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The Concise of Western

Encyclopedias and are rarely concise. This classic encyclopedia, now updated, combines philosophers and conciseness in a manner perfectly suited to students and other non-specialists. Readers enjoy philosophy in here. Paul Moser, Loyola of Chicago

Ever since its first appearance in 1960, this Concise Encyclopedia has been recognised as a classic, providing not only a guide to philosophy at its best, but some remarkable samples of it too. It is a treasury of brilliant philosophical : A. J. Ayer on Russell, on Frege, R. M. Hare on , on , P. F. Strawson on and on Descartes, not to mention Dorothy Emmet, J. N. Findlay, H. L. A. Hart, Walter Kaufmann, G. S. Kirk, Alasdair MacIntyre, P. H. Nowell-Smith, R. S. Peters, Richard Robinson, J. O. Urmson, G. J. Warnock and many others. This new edition builds on the strengths of the first and brings it completely up to date, with entries on newly emerging philosophers and on themes as diverse as , ‘’, , and philosophy of . The Concise Encyclopedia offers a lively, readable, comprehensive and authoritative treatment of as a whole, incorporating scintillating articles by many leading philosophical authors. It serves not only as a convenient , but also as an engaging introduction to philosophy.

Jonathan Rée is a freelance , journalist and . His include Descartes, Philosophy and its Past, Proletarian Philosophers, Philosophical Tales, Heidegger and I See a Voice.

J. O. Urmson, who edited the first edition, is author of Philosophical , The Emotive of Ethics and The Greek Philosophical Vocabulary. He is Emeritus Professor at Stanford and Emeritus Fellow of Corpus Christi College, .

The Concise Encyclopedia of Western Philosophy

Edited by Jonathan Rée and J. O. Urmson Third Edition First published 1960 by Unwin Hyman Ltd Second edition 1975 Third edition published 2005 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 270 Madison Ave, , NY 10016 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group This edition published in the Taylor and Francis e-Library, 2005. “To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.” © 1960 George Rainbird Ltd © 1989, 2005 Jonathan Rée All reserved. No part of this 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 storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Cataloging in Publication Data The concise encyclopedia of western philosophy/ edited by J. O. Urmson and Jonathan Rée.—3rd ed. p. cm. 1. Philosophy – . 2. Philosophers – Biography – Encyclopedias. I. Rée, Jonathan, 1948– II. Urmson, J. O. B41.C66 2004 190Ј.3–dc22 2004004479

ISBN 0-203-64177-9 Master e-book ISBN

ISBN 0-203-67251-8 (Adobe eReader Format) ISBN 0–415–32923–X (hbk) ISBN 0–415–32924–8 (pbk) Contributors to the original edition (1960)

J. L. Ackrill Stefan Körner H. B. Acton J. D. Mabbott A. Hilary Armstrong Alasdair MacIntyre A. J. Ayer D. M. Mackinnon Errol Bedford D. O. C. MacNabb Karl Britton Philip Merlan Joseph G. Dawson M. A. E. Dummett P. H. Nowell-Smith Dorothy M. Emmet James O’Connell A. C. Ewing D. J. O’Connor R. S. Peters J. N. Findlay Anthony Quinton Thomas Gilby Richard Robinson Roland Hall Erwin I. J. Rosenthal R. M. Hare Gilbert Ryle Rom Harré Ruth Lydia Saw H. L. A. Hart P. F. Strawson D. J. B. Hawkins F. A. Taylor P. L. Heath Ivo Thomas Ronald W. Hepburn J. O. Urmson Edmund Hill James Ward Smith Walter Kaufmann G. J. Warnock I. G. Kidd Alan R. White G. S. Kirk Bernard A. O. Williams

Additional contributors to the second edition (1989)

Christopher J. Arthur Genevieve Lloyd Ted Benton David Macey Robert L. Bernasconi Michael Macnamara Jay M. Bernstein Rudolf A. Makkreel Stephen R. L. Clark Peter Dews Nicholas Phillipson Colin Gordon Jonathan Powers Jonathan Rée David-Hillel Ruben Ross Harrison Paulin Hountondji Kate Soper Richard Kearney Charles Taylor Douglas M. Kellner Mary Tiles Peter Lamarque Elisabeth Young-Bruehl Jean-Jacques Lecercle

Additional contributors to the third edition (2005)

David Archard Matthew Nudds Bruce Kuklick Jonathan Rée Peter Lamarque Introduction to the second edition

The very of an encyclopedia of philosophy is a bit embarrassing. Some people may fancy, from to time, that they have achieved an encyclopedic grasp of the of philosophy. But all you ever get from an actual encyclopedia is a little about the personalities and problems which make up the OF PHILOSOPHY. And this little knowledge will be enough to convince most people of one thing: that philoso- phy is such a jumbled and controversial that encyclopedic philosophical ambi- tions are symptoms of megalomania rather than expressions of . The first edition of this Concise Encyclopedia of Western Philosophy and Philosophers came out in 1960, and it soon won itself the status of a minor classic. Part of its attraction was that none of its large team of contributors disguised their indi- vidual voices for the sake of encyclopedic unison. Nevertheless, the majority of these forty-nine authors had a common philosophical allegiance: like their editor, J. O. Urmson, they were participants in what many would regard as the Golden Age of twentieth-century English philosophy – the ‘linguistic’ movement centred in Oxford in the 1950s, which was inspired by the later Wittgenstein, and advocated by Austin, Hare, Strawson and above all Ryle (see also ). The main thing that united the Oxford philosophers was their ambivalence about the project of , particularly as interpreted by LOGICAL and its English advocate, A. J. Ayer. They admired its unsentimentality and its terse, hard-edged prose; but they rejected its cut-and-dried and its in technicalities and formal , and they felt uneasy about its condescension towards the of philosophy. As one observer of Oxford in the 1950s put it, philosophy was ‘the subject which now spends its time debating whether it was once correct to describe it as ’. Whatever else one may think of this episode in the history of English philosophy, it was a good moment for compiling an encyclopedia. Urmson’s editorial policy, as explained in his Introduction to the first edition, was based on the assumption that ‘there are no in philosophy’, and that ‘there is no of agreed results’. So he made his Encyclopedia into an incitement to thinking as well as a store of informa- tion. Readers could consult the articles on and , for example, to get a straightforward guide to two schools whose disagreement is supposed to structure the whole field of philosophical debate; but if they turned to the magisterial article on they would be told that ‘their tug-of- lacks a rope’. With the second (1967), moreover, readers found initials at the end of each article identifying its author: in the case of Epistemology and several others, it was Ryle himself. Hare wrote on ETHICS; Strawson on METAPHYSICS; Ayer on Russell; Dummett on Frege; Introduction to the second edition vii

Williams on Descartes – to cite only a few examples. And Urmson had extracted perfect miniature samples of their work from his celebrated authors: the result was a remark- able philosophical anthology, as well as an Encyclopedia. Teachers also found that it served well as a textbook for introducing new students to philosophy. Another of Urmson’s objectives was to ‘range beyond the confines of British and American philosophical fashions’. Here too, he had some notable successes: Kaufmann’s articles on Hegel and Nietzsche are classic sources for his famous if ten- dentious interpretations; in his article on Husserl, Findlay was able to his views about ‘the strange drop from Phenomenology to ’, and Farber gave a characteristically eccentric interpretation of PHENOMENOLOGY. This new edition reproduces most of Urmson’s Encyclopedia, edited and updated where necessary. I have removed about one-tenth of the original articles, either because they are obsolete, or because they are preposterous (like Kaufmann’s notorious piece on Heidegger, which concluded, without argument, that ‘there are probably few philoso- phers to whose vogue Andersen’s fairy tale The Emperor’s Clothes is more applicable’). This venerable material from the original edition is now supplemented with 80 new articles* from 31 authors. Some of the additions concern things that have happened in philosophy in the past thirty years; others take account of new about old ; several deal with political or literary aspects of philosophy which might have seemed to the first editor to be of little importance; but most of them have to do with PSYCHO- ANALYSIS, and traditions in European which would not have been regarded as intellectually legitimate by English philosophers in the 1950s. The initials at the end of each article can be decoded by reference to the lists of con- tributors on p. v. Initials enclosed in round brackets indicate that the article is a survivor from the first edition; those in square brackets indicate that it is new. So readers can easily tell whose point of they are offered, and whether it belongs to the 1950s or the 1980s. My aim has been to collect the widest range of perspectives on Western Philosophy and Philosophers which could be explained to non-specialist readers and squeezed into a pocketable book. This Encyclopedia is not meant to resolve questions about the of philosophy and its encyclopedias though; in it will succeed only if it sharpens them.

Jonathan Rée June 1988

* Adorno, ‘African Philosophy’, Alienation, Althusser, Analytic Philosophy, Anderson, Animals, Anscombe, , Arendt, , Bachelard, de Beauvoir, Benjamin, Bentham, Bloch, Canguilhem, Chomsky, Davidson, Deleuze, Derrida, Dialectical , Dilthey, Duhem, Dummett, Feuerbach, Foot, , , Gadamer, Gender, Gramsci, Habermas, Heidegger, , History of Philosophy, , Horkheimer, , , lntentionality, Kierkegaard, Kojève, Kripke, Kuhn, Lacan, Lenin, Levinas, Lukács, MacIntyre, Marcuse, Marx, Merleau-Ponty, Metaphor, , , Nozick, , Philosophy of , Political , , Post-modernism, , Quantum , Quine, Rawls, , , Relativity, , Ricoeur, Rorty, Sartre, Saussure, Schelling, Smith, , Transcendental Arguments, Urmson, Weil. Introduction to the third edition

A decade and a half later, the Concise Encyclopedia is still in good . But discussions have moved on, fashions have changed and a number of mournful obituaries have had to be written. The field remains as controversial as ever, and no attempt has been made to conceal divergences not only between the subjects of this Encyclopedia but also between its authors. Meanwhile the gap between what professional philosophers want to write about and what students and general readers want to read shows no of narrowing. With thorough line-by-line updating, refurbishment and revision, and more than eighty new articles** (identifiable by curly brackets – {} – enclosing the initials of the author) this third edition will continue to bridge the gap.

Jonathan Rée December 2003

** New articles for 2004 include , Aesthetics, Berlin, Burke, , Cavell, Coleridge, Continental Philosophy, Darwin, Laertius, Evil, Hackenschmidt, Jonas, , Neurath, Newton, Personal , Sellars, Substance, Translation, Ethics. A

Abelard, Peter (c.1079–1142) The more than 900 years, being associated details of the stormy life of the Breton first with the mathematical and ethical philosopher are found in teachings of and his pupils, and the autobiographical letter known as the later with a revival of the SCEPTICISM Historia Calamitatum, which describes attributed to . A fashion for the consequences of his seduction of referring to all sorts of educational insti- Héloise, niece of Canon Fulbert of Notre tutions as ‘academic’ was associated with Dame: when their child was born they the burgeoning taste for in the married secretly but Héloise’s brothers seventeenth-century , and has broke into Abelard’s room at night and incongruously survived it. {J.R.} castrated him; subsequently Héloise Adorno, Theodor W. (1903–69) The became a nun and Abelard a monk. German philosopher Theodor Adorno In philosophy, Abelard is noted for his was, along with and skill as a and his contribu- , a major architect of the tion to the . He FRANKFURT SCHOOL of . studied LOGIC under , a Besides his work in philosophy, Adorno NOMINALIST, and later disputed with the was also active as a sociologist, literary REALIST theologian William of Champeaux theorist and musicologist (he was student in . The details of this debate are of Alban Berg, a composer of several given in Abelard’s logical treatises songs and chamber works and a defender Concerning Genera and Species and of Arnold Schoenberg). Glosses on . He stands by the Adorno’s most important philosophi- that only individuals exist and cal works are Negative (1966) that terms get their and Aesthetic Theory (1970). In Negative purely from the abstractive power of the Dialectics he argues that dialectics needs mind. The famous formula that the mind to be freed from the totalizing impulse of may consider factors separately without HEGEL’s system, because the ‘whole’ of considering them as separate from one contemporary society is not a Hegelian another gave a convenient dialectical reconciliation of universal and particular, answer to the problem as formulated by but the domination of particularity by . Abelard also wrote an ethical the universality of subjective , treatise, Know Thyself, which empha- determined solely by the drive for self- sizes the subjective element in preservation. Subjective reason conceives conduct and the role of in moral of knowing as the mastery of things by evaluation. (J.G.D.) , where nothing is cognitively Academy In or around 385 BC, PLATO significant except what different items set up in a park outside a school share, or what makes them the ‘same’. The called the akademeia. The institution came rule of identity and sameness is realized to be called the Academy, and remained in not only philosophically, in the systems of more or less continuous for German , but also materially, in 2 the capitalist system where use values of , introduced the (particulars) are dominated by exchange important term ‘mimesis’ (imitation), and (universality). is launched the first sustained into dialectics without a final moment of uni- the moral status of poetry. But modern fication. It operates for the sake of the philosophical aesthetics (which owes its of , and its goal is to reveal name to Alexander Baumgarten in 1735) the non-identity between objects and the took its impetus and many of its guiding concepts under which they are usually from KANT’s Critique of ‘identified’. For Adorno cognitive Judgment (1790) and various eighteenth- would not be a unified science, but a use century on ‘taste’ by the Earl of of concepts to unseal the non-conceptual SHAFTESBURY, HUTCHESON, HUME and without making it their equal. BURKE. These authors highlighted the In Aesthetic Theory Adorno argues question as to how far judgements of that the kind of non-identity thinking beauty could attain and univer- aimed at by negative dialectics is, for the sality, often making comparisons between time being at least, adumbrated in mod- and . But it was Kant’s account ernist works of art. Successful works of of aesthetic judgement as based on disin- art claim us beyond our ability to redeem terested attention to the appearance of an their claims conceptually. They are partic- object that became the foundation for ulars demanding acknowledgement while subsequent thinking about the aesthetic simultaneously resisting or realm, eventually transmuting into ver- explanation: in fact it is their very unin- sions of artistic formalism that made no telligibility which reveals the wounding reference to morality. Philosophical aes- duality between particularity and univer- thetics has two broad centres of interest: sality in modern . Art is a pre- first the nature of art, and second, the figuration of a which comprehends nature of aesthetic in general. individuals without dominating them. For One leading question in the philosophy Adorno modernist art enacts a critique of of art concerns the definition of art. The subjective reason, and reveals the possi- idea of ‘fine ’ (beaux arts), covering bility of another form of reason. Other diverse forms like music, poetry, , noteworthy philosophical works by Adorno sculpture and dance, was introduced in the are: of Enlightenment (with eighteenth century; but the explicit search Max Horkheimer, 1947); Kierkegaard: for an of art – a set of distinctive The Construction of the Aesthetic (1933); properties shared by all forms of art – was Against Epistemology: A Metacritique first given prominence by analytical (1956) (on HUSSERL); The Jargon of philosophers in the second half of the twen- Authenticity (1964) (on HEIDEGGER); Three tieth century. The search has proved incon- Studies on Hegel (1963); and Minima clusive, but four broad tendencies can be : Reflections from Damaged Life distinguished. Some philosophers reject the (1951). See also AESTHETICS, PHILOSOPHY very idea of defining art: , in OF SCIENCE. [J.M.B.] 1956, applied WITTGENSTEIN’s of ‘’ to art, arguing that it Aenesidemus See STOICS. is an ‘open ’ with no ‘essence’. Aesthetics Philosophical reflection on Others have sought a definition in terms beauty and goes back to classi- of the functions of art: for example, to cal Greek , which sought for a express (R. G. COLLINGWOOD) or Aesthetics 3 to provide aesthetic (Monroe distinct from philosophy (PLATO). The Beardsley). A third group has proposed value that art is taken to have will depend ‘institutional’ , where the on what conception of art is adopted; defining properties are not intrinsic or mimetic commend art for hold- functional but relational. On this view, ing up a ‘mirror to nature’ or more gener- objects are works of art not in virtue of ally for its cognitive ( bearing) what they look like or what purpose they potential; others locate artistic value in fulfil but by having the status of art con- kinds of or experience (Monroe ferred upon them by the ‘art world’ Beardsley), yet others in expressive or (George Dickie). Finally, there are ‘histor- formal qualities (CROCE, Clive Bell); ical’ definitions (, Noël according to Marxist tradition, value Carroll), whereby an object counts as art if judgements are grounded in ideology and it stands in an appropriate relation to of aesthetic taste merely expres- objects previously accepted as art. None sions of social and historical conditions of these approaches has received universal (Terry Eagleton, ). In assent although there is broad acceptance recent years, the philosophy of art has that some kinds of relational properties focused increasingly on particular art are involved in identifying art. Related forms. For example, there is debate about debates concern whether the concept of how pictures represent objects: is it ‘art’ is fundamentally evaluative or merely through conventional symbolism (Nelson classificatory and what ontological cate- GOODMAN), through ‘seeing-in’ (Richard gory art works fall into – for example, par- Wollheim), through make-believe (Kendall ticulars or types – and whether there is Walton), through modes of resemblance only one such for all kinds of art. (Malcolm Budd) or in other ways? Issues The philosophy of art also addresses about pictorial representation have been questions about meaning, truth and value extended to photography and film (Roger in the arts. Debates about meaning ask, Scruton, Noël Carroll). There are also for example: whether the task of artistic philosophical problems about music: what interpretation is to recover the artist’s men- kind of entities musical works are, how tal processes, conscious or unconscious, as music expresses , whether music suggested by romantic or expressivist has meaning, and whether pure instru- conceptions of art; whether interpretation mental music is strictly art. has allows for imaginative creativeness on the long been a topic of interest in aesthetics: part of the interpreter; whether plural, even whether there is a distinctive kind of conflicting, interpretations are permissi- ‘poetic truth’ (famously debated by Plato ble; and whether a work’s very identity and Aristotle), how fictionality is to be changes under different interpretations. explained, and how literature can be The relation between art and truth has defined. also been contested. For some, art is Apart from these specific questions in closely bound up with ideology (ADORNO), the philosophy of art, there are issues about or it ‘unconceals’ truth at the heart of aesthetic experience in general. Some of being (HEIDEGGER) or it aspires to univer- these issues span all artefacts and natural sal truth (ARISTOTLE); others are more objects, as well as art. One concerns sceptical, either because of suspicions the very nature of aesthetic appreciation: about truth itself (NIETZSCHE, RORTY), or is there, as Kant thought, a distinctive because they consider art to be radically kind of aesthetic attention – disinterested, 4 ‘African Philosophy’ non-conceptual, and removed from desire rudimentary scientific theory which and utility? If so, is this associated with a attempted to explain natural phenomena particular kind of experience and does it by attributing them to the voluntary acts reveal particular qualities? The idea of a of personal spirits; it was not an arbitrary specific ‘aesthetic attitude’ has come invention, but a special if naïve applica- under attack: as an unsupported ‘myth’ tion of the principle of . In this (George Dickie) and, by feminist aestheti- Tylor’s approach was intellectualist: cians, in relation to art, as overly detached he went beyond purely emotional factors, and apolitical. Modern debates about such as fear, upon which previous analy- aesthetic properties originate in the work ses of ‘primitive ’ had focused, in of Frank Sibley, who distinguished aes- order to identify its conceptual founda- thetic qualities, such as unified, balanced, tions. This intellectualist approach did integrated, dynamic or delicate, from not necessarily involve a rehabilitation of non-aesthetic, physical or perceptual, ‘primitive’ culture or an affirmation of qualities, arguing that the former are non- cultural equality. ‘Primitives’ were still condition-governed, require ‘taste’ for their primitive, ‘savages’ still savage. For Tylor’s apprehension, and are ‘emergent’ from the was a form of evolutionist latter. All these claims are debated, as are , in which inequalities of devel- realism and anti-realism about aesthetic opment were seen against a background qualities, whether such qualities are irre- assumption of the ultimate identity of ducibly evaluative, and how aesthetic and humanity as a whole. Thus it contrasts, on non-aesthetic properties relate. Finally, the right hand, with theories of there has been burgeoning interest in , which fragment the idea of ‘the aesthetics applied to nature and the envi- human race’ into several different ‘races’; ronment. How does the aesthetic appreci- and on the left, with the principled egali- ation of nature relate to that of art? How tarianism which regards actual inequali- far should aesthetic judgements about ties of achievement as historical accidents, nature be informed by background scien- which do not detract in any way from the tific knowledge (Allen Carlson)? And, equal value of all and peoples. returning to a Kantian theme, what does Tylor drew extensively on COMTE’s it mean for nature – its magnitude and theory that the history both of the individ- its power – to evoke experiences of the ual and of humanity as a whole passes sublime? {P.L.} from a theological stage, through a meta- physical one, to a positive or scientific ‘African Philosophy’ The concept of stage. Comte had regarded each of these African Philosophy originated as a vari- three stages as based on a specific ‘phi- ant of the general idea of ‘Primitive’ losophy’, and held that their historical Philosophy, which in its turn is part of the succession exhibited a progressive accept- history of European attempts to under- ance of the limits of human understand- stand the strange practices of ‘other ing. Thus , for Comte, was the peoples’. In Primitive Culture (1871) the earliest and most ambitious form of English anthropologist E. B. Tylor (1832– philosophy. It too had developed in three 1917) postulated a childish but coherent stages: fetishism, and world-picture called ‘’, which . Fetishism – the habit of he took to be at the basis of ‘primitive treating inert objects as though they were society’. Animism, for Tylor, was a alive – was thus the absolute beginning ‘African Philosophy’ 5 of reason. However, according to Comte There was then a reaction against every member of every society has to go both pre- and para-, and a well- through all the same stages, and moreover meaning revival of intellectualism. Thus no society and no scientific system, how- in Primitive Man as Philosopher (1927) ever highly developed, could break com- the American anthropologist Paul Radin pletely with its origins. So Comte insisted (1883–1959) described the role played by on the functional value of fetishism, as in ‘primitive society’ in order the stage of the initial stirring of concep- to discredit the myth that ‘primitive man’ tual exploration, which left its mark on all is totally submerged in society, dominated subsequent ones. by the thinking of the group, and lacking Tylor, in contrast, saw fetishism (or individual personality. The French ethno- animism, as he re-named it) as an abso- grapher Marcel Griaule (1908–56) pur- lutely backward mentality, in prim- sued a similar task with the Dogon of itive societies but completely overcome in French Sudan (now Mali). He did his best civilized ones. However, even Tylor’s to efface himself as a theorist, and to act intellectualism came to be criticized for as little more than a secretary, recording, being excessively generous towards prim- transcribing and translating the - itive cultures. In How Natives Think: ments of some ‘master of the spoken Mental Functions in Inferior Societies ’ (see, e.g. his Conversations with (1910), the French philosopher Lucien Ogotemmêli, 1948). With the discovery of Lévy-Bruhl (1857–1939) complained that ‘oral literature’, numerous other investiga- the idea of ‘animism’ made the unjusti- tors, including many Africans, have taken fied assumption that ‘savages’ are capable the same approach as Griaule. of rudimentary logical thought, and hence In this context, ‘primitive philosophy’ that they are essentially the same as the means an explicit set of doctrines, rather ‘civilized adult white man’. Lévy-Bruhl than the merely implicit animism postu- suggested that savages are pre-logical and lated in Tylor’s Primitive Culture. But the separated from Europeans by a gulf as Dogon cosmogony which was expounded large as that between vertebrate and inver- with elaborate beauty by Ogotemmêli is tebrate animals. more like a magnificent poem than an The French Raoul Allier reached exercise in abstract, systematic, critical very similar conclusions, on the basis of analysis. It is not clear why it should be reports and letters written by Protestant categorized as ‘philosophy’ as opposed missionaries. In The of Con- to, for example, ‘religion’ or ‘mythology’. version amongst Uncivilised Peoples Some of the more ardent exponents of (1925) and The Uncivilised Peoples and this approach therefore attempted to go Ourselves: Irreducible Difference or Basic behind the actual of their inform- Identity? (1927), Allier also challenged ants in order to reconstruct another, more the idea of a universal human nature, and systematic and philosophical described the intellectual methods of upon which they could be taken to depend. ‘savages’ as ‘para-logical’. On this basis Thus Bantu Philosophy (1945), by the he argued that when uncivilized individu- Belgian missionary Placide Tempels, als were converted to they depicted a specifically Bantu underwent a total crisis, which gave them involving a dynamic conception of the uni- access not only to a new faith, but to a verse based on the idea of a complex, strat- new humanity. ified plurality of . This ontology, he 6 Albert the Great said, contrasted with the static Aristotelian The trouble with all these investigations concept of Being which predominated in is that they are based on an antiquarian Europe; and he presented the doctrine in a conception of philosophy, as something systematic, deductive form which looks which belongs essentially to the past: they distinctly philosophical. Tempels also are uncritical attempts to restore a philos- argued for the theological conclusion that ophy which is supposed to be already has always been present to Bantu given, a collective world-view passively thought in the guise of a supreme . shared by a whole society. They are exer- This had important implications for his cises in what has been called ‘ethnophi- ‘missiology’ (theory of missionary activ- losophy’, rather than philosophy itself. ity): it meant that Allier was mistaken in Unfortunately, the positive, factual and conceiving conversion as a total crisis and historical assumptions of breakthrough into a new type of human- still dominate African philosophy; but ity; rather it was a return to mean- happily they do not have a monopoly. ing of authentic Bantu thought, peeling The alternative is to take the idea of away historical accretions to discover an African philosophy more literally, so that it original of the divine. means the contributions which African But Tempels’ generous conception of thinkers make to the sorts of critical and Bantu philosophy could also be seen as an reflexive discussions in which philosophy expression of colonialist condescension. has traditionally been taken to consist. Then He admitted that the Bantu people them- the European history of African philosophy selves were incapable of formulating could be replaced by an African history of ‘Bantu philosophy’, but claimed that when philosophy, with philosophy defined by its the ethnologist articulated it for them, they simple if subversive insistence on truth recognized it immediately as representing (which of course does not exclude, but on their own view. However, this suggested the contrary presupposes being rooted in a that their thought became philosophical historical situation and responding to extra- only thanks to outside intervention. It is philosophical problems). African philoso- not surprising that in his Discourse on phy in this sense has a long history – Colonialism (1950), Aimé Césaire denou- certainly longer than that of ethnophiloso- nced Tempels for inviting colonists to phy. More and more Africans are rejecting respect the philosophy of the Africans philosophical antiquarianism as a manipu- rather than their rights. lative impoverishment of the past: they are Nevertheless, a number of later authors, refusing to reduce African culture to pure mostly Africans, have followed Tempels in traditions emptied of movement and trying to reconstitute ‘African philosophy’, controversy. Knowledge of old African cul- or, more cautiously, the philosophy of some tures is no longer the necessary starting particular group of Africans, or ‘African point for African philosophy; and it is cer- thought’ generally. The theory of negritude tainly not the last word. See also HISTORY OF developed by Léopold Senghor, from the PHILOSOPHY, RELIGION. [P.J.H.] word coined by Césaire, is closely related to this idea of ‘African philosophy’; so Albert the Great (1206–80) Albert too are the works of the Rwandan writer the Great (also known as Albertus Alexis Kagamé (1912–81) (The Bantu– Magnus, Albert of Lauingen and Albert Rwandan Philosophy of Being, 1956, and of Cologne) was canonized in 1931. He Comparative Bantu Philosophy, 1976). was born in Swabia, and studied at Padua, Alienation 7 where he joined the Dominicans; later he the time being is the ; God is never became Bishop of Ratisbon. He taught at actual but always in the making. (J.O.U.) Cologne and Paris. He was a traveller, administrator, theologian, but above all an Alienation Strictly speaking, to alien- indefatigable experimentalist, especially ate something is to separate it from one- in botany and zoology, held in grudging self or disown it. But an extended concept respect by his contemporary, Roger of alienation gained wide currency in the BACON. He wrote of ARISTOTLE with great twentieth-century philosophy and social sympathy, and together with his pupil theory. Under converging influences from , he led the movement EXISTENTIALISM, the FRANKFURT SCHOOL, which introduced a new form of HUMANISM and PSYCHOANALYSIS, the term into Christian thought. ‘alienation’ has been used in numerous But he was a less synthetic and imper- diagnoses of the maladies of ‘the modern sonal thinker than Aquinas: he com- world’. All sorts of alleged symptoms of mented on Aristotle in the older style of ‘MODERNITY’ – the dichotomies of civi- paraphrase and digression, and is closer lization and barbarism, scientism and to than to . His sym- irrationalism, town and country, mental pathy for the of Dionysius and manual labour, and religios- and descended through his disci- ity, individualization and massification, ples, Ulrich of Strasbourg and Dietrich of banal and unintelligible Freiburg, to Master Eckhart, John Tauler high culture, and feeling, mascu- and the Dominican mystics of the line and feminine etc. – have been Rhineland. (T.G.) encompassed within theories of alienation. Superficially, alienation refers to a Alembert, Jean le Rond d’ (1717–83) subjective feeling of unease, dissociation French , see ENCYCLO- or exile. At a deeper level, it indicates PEDISTS. a structure which prevents people from Alexander, Samuel (1859–1938) ‘identifying’ with the social and spiritual was born in Australia conditions of their existence. Ultimately it but educated in Victorian Oxford in the implies that modernity is the loss or dis- IDEALIST tradition. But as Professor at ruption of an original unity, and may also Manchester University for many years he suggest that a day of reconciliation in a became one of the most noted REALIST ‘higher unity’ is about to dawn. metaphysicians of his time. His great work But alienation is not supposed to be was , Time and Deity (1920), which a catastrophe striking humanity from out- argued that the basic stuff of the side; it is essentially a perverted, malign is space-time or pure , and that and self-destructive expression of human everything develops out of it by a process creativity itself. Alienation means that of emergent . Things or sub- people are subject to an oppression stances are volumes of space-time with a which – though they may not recognize determinate contour; is low in the it – is of their own making. In this sense scale of evolution, and gives rise to life Mary Shelley’s story of Frankenstein and and finally – so far as we are concerned – his monster provides an exact allegory of mind; but no one can say what will emerge alienation. later in the process. The universe is always The concept of alienation achieved striving towards a stage, which for popularity as the basis for an alternative 8 Althusser, Louis to in the be found in Marx’s Capital, for example philosophical interpretation of Marxism. in the doctrine of ‘commodity fetishism’ Humanistic Marxists such as MARCUSE, and criticisms of bourgeois theorists like SARTRE and the psychoanalyst Erich J. S. MILL for ‘the folly of identifying a Fromm (1900–80) used the term to trans- specific social relationship of production late the German words Entfremdung and with the thinglike qualities of articles’. Entäusserung, with particular reference LUKÁCS’ History and to the young MARX and his philosophy of (1923) was the first work to interpret labour or praxis. In the 1844 Manuscripts Marxism in terms of alienation or rather (published in 1932) Marx tried to explain ‘REIFICATION’. Later, Lukács followed , or rather ‘the system of private the theme back to HEGEL, arguing in ’, as a form of ‘alienated labour’. The Young Hegel that alienation is ‘the As Marx acknowledged, this explanation central philosophical concept of the was indebted to FEUERBACH, who argued Phenomenology of Spirit’ (see also in The Essence of Christianity that ‘reli- KOJÈVE). The concept is also at work in gion is the dream of the human mind’ and ROUSSEAU’s , and may indeed that the God that people worship is really be traced much further back: perhaps it nothing more than their own ‘alienated can even be detected in the theology of self’, inverted and unrecognized. NEOPLATONISM (see also ) and in According to the young Marx, the func- PRE-SOCRATIC doctrines of creation. For tion of labour in modern society is just the idea that humanity is at odds with like that which Feuerbach attributed to itself, and adrift from its spiritual home, is worship in religion: it creates the power probably co-extensive with religion in which confronts and overwhelms it. general; in which case ‘modernity’ must Hence ‘the alienation of the worker in his be considerably older than is commonly product means not only that his labour supposed. [J.R.] becomes an object, an outside existence, but also that it exists outside him, inde- Althusser, Louis (1918–90) The pendent and alien, and becomes a self- French-Algerian philosopher Louis sufficient power over against him – that Althusser is best known for his writings the life he has lent to the object confronts from 1960 onwards, the main theme of him, hostile and alien’. Moreover, in which was a re-working of Marxist ortho- Marx’s theory money itself plays the part doxy and an associated defence of the sci- of Feuerbach’s humanly constructed God: entific status of . ‘it is the visible deity, the transformation Using ideas derived from French historical of all human and natural qualities into and from STRUC- their opposites’; thus, ‘the divine power of TURALISM, Althusser argued that Marx’s money resides in its nature as the alien- early works, with their ‘HUMANIST’ and ated, externalised and self-estranging ‘historicist’ philosophical basis, should be species-being of humanity: it is the regarded as ‘pre-scientific’. Later writings alienated power of human ’. such as Capital could then be read as con- Some Marxist commentators (notably taining the elements of a new ‘scientific’ ALTHUSSER) have argued that the theory theory of social formations and their trans- of alienation is no more than a regret- formations. Human individuals were to be table vestige of pre-Marxist ideology. understood not as the self-conscious Nevertheless numerous traces of it are to sources of their social life, but rather as 9

‘bearers’ of a system of social and the empiricist tradition in Britain, and which exists prior to and independently of his followers also assimilated Scottish their consciousness and activity. In opposi- Realism and then . In tion to economic , Althusser Freedom of the Will (1754) he delineated argued for a recognition of the relative ideas about the compatibility of freedom of political, cultural and intel- and that are comparable to lectual practices within a loosely defined those of HOBBES and HUME, while his ‘determination in the last instance’ by eco- Religious (1746) argued for a nomic structures and practices. connection between and action that This notion of ‘relative autonomy’, anticipates some twentieth-century views. together with Althusser’s insistence upon The second part of the conversation the irreducible complexity of social con- was located in divinity schools in the tradictions and struggles, made it possible northeast, south and mid-west. Apart for a new significance to be given to cul- from and medical schools, these were tural analysis and to forms of resistance the only institutions in America offering not directly attributable to ‘class strug- post-graduate instruction. The theologians gle’. However, Althusser’s ‘scientism’, at Andover, Harvard, Princeton and espe- and his apparent denial of autonomous cially Yale gradually took over intellectual human led to a growing division leadership from the old parish ministers. between Althusser and his followers. Though writing in particular conformity Althusser’s response was a spate of self- to their understanding of the New critical writings which appeared to put an Testament, they developed a distinctive end to what was distinctive in the school PHILOSOPHY OF MIND in which feeling, of which he had will, and intellect had carefully defined engendered. [T.B.] roles, and in which the intellect’s ability to grasp the of the external world American Philosophy Philosophy in was not compromised. what is now the is charac- The third set of participants in the terized by distinctive religious and practi- conversation held chairs in philosophy in cal concerns that go back to the beginning American colleges, and were the only ones of the eighteenth century. At its origin, who actually called themselves philoso- American philosophy was a three-way phers. They concurred in the Protestant conversation, led by a number of New doctrines of the theologians, but they also parish ministers who wrote on engaged with questions of and the problems in protestant philosophical the- grounds of social order. Many of them ology, debating the served as presidents of their institutions, of the solitary individual confronting a and had captive student audiences and mysterious deity, in dialogue with thinkers easy access to publication. Noah Porter in England, and later . (1811–92) of Yale led a move away from This group included Ralph Waldo the realistic epistemology of the past to EMERSON, who became celebrated as a one grounded in the TRANSCENDENTAL and interpreter of the uniqueness of IDEALISM of KANT. the American intellect. But its pioneer This entire tradition went into abeyance was Jonathan EDWARDS, whose extraordi- in the and Constitutional nary talents still command attention today. period (1776–87), but despite the preoc- Edwards was indebted to both the Platonic cupation of the ‘Founding Fathers’ with 10 American Philosophy politics, they never lost sight of larger impossible for human effort to make a theoretical issues. The Federalist difference. Knowledge of the world con- (1787–8 – published anonymously but sisted not in our grasp of a pre-existing mostly attributable to , object but rather in our ability to accom- 1755/7–1804, and , modate ourselves to a potentially hostile 1751–1836), which commented on the environment. Applying Darwinism to phi- proposed American , remain losophy, the pragmatists treated beliefs an extraordinary set of arguments for not as mental entities but as modes of republican based on history, action, which had to struggle for survival political , and a prudent and in the competitive world of experience; to realistic appraisal of human nature. The call them true was not to attribute a mys- briefer reflections on the nature of demo- terious metaphysical property to them, cratic government by Abraham Lincoln but simply to say that they had prevailed (1809–65), which are still widely read, in competition with others. Pragmatists reflect back on the Constitutional period also emphasized the social dimension of but also look towards the present. inquiry, showing how ideas are propa- After the , the influence of gated not so much within individual devastated the religious as among groups of investigators. Some orientation of traditional American phi- forms of might also reinstate losophy. At the same time, many colleges religion at least in a chastened form: after were transformed into internationally rec- all, if beliefs about spirituality prospered, ognized centres of learning, while new then pragmatists were bound to call them commanded national atten- true. But even non-religious pragmatists tion. Students who a generation earlier held that the world was what human would have sought graduate training in beings collectively made of it, and prag- Germany, or in a theological college, matism at its most influential was a form would by 1900 attend an American uni- of COMMUNITARIAN idealism, not unlike versity to study for the doctoral degree. that of T. H. GREEN in England. Theologians and clergymen gave way to There were two varieties of pragma- professional philosophers, and students tism. One was associated with the Harvard sought in secular philosophy much of philosophers Charles PEIRCE, William what their predecessors had found in a JAMES and . The Harvard theological education. pragmatists took , logic and The starting point for American uni- the physical as their model of versity philosophers in the second half of inquiry, though sought to the nineteenth century was German ideal- justify religion as well as science. The ism. But idealism in America soon took second variant of pragmatism was the the distinctive form of PRAGMATISM, ‘’ of , who which linked mind or spirit with practice took the social sciences as his exemplar of or action, and found a new approach to useful knowledge. Dewey taught at the traditional problems of knowledge by University of Chicago in the 1890s, and focusing on practices and processes of shaped the intellectual life of New York inquiry. Pragmatism was hospitable to the after he moved to Columbia natural and social sciences and embraced University in 1904, stressing the ways in an optimistic on politics, which the social sciences could be based on the conviction that it is never applied to the improvement of the cultural Analysis 11 and social world. As well as writing in of knowledge as a representation of , their own learned magazines, the pioneers in a way that his many critics thought led of pragmatism contributed to a wider edu- to relativism. At the same time, many other cated culture with works such as Peirce’s scholars proclaimed that philosophy was essays in the Popular Science Monthly of no more than a rather pretentious branch 1877–8, James’s Pragmatism (1907) and of imaginative literature, and that it had Dewey’s Quest for (1929). Their no future as a distinct discipline. American mix of the professorial and the popular philosophy entered the twenty-first cen- defined what has been called the ‘Golden tury in a confused and fragile state. {B.K.} Age’ of American philosophy. When the of the 1930s precipi- Analysis The Greek word ‘analysis’ tated an influx of European intellectuals, means the resolution of a complex whole LOGICAL POSITIVISM became influential, into its parts, as opposed to ‘synthesis’, and the ANALYTIC PHILOSOPHY that came which means the construction of a whole in its wake turned its back on socially out of parts. Philosophers have always engaged normative reasoning. In the had two main aims, the construction of middle years of the century, C. I. LEWIS, systems of METAPHYSICS, LOGIC or ETHICS , and W. V. QUINE contin- (synthesis) and the clarification of impor- ued the Harvard tradition, while calling tant ideas (analysis). These cannot always pragmatism into question. Lewis’s Mind be sharply distinguished, since what is and the World-Order (1929) introduced the synthesis from one point of view is analy- influential notion of alternative conceptual sis from another. PLATO’s , for schemes that might, in various ways, inter- example, may be considered as the con- pret the given data of sense. However, struction in thought of a perfectly just , of the University of society or as the analysis of the idea of a Pittsburgh, rejected this sort of empiri- just society. Large parts of ARISTOTLE’s cism, insisting in ‘Empiricism and the Ethics are concerned with the analysis of Philosophy of Mind’ (1956) that science such important ideas as ‘voluntary was the unique that explained action’, ‘virtue and ’, ‘pleasure’ etc. the materialistic physical and biological In modern CONTINENTAL world that human beings inhabited. PHILOSOPHY has tended to be synthetic The 1960s accelerated the withdrawal and analytic. For of philosophy into the academic enclave. DESCARTES the analysis of concepts was Lewis’s ideas were taken up by Goodman only a preparation for the construction of and Quine, who presumed some form of a system of knowledge based on certain materialism but also used the tools of sym- ‘clear and distinct ideas’ obtained by bolic logic to argue that diverse frame- analysis; and SPINOZA sought to construct works of human understanding might be a view of the world deduced from a small justified. This ‘pragmatic analysis’ was number of definitions and . British carried forward by as well philosophers, on the other hand, have as , whose Structure of tended to be suspicious of constructive Scientific (1962) opened the metaphysics and more concerned with way for attacks on the absolute legiti- the analysis of thought and experience macy of the sciences. , in into their fundamental elements. Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature From the beginning of the twentieth (1979), tried to throw out the whole idea century the view that analysis is the 12 Analysis distinguishing feature of philosophy was To give the proper analysis of a con- widely accepted in English-speaking cept or is to replace the word countries. Philosophers who follow this or which is normally used to trend often have little in common with express it by some other expression which each other except the use of the word is exactly equivalent, but less puzzling. ‘analysis’ to describe their various activi- An analysis, therefore, is a sort of defini- ties. The most that can be said is that they tion, a kind of equation with the puzzling take the function of philosophy to be, not expression, the analysandum, on the left- the acquisition of new knowledge (which hand side and the new expression, some- is the function of the special sciences), times called the analysis, sometimes the but the clarification and articulation of analysans, on the right. It implies the what we already know. Three main stands splitting of a complex form, or replacing can be detected in the practice of analysis. an expression that stood for a complex (1) G. E. MOORE questioned the concept by a longer expression that lays assumption – common amongst the IDE- bare its hidden complexity. Moore seems ALISTS who dominated British philosophy to have used this technique solely with the at the end of the nineteenth century – that aim of clarifying concepts; he had no we do not know the humdrum things metaphysical theory and did not suppose about the world that we ordinarily claim that the things mentioned in the analy- to know. Some had said that these things sis were in any sense more real or are actually false; others, that we could fundamental than those mentioned in the not know them to be true. The world, as it analysandum. How, indeed, could they appears to us, is mere appearance, and its be, if the analysandum and the analysis reality is recondite, wholly unlike what we were to refer, as they must, to exactly the take it to be, and accessible only through same things? profound researches conducted in some (2) practised the technical . Against this, Moore same sort of definitional analysis as held that such truisms as that he had a Moore, but for very different and body, that he was born some years ago with very different aims. Where Moore and that he had existed ever since, could sought only clarity and never wished to be known for certain. Nevertheless he had depart from common-sense beliefs, Russell no wish to assert that metaphysical theo- sought metaphysical truth and was quite ries which contradicted these assertions willing to say, with the idealists, that were merely outrageous falsehoods. They beliefs can be false and were certainly that; but they were also ordinary language wholly inadequate for mistaken attempts to answer genuine and discovering and expressing truth. The puzzling questions. Though we cannot idealists had claimed that only reality as a seriously doubt the truth of such ordinary whole (the absolute) was wholly real; statements, we may not be able to state particular things were abstractions from clearly and precisely what they mean. this totality and, as such, only partially We do not, in his words, ‘know their real or not real at all. Russell’s picture proper analysis’; and almost all his - (known as LOGICAL ATOMISM) was the exact sophical activity was devoted to the opposite – that of a world composed of analysis of whose truth is not ‘atomic facts’, each corresponding to a in doubt. true ‘atomic ’. Analysis 13

Consider the statement ‘it is either property of existing. Rather it says that raining or snowing’. This is not made true nothing in the world has the property of by correspondence with a complex alter- being a chimaera. Russell’s aim here was native fact, either-rain-or-snow. It is true if that of replacing expressions whose gram- either of the atomic parts of which it is matical form was misleading by expres- composed (‘it is raining’ and ‘it is snow- sions in ‘proper ’, where ing’) is true. Thus compound or ‘molecu- grammatical structures would reflect the lar’ statements do not correspond or fail to form of the facts they stated. Confronted correspond to compound facts; they can by the statement, ‘the average plumber be broken down into atomic statements earns ten pounds a week’, one might ask which do, when true, correspond to ‘who is this average plumber?’ and fall into atomic facts. The aim of analysis was to wild metaphysical speculation. The rem- break down complex facts into their edy was to see that the statement could be atomic components, the method was to translated into ‘the number of pounds analyse complex statements into theirs. earned each week by plumbers divided by Russell’s conception of analysis was influ- the number of plumbers is ten’, a statement enced by the fact that he came to meta- from which ‘the average plumber’ has from the study of mathematics been eliminated. No one is likely to be and formal logic. As a mathematician, he bemused in such a simple case; but serious regarded all defined terms as theoretically consequences, both theoretical and practi- superfluous. Thus if ‘two’ can be defined cal, had certainly followed in the case of as ‘one plus one’ and ‘three’ as ‘two plus objects such as ‘the State’ or ‘Public one’, it follows that arithmetical opera- Opinion’. It is clear that these are – like tions could be carried on with no numer- armies, , schools and other als other than ‘one’. Russell himself had institutions – in some sense abstractions, claimed to ‘eliminate’ in this way even the and that to say something about them is to notion of ‘number’, by defining it in terms say something, though not the same thing, belonging to logic. As a metaphysician, about the people who make them up. In Russell held that if the word ‘number’ technical language they were said to be could be eliminated by being defined, ‘logical constructions’ out of the more con- then numbers were not among the ultimate objects (people) who compose them. constituents of the world which it was his Russell and his followers had high hopes aim to discover. These constituents, what- that analysis could be carried to yet deeper ever they turned out to be, would be only metaphysical levels by showing that the such things as would be named in a lan- things, including people, that we normally guage in which all defined terms had been treat as belonging on the ‘ground-floor replaced by ultimately indefinable ones. level’ of experience, were logical construc- Russell’s study of logic also convinced tions out of more fundamental entities. him that the grammar of natural (3) Russell’s views on logic and ana- is radically misleading. ‘Horses do not bel- lysis were taken up by the LOGICAL low’ and ‘chimaeras do not exist’ have the POSITIVISTS, but with a very different aim. same grammatical form; but while the first Where Russell sought a true metaphysical denies that certain objects (horses) have a theory, the positivists held that all certain property (bellowing), the second metaphysics was nonsensical; they were does not deny that chimaeras have the mainly concerned to establish a sharp line 14 Analytic between metaphysics and . problem is to examine the key words in Analysis was to be used first for the elim- the area that generates the problem and to ination of metaphysics, and second for the ask how they are in fact used. Thus prob- clarification of the language of science. lems of are to be solved, not by Here the word ‘elimination’ had a much condemning ordinary language wholesale more straightforward sense than in con- and inventing a new vocabulary (‘impres- nection with Russell. Russell had not sions’, ‘sensations’, ‘sense-data’, etc.), but claimed that the objects which his analy- by asking what precisely we are claiming tical method ‘eliminated’ did not exist; when we claim to see something. This is only that they were not metaphysically ulti- the sort of question which Moore asked; mate. The positivists, on the other hand, but whereas Moore jumped, almost with- used analysis to argue that metaphysical out argument, to the conclusion that the theories were literally nonsensical. answer must be given in terms of ‘sense- Since all metaphysics, including data’, linguistic analysts try to answer it by Russell’s atomism, was to be eliminated, exploring the locutions in which the verb a new aim had to be found for analysis. It ‘to see’ and kindred words actually occur. had never been agreed just what was to There is nothing here to which we can be analysed. Was it to be concepts and point as being ‘analysis’ as we can point propositions, as Moore said? Or facts, as to definitional substitution in Moore and Russell usually said? In practice this had Russell. Perhaps the survival of the made little difference, since the actual name ‘analysis’ is only a just tribute which technique of analysis had always been some philosophers have paid to those the replacement of one expression (word, from whom their own work stems. See phrase or sentence) by another. The also ANALYTIC PHILOSOPHY. (P.H.N.-S.) method itself was always linguistic, even if the aims were not. With the positivists, Analytic The terms ‘analytic’ and aim and method came closer together; ‘synthetic’ were introduced into modern both ‘concepts’ and ‘facts’ were dismissed philosophy by KANT, who defined an ana- as metaphysical, thought was identified lytic judgement as one in which the idea with language, and the analysis of linguis- of the predicate is already contained in tic expressions became an end in itself. that of the subject and therefore adds The name ‘linguistic analysis’ is often nothing to it. Thus ‘all bodies are used for an approach to philosophy which extended in space’ is analytic, since the became widespread in the English- idea of extension is contained in that of speaking world following the decline of body. On the other hand ‘all bodies have positivism in the 1950s. Its practitioners some weight’ is synthetic since the idea differed widely among themselves, for of weight is not so contained. Kant’s example, in their degree of for distinction has been criticized for being metaphysics. Their method is certainly too metaphorical (it is not clear what is linguistic, since it involves paying careful, meant by saying that one idea is ‘con- even minute attention to the actual usage tained in’ another) and for being insuffi- of words, phrases and sentences in a liv- ciently general (it applies only to ing language; but it cannot strictly be propositions of subject–predicate form). called ‘analysis’. What is common to all Various attempts have been made to linguistic analysts is their belief that the make the distinction more precise. An first step towards solving a philosophical analytic proposition is sometimes said Analytic Philosophy 15 to be one the denial of which is self- there are exceptions to this rule. Perhaps contradictory; or it is said to be a covert the sharpest difference lies at the level of , on the grounds that, if we define method: analytic philosophy relies heavily ‘body’, as ‘extended thing’, ‘all bodies on logical and linguistic ANALYSIS – from are extended’ means ‘all extended things which it derives its name. are extended’. It should be noted that on We may do better to concentrate on this view the analyticity of a proposition tradition rather than definition. Like con- depends on our of definitions – a tinental philosophy, analytic philosophy matter which, according to some philoso- recognizes DESCARTES as the rationalist phers, is arbitrary. Thus if we define father of , followed by ‘body’ as ‘that which has extension and the empiricist triumvirate of LOCKE, weight’, then ‘all bodies have weight’ BERKELEY and HUME, and then by KANT’s would be analytic. In that case, it would be attempt to synthesize RATIONALISM and impossible to determine, on the basis of its EMPIRICISM at the end of the eighteenth form alone, whether a sentence expresses century. After this, however, analytic phi- an analytic proposition; it would be neces- losophy’s version of history diverges from sary to appeal to what the speaker means the Continental one. HEGEL and NIETZSCHE by it. Clearly, if these or similar defini- have no place in the analytic , tions of analyticity are adopted, it will be and such twentieth-century philoso- easy to extend the notion to propositions phical movements as PHENOMENOLOGY, not of subject–predicate form. HERMENEUTICS and STRUCTURALISM are Analytic propositions, though they regarded as philosophically unimportant. may inform us of the meanings of words, For analytic philosophy, the first major can give no knowledge of matters of fact. philosopher alter Kant is , at The philosophy of LOGICAL POSITIVISM the end of the nineteenth century. Frege’s was based on a sharp distinction between researches into the foundations of mathe- analytic and synthetic and on the view matics led to revolutionary advances in that all A PRIORI propositions must be both logic and the . analytic. Many subsequent philosophers Bertrand RUSSELL and Ludwig WITTGEN- came to doubt whether this sharp STEIN developed Frege’s work on logic and distinction can be maintained: see espe- language, and in Russell it was allied to an cially QUINE’s essay ‘Two of empiricist EPISTEMOLOGY inherited from Empiricism’ (1951) in From a Logical Hume. This mix of logical analysis and Point of View. (P.H.N.-S.) empiricism gave rise to LOGICAL POSI- TIVISM. The logical positivists aimed to Analytic Philosophy ‘Analytic analyse all propositions into their funda- philosophy’ is a name for the dominant mental logical form, and to dismiss as tradition in academic philosophy in the meaningless any propositions whose fun- English-speaking world. It is difficult to damental constituents did not correspond define it precisely in terms of characteristic to elements of sense experience. concerns or doctrines. The questions it The influence of logical positivism asks, and even the answers it gives, often waned after the Second . have close parallels in the CONTINENTAL Wittgenstein recanted some of his earlier philosophical tradition. It might be argued doctrines, and emphasized the social role that it is distinguished by its respect for the of language as opposed to its purely rep- findings of the natural sciences, but resentational function. J. L. AUSTIN argued 16 Analytic Philosophy that the route to philosophical illumina- However, while it is unquestionably true tion lay in the sophisticated conceptual that the analysis of language was central to distinctions embodied in everyday lan- philosophy in the analytic tradition for guage. The school of ‘ordinary language most of the twentieth century, it started philosophy’, centred on Oxford University, being displaced in the 1970s by PHILOSOPHY sought to dissolve philosophical puzzles OF MIND. by attending to the structure of ordinary Treatments of the relationship between usage. Much of the work done under the mind and language have varied in the ana- banner of ‘ordinary language philosophy’ lytic tradition. For the founding fathers was philosophically shallow, and this par- the function of words was simply to con- ticular school ceased to be of much vey ideas from one mind to another, and importance in the 1960s. But in another something of this conception remained sense the post-war analytic tradition in force during the period of logical remained committed to ‘linguistic philos- positivism. But when Sellars, Quine and ophy’: nearly all analytic philosophers the later Wittgenstein discredited the idea continued to place the analysis of language of a self-sufficient mental realm which at the centre of the philosophical stage. breathed significance into words, most Different analytic philosophers, however, analytic philosophers came to regard lin- drew different philosophical conclusions guistic practice as primary, and mental from it. Thus the American philosophers events as little more than dispositions to W. V. QUINE and Wilfrid SELLARS verbal behaviour. Since then, however, concurred with the later Wittgenstein in there has been something of a reversion denying that words derive their meanings to the earlier view that mind is more from sensory ideas in the minds of speak- fundamental than language: a school of ers; but rather than locating the source of ‘’ has emerged, which, while linguistic in social practices, as rejecting the idea of the mind as a self- Wittgenstein did, they turned to the devel- intimating mental realm, seeks to treat the oping frameworks of scientific theory mind as an independent constituent of the instead. The influential British philoso- natural world. phers P. F. STRAWSON and Michael In Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature DUMMETT drew yet further philosophical (1980) Richard RORTY argued that, once morals from the theory of language: the traditional conception of mind as a Strawson, harking back to Kant, argued special self-knowing substance is aban- that linguistic reference would be impossi- doned, any substitute naturalistic concep- ble if we did not live in a world of reiden- tion of mind will be unable to carry the tifiable spatiotemporal objects; while same philosophical weight. Indeed, Rorty Dummett argued against metaphysical argues that the whole analytic tradition is realism on the grounds that it would be fated to collapse, because it is committed impossible to grasp the meanings of sen- to a notion of philosophy as the ‘queen tences about the world if the world in of the sciences’, offering epistemological itself were different from the world as we evaluations of human judgement in find it to be. general; and the idea of epistemological In Dummett’s view, Frege’s crucial evaluation, so Rorty’s argument goes, contribution to philosophy was to show presupposes the traditional distinction that the theory of meaning is the founda- between a mirroring non-natural mind and tion of all philosophical investigation. a mirrored natural world. 17

However, analytic philosophy proved approaches; but the sheer power of tradition rather more healthy and adaptable than is likely to keep the two schools distinct for Rorty predicted. For a start, while episte- some time to come. [D.P.] mological evaluation clearly requires some contrast between representer and An attempted represented, self-intimating mental states synthesis of HISTORICAL MATERIALISM with as traditionally conceived are not the only ANALYTIC PHILOSOPHY and PHILOSOPHY OF possible representers. On the naturalistic SCIENCE, pioneered by G. A. Cohen in Karl conception mentioned earlier, for instance, Marx’s Theory of History: A Defence beliefs can be conceived as organizational (1978). states of the , and yet at the same Anaxagoras of Clazo- time as open to epistemological evalua- menae flourished c.450 BC. He was pros- tion as better or worse representations of ecuted for impiety (for describing the sun their subject matters. Of course, there is a as a white hot lump of stone) while work- philosophical problem about physical ing in Athens. His was proba- brain states having representational pow- bly written later than ’ work ers; but the task of explaining representa- of the same name, and tries to overcome tion is by no means peculiar to naturalism. the ELEATIC dilemma in another way. In It is also true that, on the naturalist concep- the beginning all natural SUBSTANCES tion, mental states are not self-intimating, (not merely a limited number of basic and so cannot provide the kind of incorri- substances like Empedocles’ roots) were gible foundations for epistemology which mixed together; then Mind – ‘finest of all were provided by mental states as tradi- things and purest’ – started a rotation tionally conceived: but then various non- which brought the heavier parts to the foundational approaches to epistemology centre, by vortex-action, to form the are open to naturalism. earth, while driving the lighter to the cir- It would be wrong to suggest that ana- cumference. Anaxagoras’ cosmogony was lytic philosophy as a whole has taken a traditional and non-cyclical; the produc- naturalistic turn. Many analytic philoso- tion of a plural did not destroy the phers remain suspicious of the naturalistic initial unity, since there was still ‘a por- conception of mind, and doubt its ability tion of everything in everything, except to replace language as the focus of philo- Mind’. As in Empedocles, apparent sophical analysis. This anti-naturalistic coming-to-be was held to be caused by tendency has affinities with Rorty’s critique mixture: objects were made up of ‘seeds’, of epistemology: the continued emphasis each containing a portion of every natural on language tends to go with doubts about substance, but having the appearance of the possibility of a perspective from which that substance whose portion predomi- judgement in general can be evaluated. But nated. Anaxagoras insisted that matter those analytic philosophers who have could theoretically be divided ad infini- doubts about epistemology continue to tum, and (in opposition to ) articulate them within the analytic tradition, that it is ‘both great and small’. See also appealing to Wittgenstein and Dummett and PRE-SOCRATICS. (G.S.K.) Donald DAVIDSON, rather than to Martin HEI- DEGGER and . Perhaps we Anaximander Anaximander of are entering a period of increasing conver- flourished c.560 BC. His scientific activi- gence between the analytic and Continental ties included making a famous map of the 18 Anaximenes world. Like THALES he tried to identify unusually methodical in citing a specific a single SUBSTANCE from which the world indication that density can affect, for originated: for him this was ‘the indefi- example, temperature – when the lips are nite’, probably implying a material of compressed in exhalation. He seems to indefinite extent to which no precise name have chosen air or mist as the basic sub- could be given because it did not exist stance not only because of its apparent within the world as we know it. A nucleus meteorological connexion with fire (in was somehow separated off from the indef- the sky) and with rain, but also because – inite to produce fire and dark mist. At its being motive, directive and in some way centre this mist solidified into earth, while divine – it appeared to fulfil in the world the surrounding flame burst to form the the function that , commonly envis- heavenly bodies – wheels of fire, each aged as breath, has in living creatures. showing through a single aperture in a See also PRE-SOCRATICS. (G.S.K.) tegument of mist. The earth itself was Anderson, John (1893–1962) Scots cylindrical, and stayed still because it was philosopher who became Professor at the equidistant from everything else. Physical University of Sydney in 1927 and the change within the world occurred through dominant figure in twentieth-century the mutual encroachments and reactions of . He was noted for opposed materials like the hot and the his materialistic and deterministic opin- cold, and ultimate regularity was assured ions, and also for his outspokenly aggres- because they had to ‘pay penalty and retri- sive attacks on Christianity, patriotism, bution to each other for their censorship and , or anything according to the assessment of time’. To else in which he detected timid intellec- parallel his cosmogony, Anaximander also tual conformism. He never published a developed a zoogony, in which the first liv- book, but his principal articles are col- ing creatures were generated out of lected in Studies in Empirical Philosophy primeval slime by the heat of the sun, (1962). [J.R.] emerging out of prickly husks onto dry land, and the first originally Animals Biologically speaking, animals grew up inside a kind of fish, since other- are mobile, sentient organisms, whose cel- wise they could not have survived their lular structure is less rigid than that of long period of helplessness in childhood. plants, and which do not photosynthesize. See also PRE-SOCRATICS. (G.S.K.) The class includes amoebas, tapeworms, sea-urchins, frogs, cats, dogs and people. Anaximenes Anaximenes of Miletus, Any animal, including us, is more like any who flourished c.545 BC, reverted to other animal than either is like a mushroom THALES’ idea of a definite world-component or a rose; any two animals, if evolutionary as originative material, but said this was theory is correct, are more closely related aer – air or mist. He was the first philoso- than either is to anything not an animal. It pher to offer an account of how a single is this last fact, of evolutionary relatedness, SUBSTANCE could develop into a diversi- which makes the class of animals some- fied world: aer changed its appearance, thing more than a construct. ‘Animals’, he argued, according to its degree of con- unlike ‘weeds’, constitute a real biological centration. Rarefied, it became fire; con- taxon, even though (as for other such taxa) densed, water and earth. This was an there may be or have been organisms at important new idea; and Anaximenes was once ‘animal’ and ‘non-animal’. Animals 19

Most modern biologists would agree cannot ever ‘be in ’ in anything like that we are members of an animal species, the subjective sense in which ‘we’ often Homo sapiens, which is closely related to are. It is easy, and natural, for us to ‘proj- other primates. (Chimpanzees and people ect’ our own feelings and plans into the have more in common, from a biochemi- animals we live with, and to think that pet cal point of view, than many varieties of dogs are glad to see us, that cats go hunt- fruit fly which are indistinguishable to lay ing and veal calves miss their mothers. observation.) But some still believe that Sceptics insist that, lacking language, such people, chiefly in virtue of their linguistic creatures cannot say even to themselves and forward-looking capacities, are as what they are doing, or what would satisfy different from any other animal as ani- them. ‘Pain’ or ‘pleasure’ cannot be attrib- mals are from plants. Other animals may uted to them except in purely behavioural mimic what people do in making deci- , and without any implication that sions, formulating theories, painting pic- there is ‘anyone there’ who is subjectively tures, engaging in class-conflict and in distress or joy, or who reckons her life productive labour, but – so it is said – they worth living. On this view there is no real are not ‘really’ doing these things, because need to anaesthetize (rather than immobi- not ‘really’ thinking about them. This dis- lize) animals undergoing surgery. Members tinction between the separate ‘kingdoms’ of our own species who lack language, of plants, animals and people, and their and who should by analogy be thought different ‘’, goes back at least as far insensible too, are usually given the as ARISTOTLE and was mainstream opinion benefit of the doubt. in the West for the next two thousand The alleged impossibility of under- years. The even more radical claim put standing what ‘animals’ do or feel is not forward by DESCARTES, that ‘animals’ do usually accepted by people who work not even have sense-experiences, and that with animals. The supposed incommensu- they are more like plants than people, was rability between ‘dumb beasts’ and ‘talk- anticipated – by way of a reductio ad ing people’ also raises serious problems absurdum of STOIC claims about the irra- for evolutionary theory and for psychol- tional nature of all animals except people – ogy. If we couldn’t think until we could by Strato of Lampsacus (mentioned by talk, how, as a species or as individuals, PORPHYRY, in his work On Abstinence from did we ever learn to talk? It seems more -eating): if they only behaved ‘as if’ likely that Cartesians, and recent thinkers they were reasoning, then it must be that influenced by WITTGENSTEIN’s aphorisms, they only behaved ‘as if’ they were feeling have exaggerated the importance for expe- or desiring. Some commentators adopt rience of the capacity to articulate that this merely as a rule of method, warning experience in the sort of tensed, referen- against imputing to animals a tial language that people employ. There more complex or anthropomorphic than is are, nonetheless, real practical and philo- strictly necessary; others believe that it is sophical problems for those who seek to actually true that animals other than people understand animals ‘from within’, by do not have feelings. This doctrine is use- empathetic identification, not least those ful to experimentalists disinclined to take posed by our traditional moral categories. issues of animal welfare seriously. For ‘animal’, as well as its biological Cartesians claim that beings which or folk-taxonomic meaning, carries moral cannot speak cannot ‘think’ either, and so significance. To treat people ‘like animals’ 20 Animals is to treat them without due regard for their dictum that one can never treat an animal preferences, or their status as free and unjustly, saying that even though animals equal partners in the human community. have no rights, it is better not to treat them To behave ‘like an animal’ is to pay no wickedly or uncharitably or inhumanely. regard to the normal inhibitions and cere- Deliberate cruelty or callous negligence monies of that community. To be an animal was a of a bad character that might (a non-human animal) is to be a creature lead to towards one’s fellow that cannot really return our friendship, or humans. Pain was a recognizable evil that make or keep bargains, or participate in the decent person did not wantonly distinctively ‘human’ practices. BENTHAM, increase. According to popular morality, J. S. MILL and other classical UTILITARIANS, one ought not to cause ‘unnecessary pain’ who sought to take account of ‘animal to animals, but one has no obligation not and ’, were naturally to kill, dispossess, imprison or deprive thought (e.g. by WHEWELL) to be blind to them. Strict utilitarians, concerned to the higher values of humanity. Taking ‘ani- increase the ratio of pleasure to pain, mals’ seriously meant taking ‘animal pains should add an obligation to increase ani- and pleasures’ seriously in our own lives, mal pleasure where possible, but they are and few were really prepared to do that. as likely as the rest of us to discount the The doctrine that animals lie outside pleasures experienced by animals against the realm of – that there is no injus- those that we derive from the exploitative tice in dispossessing, enslaving, hurting or use of animals. killing them – was first articulated by The political programme of classical Aristotle (and later Stoics), but it was not lays it down that the law invented by them. It seems that all human should be invoked only to protect rights, cultures draw a distinction between their and not to enforce any particular moral own kind and everything else – though it code. It was for that reason that many lib- has been usual, historically speaking, for erals opposed the first animal welfare the class of non-people to include many legislation. Such came between citi- whom we would regard as our conspecifics, zens and their lawfully acquired property. and the class of people to include at least One solution was to insist that the law such honorary members of the community might be invoked to decrease suffering, as cattle, horses, pigs or (in the West) regardless of who the victim was, because dogs. That folk-taxonomic division no one had a natural right to treat other between our own people and outsiders has creatures just as she willed. Another was been progressively modified, by philoso- to claim that animals – which usually phers and , and most civilized meant vertebrates more closely related to peoples now accept that all human beings us (‘more evolutionarily advanced’) than are at least potentially ‘of our kind’, and fishes – possessed ‘natural rights’ on the that they should if possible be treated with same terms as people. Insofar as they were respect, as we would ourselves wish to be beings with feelings and interests and an treated. Humans are, in KANT’s phrase, ability to take decisions and recognize ‘ends in themselves’, whereas animals, as their companions, they had all the capac- irrational beings, are owed nothing ‘as of ities that were shared by those who right’. uncontroversially ‘have rights’. If imbe- Mainstream Western thought from ciles had rights (i.e. if they ought to be Aristotle to Kant often qualified the protected by law not merely against cruel Anscombe, G. E. M. 21 treatment but against robbery, undue systems, the actual rights of animals are frustration of ‘natural capacities’, enslave- already more extensive than any ‘natural ment and killing), so also did chim- rights’. Increased understanding of what panzees, horses, dogs and whatever other ‘animals’ are like, how closely related animals turned out to have at least as they are to ‘us’, and how poorly they have much mental development as the imbe- been served by moralists, may lead to an cile. Some philosophers concluded that extension of those protections. The bar- imbeciles did not ‘have rights’ after all, gains we implicitly make with our and that if they were protected, it was only domestic animals are at least as real as the in order to appease public sentiment. ‘’ on which political The probability is that neither utilitar- philosophers have laid such stress, and ianism nor a theory of abstract ‘natural ought not to be so radically rewritten as to right’ is adequate to the task of grounding leave those animals no better off for their a reformist view of how ‘animals’ should troubles, ‘Wild’ animals, similarly, should be treated. A vegetarian way of life would be given at least as much respect as decrease the amount of animal suffering, the ‘environment’, which is to say the but at the cost of decreasing gastronomic whole living world of which we are a part. pleasure amongst repentant carnivores ‘Environmentalism’ often stands opposed and lessening employment prospects. to the demands of ‘animal rightists’, does not give an unequivo- but the latter are more likely to achieve cal answer to the questions ‘should we eat their goals through environmentalist meat, bait badgers, experiment on apes?’ policies than through the advocacy of because how much is produced abstract rights, or utilitarian calculation. by any particular policy will depend on [S.R.L.C.] how we already feel about the policies. If enough people are in fact distressed by Anscombe, G. E. M. (1919–2001) badger baiting, the practice might be One of the most forceful English philo- worth outlawing; if too few, then not; but sophical teachers of her generation, this does not tell us whether or not to dis- Elizabeth Anscombe was liable to tre- approve. A theory of abstract natural right mendous dismay about philosophers whose must also grapple with the obvious fact bland fluency prevents thought ‘about the that animals are injured, exploited and stuff itself’. She spent the first half of her killed not only by humans but by other career at Oxford University, the second at animals too. Their natural rights, if they . She was deeply influenced by had any, would be like those that HOBBES WITTGENSTEIN, and pioneered the transla- supposed to exist before the institution of tion of his works into English. Apart from the state – rights that imposed no duties of two highly compressed books (Intention, care or protection on anyone else. 1957; An Introduction to Wittgenstein’s Those of us who are concerned for ‘Tractatus’, 1959), she published numer- the welfare of our fellow animals might ous brief papers, covering topics in the do better to appeal to the experience of HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY, METAPHYSICS, and a shared community life, and the EPISTEMOLOGY, and especially ETHICS and of loyalty and concern for dependants the PHILOSOPHY OF MIND, both of which and friends – assuming that, despite she saw in terms of the topic of her first Aristotle, we can have friendships with book; and in the , ‘non-rational’ beings. Under many legal where she wrote explicitly as a Catholic. 22 Anselm

Her Collected Papers in three volumes into foolish . If God is the appeared in 1981. [J.R.] being than which nothing greater can be thought, he must exist in reality as well as (1033–1109) in the mind. Anselm was born in Aosta, , The argument of the Proslogion at once joined the Benedictine Abbey of Bec in aroused controversy and it has continued Normandy, and subsequently became to divide philosophers to this day. The , eventually monk Gaunilo wrote a Book on behalf of being canonized in 1494. Apart from ERI- the Fool attacking the validity of the con- GENA, Anselm was the first systematic clusion and arguing that similar reasoning thinker of the . Meeting the could be used to establish the ‘existence’ difficulties occasioned by the DIALECTI- of anything whatever, for instance a most CIANS of his day with the celebrated for- perfect island. In his reply, Anselm pointed mula ‘a faith seeking understanding’, he out that the argument can work only in the was not prepared to substitute dialectic unique case of the most excellent of all for theology, but still he insisted upon a beings. reasoned presentation of traditional In the Middle Ages the Christian belief. tended to accept the argument, though His philosophical writings were a SCOTUS required that it be shown that the response to a request by some of his monks nature of God is not self-contradictory. for a on the existence and nature Aquinas on the other hand rejected it. of God based in reason rather than scrip- DESCARTES accepted the argument; LEI- tural authority. In the Monologion he begins BNIZ, like Scotus, required the possibility with our experience of differences in of God to be accounted for; and KANT degrees of value, goodness and being in the rejected it. (J.G.D.) objects around us. From this he argues to the necessary existence of an absolute (c.444 to c.366 BC) standard, an absolute good, an absolute Commonly held to be one of the proto- being on which the relative depends; this types of the CYNICS, Antisthenes was a absolute, he claims, is what we call God. pupil of the rhetorician , a close The argument follows a Platonic method friend of SOCRATES, and critic of PLATO. already used by AUGUSTINE, and would later From the few surviving fragments of his be elaborated by AQUINAS. numerous writings, we see the intertwin- In the Proslogion, Anselm presents his ing of three threads: the SOPHISTIC, the famous . We Socratic, and what was later to become may, he says, start with no more than the the Cynic. He held virtue to be sufficient commonly accepted idea of what we for happiness. As knowledge necessitat- mean by the term God, namely a being ing moral action it could be taught, and than which no greater can be thought. once gained it was unshakeable. This, he says, is a point of departure avail- Education began with the study of the able even to the fool who, according to meaning of words. Words corresponded scripture, denies God’s existence. Such a directly with reality, and a proposition being, then, can be said to exist in the was either true or meaningless, contradic- mind. But to exist actually is more perfect tion and false statement being impossible. than to exist in the mind. To deny the But the stress was on practical ETHICS actual , then, is to fall rather than theoretical learning. Although Applied Ethics 23 not an ascetic, Antisthenes condemned department in the English-speaking world. luxury. Virtue should be combined with Such courses frequently attracted large exertion, without which real pleasure was enrolments, and this interest was reflected impossible (Hercules was the ideal exam- in new journals such as Philosophy and ple). Established laws, , birth, Public Affairs, and in a new, or revived, sex, race, were unimportant in compari- field of philosophical debate and writing. son with the law of virtue, by which the Initially the most popular topics in state should be governed. Although many applied ethics were equality, warfare and of his views are clearly Socratic, the obedience to the state. With the end of the ancients asserted that his importance lay war there was a hiatus in discus- in giving the impulse, through DIOGENES, sions of war, but they became more to the way of life later called Cynic, and it prominent again in the 1980s, in the con- is likely that too was influenced text of concern over nuclear weapons: by his practical ethics. (I.G.K.) since traditional ‘just war’ doctrine con- demns the deliberate killing of the inno- A posteriori See A PRIORI. cent, and demands that the gains be worth Applied Ethics There is nothing new the costs of fighting the war, could a about philosophers seeking to apply their nuclear war ever be just? Discussions of ethical ideas to the world in which they racial and sexual equality also underwent live. PLATO set out his view of the ideal changes: there was widespread agree- republic, AQUINAS wrote on the justifica- ment on the issue of equality, but the tion for going to war, HUME defended sui- more controversial positions, such as cide, and attacked the reverse discrimination, attracted consider- subjection of women. Yet from the early able attention. Following the publication twentieth century until the 1960s, main- of ’ , there stream ANALYTIC PHILOSOPHY spurned was a thorough discussion of inequalities practical questions. ETHICS was seen as of within societies, though the far limited to the analysis of moral language, greater disparity in wealth between rich and hence as neutral between different and poor received less attention. moral views. To enter into practical ques- Some areas of applied ethics have tions, as Bertrand RUSSELL did, was to become virtual sub-specialities of their remove one’s philosophical hat and become own, often linking up with other related a ‘moralist’, on a par with preachers and disciplines. Questions about the environ- leader-. ment, and about our relations with the The bar against serious study of applied entire non-human world, for example, ethics came under pressure in America have opened avenues of inquiry into the during the 1960s, when first the struggle nature of , and into the appli- for racial equality, and then the resistance cation of principles of equality, rights to the war in Vietnam, began to raise cru- and justice to those who are incapable cial questions which were clearly both of reciprocity, and in some cases are not practical and philosophical. The radical- even sentient. Until recently, most ization of the campuses, with mounting ethical thinking has been, explicitly or student demand for courses relevant to implicitly, human-centred. (UTILITARIANS their present concerns, proved irresistible. were exceptions, looking to sentience, Within a few years, an applied ethics course rather than humanity, as the basis of moral was available in almost every philosophy concern.) But this tendency came under 24 A priori strong attack, and an explicitly and effects to unknown causes; an a priori exclusively human-centred ethic is now argument proceeded from causes to rarely defended. Sentient ANIMALS, at effects or from ground to consequent. least, are widely accepted as being of A priori arguments were held to pro- direct moral concern, even if some would vide indubitable scientific knowledge as still defend the legitimacy of a preference opposed to probable belief. Aristotle dis- for our own species. On the other hand, tinguished what is prior in the order of attempts to bestow intrinsic value on non- nature from what is prior in the order of sentient objects like trees, rivers and knowledge or discovery. There are many forests are still highly controversial. , such as that fire burns or that water Perhaps the most important sub- will not flow uphill, that we know from speciality in applied ethics at the moment, experience before we are able to explain however, is bioethics. Although this term them. Until we discover their causes our was originally coined to refer to an ethical knowledge of such truths will be a poste- approach to the whole biosphere, it has riori or empirical and not truly scientific come to be used much more narrowly, as or a priori. a label for studies in ethical issues arising From the seventeenth century, for from and the biological sciences. example in DESCARTES and LEIBNIZ, Philosophers began by contributing to dis- a priori came to mean ‘universal, nec- cussions of abortion and euthanasia, and essary and wholly independent of experi- have gone on to write on the ethics of ence’. The term a posteriori fell into human experimentation, resource alloca- disuse and a priori was now usually con- tion, new developments in reproduction, trasted with ‘empirical’ that is, depending and future prospects such as sex selection on experience. The term a priori is now and genetic engineering. They have also used of (1) arguments; (2) propositions played a prominent role in government and (3) ideas. and in interdisciplinary centres (1) An a priori argument is one in for bioethics. With the creation of the first which the conclusion follows deductively ‘bleeper philosophers’ – philosophers from the premises, as for example in a attached to hospitals who carry a paging mathematical proof. If the premises are device in case they need to be consulted true and the argument valid, no experi- about the ethics of an emergency treat- ence is needed to confirm the conclusion ment – philosophy has come a long way and no experience could refute it. By con- from the earlier attitude that it has nothing trast, an argument from experience to contribute to ethical decision-making. (empirical, inductive or probable argu- See also ANIMALS, POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY. ment) is one in which the conclusion, [P.S.] however strongly supported by the prem- ises, is not necessitated by them. For A priori ‘A priori’ is a phrase example, if we argue that it will rain meaning ‘from what comes before’, con- somewhere in England next January, on trasted with a posteriori, ‘from what the grounds that no January has been comes after’. The terms were introduced in known to pass without some rain, this the late scholastic period to translate two argument, though weighty, is not conclu- technical phrases in ARISTOTLE’s theory of sive. There might be a January without knowledge. An a posteriori argument rain even though there never has been yet. was one which moved from observed Since HUME it has been generally believed Aquinas,Thomas 25 that natural science always contains an SYNTHETIC proposition can be known empirical element and therefore cannot be a priori is one of the most important and a priori. difficult in philosophy. The RATIONALISTS (2) A proposition is a priori if it is believed that the fundamental principles known independent of experience, except of science could, like those of logic in so far as experience is necessary for and , be known a priori. understanding its terms. Thus we know Hume argued (in effect) that the princi- a priori that a whole is equal to the sum ples of logic and pure mathematics were of its parts; for, once we understand the indeed a priori, but only because they terms involved, we see that this is univer- were analytic. But all knowledge of sally and necessarily true and that no matters of fact, both common sense and experience could refute it. scientific, depended, he argued, on such (3) Empiricist philosophers – so called causal principles as that every must because they tend to emphasize the role have a cause and that like causes must of experience in knowledge as opposed to have like effects. He claimed that these a priori elements – have sometimes held principles could not be known a priori and that all ideas are derived from experience. had to be derived from experience. We can (they say) have no idea unless we KANT saw the force of Hume’s argu- have either come across an instance of it ment, noting its sceptical tendency and in experience – as in the case of ‘red’ or devoting his most important book, the ‘horse’ – or fabricated it out of elements , to establishing we have come across – as in the case of the possibility and scope of a priori ‘dragon’. There are, however, some ideas knowledge. He held that such knowl- whose origin is difficult to explain in this edge was possible in mathematics (which way. Among them are ideas of great he did not regard as analytic) and in importance in philosophy, such as sub- physics. With regard to metaphysics he stance (thing), cause, existence, equality, agreed substantially with Hume, but likeness and difference. Of these it is undertook to show why we are bound to claimed that, far from being derived from continue to ask metaphysical questions experience, they are necessary for it, and even if it is impossible for us to answer we could have no experience without them. In the twentieth century the LOGICAL them. This is not to say that we are born POSITIVISTS and many philosophers influ- with them, but rather that they are presup- enced by them followed Hume in denying posed by our being able to have any expe- the possibility of synthetic a priori know- rience at all. (PLATO’s and LEIBNIZ’s ledge. This programme ran into diffi- New Essays on Human Understanding culties, however, when doubts arose are classic expositions of this view, about the validity of the distinction sometimes called the doctrine of Innate between analytic and synthetic (see also Ideas. For the empiricist view see LOCKE ANALYSIS, ANALYTIC). (P.H.N.-S.) and HUME.) It is clear that all ANALYTIC proposi- Aquinas,Thomas (c.1225–74) Born at tions are a priori. If ‘bachelor’ means Roccasecca near Aquino on the northern ‘unmarried man’ we need not investigate border of the ancient Kingdom of , any particular cases to satisfy ourselves of Aquinas proceeded from Monte Cassino to the truth of the proposition ‘No bachelor the University of where he joined is married’. But the question whether any the Dominicans; he then studied under 26 Aquinas,Thomas

ALBERT THE GREAT at Cologne, worked for a special pleader who treated rational nine years as adviser to the Papal Court, investigation as ancillary to religious and taught in Paris. A large man, decided belief; on the other, he never countenanced and calm, patrician yet modest, he enjoyed a practical separation between them, the affection even of his adversaries. There indeed he fought against the celebrated are ninety-eight items in the catalogue of ‘double truth’ theory associated with his works, some running to several folios. and the Latin Averroists. Canonized in 1323, and proclaimed Aquinas’ solution lay in the notion of in 1567, he is the subordination without subservience. The classical systematic theologian of Catholic world was composed of real things acting Christianity. In 1879, Leo XIII inau- as true causes, that is as principles and gurated a revival of Thomist philosophy, goals of activity rather than mere instru- based on the early Contra Gentiles ments or occasions. To be truly wise was as well as the later (or to see them in the of their ‘first Theologiae). cause’. Creatures were real; moreover According to tradition Aquinas asked they interacted and depended on one his colleague William of Moerbeke another. By a judicious use of analogy – (1215–86) to make fresh Latin transla- considered as a law of being rather than tions of ARISTOTLE, with a view to sepa- an artifice of logical classification or lit- rating authentic Aristotelian doctrine erary metaphor – the mind could range at from the contributions of Arab commen- large and discover truth beyond its tators, notably AVICENNA and AVERROES, experience. and purifying it of NEOPLATONIST strains But Aquinas never lost sight of indi- inherited from AUGUSTINE, Proclus, Dion- vidual and personal substance. This is par- ysius and BOETHIUS. Aquinas’s so-called ticularly evident in his psychological and baptism of Aristotle, however, was no moral philosophy. The philosophical sci- mere surface reconciliation. Aquinas ences differed from the particular sciences meant to follow Aristotle’s arguments to in that they did not stay with the proxi- their philosophical conclusions, rather mate causes but sought reasons more than merely fitting them into an exist- universal, though not on that account more ing theological framework. He pressed the summary. He never fell into the philo- Aristotelian distinction between potential- sophism which seeks to deduce facts from ity and actuality to the core of reality reasons or to treat the specialist sciences itself, and turned the old ‘problem of as mere applications of metaphysics. the one and the many’ into that of the Aquinas was a poet and on occasion a creation of all existents. He showed that writer of distinguished prose, but the gen- a universal and particular Providence eral run of his expository style is curt and followed from the nature of knowledge repetitive. Many of his works were dic- and at their best, and defended tated to or written up by secretaries, and immortality without denying that the the sparse vocabulary sometimes conceals soul is essentially embodied. If he the variety of his ideas and the delicacy of borrowed from Aristotle he also made his distinctions. In his exposition of capital gains. Boethius’ De Trinitate, Aquinas mapped Aquinas called for careful interpreta- out the three basic philosophical disci- tion of the relations between reason plines: Logic, and and faith. On the one hand, he was not Moral Philosophy. Aquinas,Thomas 27

(1) Logic comprised the study of scien- cause, its actual determinant. All material tific method and the rational constructions substances were a combination of matter, (entia rationis) which we impose on materia prima and form, forma substan- experience. In this field, Aquinas tialis. Bare matter so conceived was not completed a commentary on Aristotle’s the ultimate atomic or infra-atomic point and began one on which can be calculated or recorded by the . His academic scientific apparatus, but the substantial discussions of logic fall into two sets, the potentiality common to all material things Quaestiones Disputatae, which in the which are formed differently in number, main follow the systematic exposition of degree and kind under the action of sec- a teaching-course, and the Quaestiones ondary causes. Quodlibetales, or questions for special A tang of reality infuses Aquinas’ psy- occasions. chology, which is less a study of con- (2) Theoretical Philosophy, as Aquinas sciousness than of human substance and understood it, aims to isolate what is gen- activity. He applied the matter–form dis- eral and constant in the changing world tinction uncompromisingly, describing of individual facts, and comprises three the soul as the of the provinces: first, , body. This implied that human beings are which deals with objects which exist in psychophysical unities, and that we are, material processes and cannot be under- by one and the same actuality, bodily, stood without reference to them; second , vegetative, sensitive and intellective Mathematical Philosophy, which consid- beings – a conception which raises obvi- ers the implications of quantity without ous difficulties for the doctrine of the reference to the sensible world; and third , immortality of the soul. Metaphysical Philosophy, which reaches The celebrated , quinque beyond the sensible world because viae, sometimes called the proofs for the its objects are either non-material existence of God, focus on the general (for instance, God), or not of necessity themes of change, dependence, contin- material (for instance, substantial unity). gency, limited perfection and utility. Aquinas’ receptiveness to Aristotle’s Aquinas argues that if these themes com- natural and metaphysical philosophy prised the whole of reality they would be scandalized some of his contemporaries. inexplicable, and that we are therefore Rejecting NEOPLATONISM he saw ideas as bound to postulate an ulterior reality in the embodied here and now about us. The form of a changeless changer, uncaused first two categories of the material world cause, necessary being, complete perfec- were ‘substance’, or whatever is able to tion and ultimate end – notions which exist in and of itself, and ‘accidents’, or could be combined to make up the nomi- secondary, inhering , such as nal definition of God. However, our clas- being quantified, qualified or related. sification of different sorts of being could Material processes were shaped by the not accommodate God, and we have to – final, efficient, material and content ourselves with the via negationis – formal. A final cause was the immanent defining not what God is but what he is purpose or end ( finis) of an activity; an not. But Aquinas goes beyond traditional efficient cause, agens, was the producer negative theology by showing that we can of an effect; the material cause was its think positively when we are dealing with basic potential subject, and the formal unmixed values: to say that God is good 28 of Pitane means more than that he is not evil, or forms). Human legislation had its limits, that he is the cause of the goodness we see and should not seek to cover the whole about us. Goodness is more properly his field of morality. (T.G.) than ours, being taken to its highest strength, via eminentia. Arcesilaus of Pitane See SCEPTICS. (3) The chief science in the field of Arendt, Hannah (1906–75) The practice was Moral Philosophy, which political theorist was born included personal ethics, and in Königsberg and educated chiefly at politics. Aquinas’ moral philosophy added Marburg (with ) and little to the typology of the virtues set Heidelberg (with ). She fled forth in Aristotle’s Germany in 1933, lived in Paris and emi- on which he wrote a commentary, though grated to America in 1941. Her first major he hinted at a heroic ideal of theological work, The Origins of Totalitarianism, perfection and criticized the STOIC notion published in 1951, remains a classic his- of passionless virtue. torical study of and Stalinism as Aquinas’ is domi- instances of a novel form a government, nated by his theory of Law. Law was totalitarianism. Her next three books, The rational ordinance, rather than a manifes- Human Condition (1958), Between Past tation of might; it served the common and Future (1961) and On good, or the communion of persons. In (1963), present basic political concepts human communities it came from the ruler and distinctions in challenging interpreta- who was the representative but not the tions. For example, she analyses work, owner of the people. The Eternal Law in labour and action, public space and the was the exemplar of all private realm, history, freedom, authority, law; it was impressed on human minds as power and violence, emphasizing their , which is immutable in its historical evolution as concepts and their principles though particular precepts can present meaning and political relevance. be variously developed according to Arendt thought that the precondition for region and period. In contrast, though not a ‘new science of politics’, neither tradi- in contradiction, stands the : tionally liberal nor conservative, was its precepts may sometimes reinforce a radical, critical re-examination of all the Natural Law, but as such they are not political thought since the rise of the conclusions from it but rather pragmatic Greek city-states. In 1963, Arendt pub- supplements to make the good life easier lished Eichmann in Jerusalem, a contro- or to safeguard public order. Aquinas was versial study of EVIL in the context of the the first to depart from the traditional Israeli trial of a leading Nazi functionary. view, formed by the Stoics and Augustine, The book posed questions about morality that the civil power, like private property, and politics that Arendt took up in her last was only a remedy against our sinful anti- (and unfinished) philosophical study of social appetites. He revived Aristotle’s thinking, willing and judging, called The idea of the State as meeting the essential Life of the Mind (1978). [E.Y.B.] demands of human nature, which, he says, are both ‘social’ (concerned with the of Cyrene (c.435–356 BC) moral requirements of living together in A and friend of Socrates, community and society) and ‘political’ Aristippus is regarded by tradition as the (concerned with specific constitutional founder of the CYRENAIC school. His views Aristotle 29 are certainly in harmony with Cyrenaic antiquity but only fragments survive. The tenets, but it is possible that they were works we possess are systematic treatises first systematically formulated by his intended for serious students, and they grandson, also named Aristippus. He had only a limited circulation until they made enjoyment of present pleasure the were edited by Andronicus in the first goal of his life, eschewing regret for the century BC; our texts are based ultimately past and toil for the future. But happiness on this edition, as were all consisted in the prudent, intelligent con- into Latin and . Aristotle’s treatises trol of such pleasure, not in slavery to it, have a rather peculiar character, for they or abstinence. Hence his famous remark are in essence notes of or for lectures. on his expensive mistress Lais: ‘I have They were added to and altered over Lais, not she me.’All acts were indifferent a period of years without ever receiving a except in so far as they produced pleasure final rewriting. Moreover what we count for the doer. Aristippus cultivated the art as a single treatise may really consist of of adapting himself to place, time and per- several separate courses strung together son, especially at the court of Dionysius by Andronicus or an earlier editor. All this of Syracuse. It was said that he alone makes it difficult to give an account could play the dandy or go in rags. He of how Aristotle’s thought changed or had an extraordinary capacity for enjoy- developed. ment combined with a great freedom Aristotle’s very name suggests to some from wants, and this combination was to people the idea of a dogmatic system of pose a difficult choice of ideals for his rigid doctrines. But in fact he was always successors. (I.G.K.) reopening questions and admitting diffi- culties. He did not argue arrogantly from Aristotle (384–322 BC) The son of a premises he laid down as self-evident, but doctor from Stagira in northern , gave careful consideration to ordinary Aristotle was a member of PLATO’S ACAD- opinions and to the views of his predeces- EMY for twenty years, from 367. When sors. He assumed that divergent views Plato died and became head of would all have some element of truth in the Academy, Aristotle left Athens and them, seeking to clarify issues and qualify went first to Assos (on the coast of Asia or refine the various inconsistent solu- Minor) and then to Lesbos. About 342 he tions on offer. The philosophical value of was invited by King Philip of his work resides not in his conclusions (or to go there to supervise the education of ‘doctrines’) but in his skill in analysis and the King’s son, Alexander. A few years acuteness in argument. The following later he returned to Athens to found a notes introduce some of the ideas which new school, which became known as the recur constantly in Aristotle. Lyceum or Peripatos. The school flour- 1 Categories. Aristotle’s categories ished; but in 323 Aristotle left Athens for classify reality: everything that exists political reasons and retired to Euboea, falls under one of them – it is either a where he died in 322. SUBSTANCE or a or a quantity or Aristotle’s early writings were mostly a relation etc. (Aristotle sometimes lists intended for a general public. Written in ten categories, usually fewer.) It is a polished style (some in dialogue because items in different categories have form), they were largely Platonic in out- irreducibly different sorts of being look. These works were well known in that terms like ‘is’ and ‘one’, which are 30 Aristotle applicable in all categories, are in an table does is to say what it is. (c) Matter is important way ambiguous (compare the ‘for the sake of’ form, not vice versa. If scholastic doctrine of transcendentalia). you want an axe – something for cutting Inattention to this type of and down trees – you must of course use iron to categorical distinctions led, Aristotle to make it; but there can be iron without argued, to philosophical paradoxes. an axe. So to state something’s form or Substance is prior to the other cate- function explains it far better than stating gories because substances exist ‘sepa- what it is made of; the form implies the rately’ while qualities, etc., exist only as appropriate matter but the matter does not their attributes. Individual substances (e.g. imply the form. (d) Wood and glue, the Socrates or this table) are the subjects to matter of a table, are not matter in an which predicates belong and are not them- absolute sense. In a piece of wood we selves predicates of anything else. Aristotle can again draw a distinction between form places in the category of substance not and matter, since wood, like everything only individual substances but also their else, is made of earth, air, fire and water species and genera (e.g. ‘man’, ‘animal’). (or of some of these) combined in a cer- For to say that Socrates is a man is not to tain way. Nor are these four elements pure mention some quality which he has, but to matter. They can change into one another. say what he is. Moreover science, which This implies a persistent underlying stuff studies reality and above all substance, capable of receiving the form of earth, air, defines and studies species rather than etc., which is what Aristotle calls first individuals, even though species do not (or ‘prime’) matter, a characterless sub- exist separately as individuals do. There is strate which never actually exists on its a deep difficulty in Aristotle’s thought own but only in the form of earth, air etc. here, which may be expressed by saying (e) Besides pressing the distinction of that his word (literally ‘being’) does matter and form to the extreme concept of duty both for our ‘substance’ and for our prime matter, Aristotle also applies it by ‘essence’ and ‘species’. analogy. Thus in the definition of a 2 Form and matter. A table is wood species he treats the genus as the matter and glue put together in a certain way. and the differentia as the form: the genus Aristotle distinguishes as separate aspects is relatively indeterminate, the differentia of the table its matter (the wood and glue) gives its definite character to the species. and its form (how it is put together, its This is typical of Aristotle’s way of extend- structure). Many central ideas (and puz- ing the application of key concepts, adding zles) are connected with this distinction. a certain unity to his thought at the cost of (a) Form is immanent: the form of table some obscurity. (f ) Aristotle that exists only as the form of this table or that there can be form without matter, but it is table, that is, as the form of certain matter. very different from a Platonic Form: God There is no separately existing Platonic is form without matter. Form of Table (or indeed of Man or 3 Actuality and Potentiality. A block Justice). (b) Form or structure is normally of wood is potentially a statue, an determined by function. It is because of acorn potentially an oak; conversely, the what it has to do that a table has a flat completed statue and the mature oak top and four legs. Form may in fact be are actualizations of those potentialities. identified with function: to say what a (a) For Aristotle, there is a close Aristotle 31 connection between the antithesis Aristotle; ‘cause’ is the traditional form–matter and the antithesis actual- translation in this context of a Greek word ity–potentiality. Matter is what has the of wider meaning. Aristotle holds that in potentiality of receiving form; form is a way the formal, efficient and final what actualizes the potentiality. So causes are identical. It is the essential Aristotle sometimes uses the two antithe- nature of a table (formal cause) to serve ses interchangeably. (b) There are limits certain purposes (final cause), and it was on the form any given material can take: the thought of those purposes in the car- an acorn cannot become an elm, wood penter’s mind that brought the table into cannot be made into an axe. But Aristotle being (efficient cause). It is the essential does not think it adequate to say that nature of a horse to perform certain char- every actual so-and-so comes from a acteristic functions and exercise charac- potential so-and-so; what is required is a teristic powers, and to do this – to live the quite general philosophical analysis of the life of a mature horse – is just what horses notions of growth and change. (c) are for; and a horse is produced by horses, Aristotle argues that actuality is always that is, creatures already exercising the prior to potentiality. It is prior in defini- functions of mature horses. It should be tion, in that actuality has to be mentioned noticed that the notion of explanation in the definition of a potentiality, but not by the four causes applies to things rather vice versa. It is also prior in value, than events, that it is derived from reflec- because actuality is the end for the sake of tion on the process of production (natural which potentiality exists. And it is prior in and artificial), and that it implies a kind time: although an acorn exists before the of universal . oak it grows into, it is itself the product of 5 Classification of the Sciences. an existing oak: ‘for from the potentially Aristotle divides the various branches of existing the actually existing is always inquiry into theoretical, practical and produced by an actually existing thing, productive sciences. Theoretical science for example, man from man, musician by studies ‘what cannot be otherwise’ and musician; there is always a first mover, aims simply at truth, and it can be subdi- and the mover already exists actually’. vided into three parts, distinguished by (Of course a table is not produced by a subject-matter: physics deals with things table; but it is produced by someone who that exist separately but are liable to already has the form of a table ‘in mind’.) change, mathematics with things that are (d) Since a potentiality implies the changeless but have no separate existence possibility of change to the actuality, and ‘first philosophy’ (metaphysics) with which is better, there can be no element of what exists both separately and beyond potentiality in a perfect changeless being. change. The practical sciences – chiefly 4 The Four ‘Causes’. Aristotle holds ethics and politics – are concerned with that the full explanation of anything must ‘what can be otherwise’ and are ultimately say what it is made of (material cause), aimed at action. And the productive sci- what it essentially is (formal cause), what ences are concerned with making things. brought it into being (efficient cause) As for logic, Aristotle regarded it not as a and what its function or purpose is (final substantive part of philosophy but as cause). The oddity of describing all these ancillary to all its parts: it studies forms as causes is not to be held against of reasoning and expression common to 32 Aristotle different subject-matters, and is a neces- 7 Physics. Aristotle’s Physics and sary tool in all areas of inquiry. Hence the connected works analyse such concepts as traditional name of Aristotle’s logical nature, change, chance, time, place, con- works – the ‘’ (i.e. tool or tinuity, and growth; they also instrument). offer proofs that movement is eternal and 6 Logic. Aristotle’s great contribu- that there is an eternal Prime Mover, tion to formal logic is his theory of the and discussions of the actual constitution , expounded in the Prior and workings of the universe. The analy- Analytics. It is a theory of great rigour but ses of concepts are often subtle and illu- limited scope: it handles only certain minating, but much of what Aristotle says kinds of statement, and the arguments it is out-of-date (and would not now be studies are all from two such regarded as in a philosopher’s province). statements to a third. Each statement in a Moreover his treatment of movement and categorical syllogism must have one of continuity – which rejected as senseless the following forms: ‘all A is B’, ‘no A is all questions about the velocity (or direc- B’, ‘some A is B’, or ‘some A is not B’. tion) of a moving body at a given point – Modal involve such forms as was to have unfortunate effects on the ‘all A may be B’ and ‘all A must be B’. study of dynamics. Aristotle works out all possible combina- The argument for a Prime Mover tions of premises and conclusions, deter- starts from Aristotle’s conception of mines which syllogisms are valid and change and causation. There could not be investigates some of the logical relations an absolutely first (or last) change. For between different syllogisms. since change implies pre-existing matter The Posterior Analytics contains (or potentiality) and a pre-existing effi- Aristotle’s ‘logic of science’. His account cient cause to impose form on the matter of the form a completed science should (to actualize the potentiality), every sup- take is much influenced by the model of posed first change must have been pre- and rests on the view that ceded by something capable of being nature contains ‘real kinds’ whose essence changed and something capable of caus- we can know. Aristotle rejects the notion, ing change. But then to explain why these which he ascribes to Plato, of one grand potentialities were actualized at a certain comprehensive science; different sciences, time, we must assume some actual change he argues, require different premises. Any just prior to that time, that is, a given branch of science is concerned with change before the supposed first change. some limited class of objects. It starts Change or movement must therefore be from principles and axioms – some com- eternal. But can eternal change be mon to all the sciences, others peculiar to explained? Not by the assumption of an itself – and from definitions of the objects eternal ‘self-mover’, for we would then studied. It then demonstrates by means of have to distinguish one part of the self- syllogisms that certain properties neces- mover which causes change and another sarily belong to the objects in question. which undergoes it. Hence we have to This may seem remote from what scien- postulate an unmoved being which can tists do, and indeed from Aristotle’s own somehow cause eternal movement. This scientific works; but it expresses an ideal Prime Mover – eternal, changeless and for the exposition of a completed science containing no element of matter or unre- rather than a programme for investigators. alized potentiality – keeps the heavenly Aristotle 33 bodies moving and maintains the eternal strive, that for the sake of which they do life of the universe. whatsoever their nature renders possible.’ 8 . If Aristotle’s work on 9 Psychology. The word ‘’, physics suffers from a lack of experiment commonly translated ‘soul’, really has a and observation, the same cannot be said wider meaning; plants as well as animals of his biology. He collected a vast amount have psyche, because they have life. of information about living creatures and, Living things can be ordered according to in spite of some fundamental errors, was the complexity of their powers. Some better informed on the subject than most (plants) have only the power of nutrition of his successors until comparatively and reproduction; others have also the recent times. He recognized that theories power of perception, desire and move- must wait upon facts; after giving a theory ment; humans have in addition the power about the generation of bees he says: ‘the of thought. Aristotle’s main discussion facts have not been sufficiently ascer- of these various psychical functions is in tained’, and affirms that ‘more credence the De Anima, which also contains his must be given to the direct evidence of the general account of soul and its relation senses than to theories’. to body. Aristotle achieved valuable systematic A dead human body is not strictly classifications of animal life, rejecting human at all, since it lacks the powers what he regarded as an inadequate Platonic which define humanity. A human being method – the method of dichotomy – and (like an animal or plant) is a body-with- employing multiple differentiae to distin- soul; and the relation between body and guish the main classes of creatures. He soul is the relation of matter to form. Soul thought of the various species as eternal, is the form of body, as sight is the form of but as capable of being arranged in a scale the eye (‘when seeing is removed the eye leading from the lowest and least devel- is no longer an eye, except in name – it is oped to the highest and most complex. no more a real eye than the eye of a The essence of biology, he thought, was statue’). Soul, the power of life, cannot teleology, or the explanation of material exist in any and every body (form requires structure in terms of function. Nature appropriate matter); only a body with does nothing in vain, and the true expla- suitable organs can possess life. Such a of the characteristics of a species body is potentially a living animal or plant; must show how they serve some purpose soul is the actuality of such a body. This in the life of the members of the species. important conclusion (closer to RYLE than The job of an embryo is to become a to DESCARTES) enables Aristotle to dismiss mature animal, live its proper life and the question whether soul and body form reproduce itself; and its parts and char- a unity: ‘this is as meaningless as to ask acteristics are to be explained as con- whether the wax and the shape given to it tributing to these ends. ‘For any living by the stamp are one, or generally the thing that has reached its normal develop- matter of a thing and that of which it is the ment...the most natural act is the pro- matter. Unity has many senses...but duction of another like itself, an animal the most proper and fundamental sense . . . producing an animal, a plant a plant, in is the relation of an actuality to that of order that, as far as its nature allows, it which it is the actuality’. On this view, may partake in the eternal and divine. psychological activity is not the activity That is the goal towards which all things of an immaterial substance but the 34 Aristotle actual functioning of a living body; and theology, and Books XIII and XIV discuss Aristotle’s accounts of psychological con- and reject certain views held in the cepts always bring in the relevant physical Academy about immaterial substance, and physiological facts. arguing that there are no such things Aristotle allows one exception to the as Platonic Ideas or Ideal Numbers, rule that soul is the form or actualization of and that mathematical objects are not body. The activity of (pure intuitive substances. thought) does not depend on body and may Only Book XII can be discussed here. therefore exist separately from it. His doc- In it Aristotle argues again (as in the trine on this point is exceedingly obscure, Physics) that there must be an eternal, and it is disputed whether he attributes immaterial Prime Mover, which he now some sort of immortality to the nous in the calls ‘God’. God is not himself suscepti- individual human soul. In general, his ble of movement, but causes movement as account of soul dissolves the question of an object of desire and love. His life is personal immortality as effectively as that perpetual activity – activity being perfect of the unity of body and soul. and complete in every moment and not, 10 Metaphysics. Aristotle expresses like movement, a process. The only sort two views about ‘first philosophy’. (The of activity which can be ascribed to name ‘metaphysics’ was applied to it by God is pure thought, uninterrupted intu- an editor simply because Aristotle’s trea- itive knowledge of the highest object of tise came after (meta) the Physics in his knowledge, which is Godhead itself. ‘It edition.) One view, already mentioned, is must be of itself that the divine thought that it is the study of changeless, separable thinks (since it is the most excellent of substance, which makes it equivalent to things), and its thinking is a thinking theology. The other is that it studies being about thinking.’ as such, together with concepts (e.g. unity The outer and the planets are and identity) and principles (such as the animate beings moved by a desire to imi- law of contradiction) which are common tate the eternal activity of God, and nature to all particular sciences. Aristotle is not as a whole does something similar in that very successful in reconciling these two the processes of birth, growth and repro- views. Most of the Metaphysics is meta- duction maintain forever the life of the physics in the wider sense, as a brief various species. But of course plants and synopsis will show. animals, unlike humans, do not imitate In Book I Aristotle surveys the opin- God consciously, nor is God aware of or ions of his predecessors on the ultimate concerned about them. principles of reality and confirms his view 11 Ethics. The Nicomachean Ethics is that there are just four different kinds of one of the best books ever written on ‘cause’. Book IV discusses the law of con- the subject: rich in analysis of moral and tradiction and the law of excluded middle, psychological concepts, and in ingenious while Book V is a lexicon of important arguments. philosophical terms. Books VII and VIII (a) ‘Good’ is not, Aristotle argues, the discuss substance and wrestle with notions name of a single quality. Different kinds of essence, genus, universal, substrate, of things are called good for different rea- form, etc. The next books treat actuality sons: an axe is good if it cuts efficiently, and potentiality, unity, plurality and similar eyes are good if they see well. To decide notions. Book XII contains Aristotle’s what constitutes the best life for human Aristotle 35 beings one must first establish what their all virtues and into his scheme: proper functions are (as cutting is the ‘anger and pity...may be felt both too function of an axe); the life of those who much and too little, and in both cases not perform those functions excellently will well; but to feel them at the right times, be the good life. Now the function of with reference to the right people, with something is what it alone can do, or what the right motive, and in the right way, it can do best. But humans are distin- is what is intermediate and best, and this guished from other animals by their power is characteristic of virtue’. The doctrine of of reason, so their proper functions – the mean, in fact, contains little positive those whose effective performance will moral teaching and is inadequate if con- constitute a good life – will be those sidered simply as analysis of vice–virtue which involve reason. Reason shows itself concepts. Supplementary discussions con- in an ability not only to think, but also to sider responsibility and choice. Aristotle control desires and conduct; hence human offers acute analyses of the conditions virtues are not only intellectual but also under which responsibility can be dis- moral or ethical (i.e. virtues of character, claimed, and reduces them to two – ethos). duress and ignorance of material facts. (b) Moral virtues, like skills, are Choice he finds to involve deliberation acquired by practice. We become gener- and desire: our desires and character ous by being trained or habituated to determine our ends, and we deliberate doing what generous people do; and they about the means by which we may reach are generous because they have acquired these ends. a settled disposition of character to do (c) Practical wisdom is an intellectual such deeds regularly, gladly and without virtue that enables us to find the right ulterior motive. ‘Gladly’ is important; it answers to practical questions of conduct. helps Aristotle argue that the virtuous life It involves skill in deliberation, but also is a pleasant one, in which we do as we presupposes the possession of moral ought because we want to: moral struggle, virtue. Character determines ends, and to or a need to conquer desires, are signs of have the right aims is a matter of moral imperfection. virtue. Moral goodness and practical wis- Moral virtue is concerned with feelings dom are in fact inseparable, each involv- and actions, of which there can be either ing the other in its definition. Three too much, or too little, or the right further points about practical wisdom may amount – ‘the mean’. Virtue is a matter of be noted. First, the means–end terminol- striking the mean between opposite vices: ogy used by Aristotle is clearly inade- for example, generosity lies between quate to his own account of the good life: stinginess and prodigality. There are no the aim of the good person is not to simple rules for deciding what the mean achieve some future goal but to live a is – it is not an arithmetical average, but good life; and Aristotle came to recognize always ‘relative to us’. We need that an action can be right not as a means (‘practical wisdom’) in order to hit to a future end but as falling under some the mean. moral principle. Second, though Aristotle The doctrine of the mean is more gives simple examples of deliberation, famous than it deserves. Aristotle admits he does not underestimate the complexity that virtue is not just a matter of the right of practical questions or suppose they amount, and that it is difficult to bring can be settled easily. To appreciate all the 36 Arnauld, Antoine factors in a situation and weigh their var- ‘citizen’, ‘law’ etc.). His meanwhile ious claims one must have an experienced had an enormous – and not wholly bene- eye for what matters. Age and training are ficial – influence both on the writing of what count here, not mere cleverness. drama and on theories of AESTHETICS. See Third, Aristotle does not suppose that also CATEGORIES, METAPHOR, PHILOSOPHY OF every right action is preceded by deliber- MIND, POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY. (J.L.A.) ation, only that practical wisdom implies being able to justify actions by reference Arnauld, Antoine (1612–94) Catholic to ends or principles. Aristotle’s treat- theologian, a leading defender of ment of practical wisdom concludes DESCARTES’ ‘new philosophy’, and author with important discussions of akrasia (with Pierre Nicole) of La logique, ou l’art (knowing what one ought to do but not de penser (‘Port-Royal Logic’, 1662). doing it) and of the nature and value of pleasure. Atomism Atomism arose as an (d) Theoretical wisdom is an intellec- explanatory scheme with the ancient tual virtue concerning ‘what cannot be , and , and otherwise’. It involves intuitive knowledge , and the Roman poet . of unprovable starting-points (concepts At the most fundamental level atomism is and truths) and demonstrative knowledge the belief that all phenomena are explica- of what follows from them. Such wisdom, ble in terms of the properties and behav- Aristotle argues, is the highest of human iour of ultimate, elementary, localized virtues: it concerns the highest objects entities (or ‘fundamental particles’). Thus and the divine part of the soul (for pure it prescribes a strategy for the construc- thought is the only activity that can be tion of scientific theories in which the attributed to God). The happiest possible behaviour of complex bodies is to be life is one devoted to theoretical philoso- explained in terms of their component phy, but few are capable of it (and they parts. That strategy has led to many of the only intermittently); the rest of us must successes of modern physical science, make do with a life of moral virtue and though these do not prove that there practical wisdom. actually are ‘ultimate entities’ of the type It is striking how Aristotle, starting postulated by atomism. from the question of human nature, con- The atomists made the assumption cludes by identifying the highest virtue that the things which really exist are per- with the imitation of God through the manent and indestructible, though this is exercise of pure reason. obviously not true of the everyday objects 12 Politics and Poetics. In his Politics around us. Their analysis goes ‘behind’ Aristotle seeks to explain the nature and the appearances to minute, unchangeable purpose of a state (a city-state) and dis- and indestructible ‘atoms’ separated by cover what constitution and laws would the emptiness of ‘the void’ which is said be best. Further, since politics is a branch to make change and movement possible. of practical inquiry, he not only expounds All apparent change is simply the result an ideal constitution but also makes of rearrangements of the atoms as a con- suggestions as to how actual of var- sequence of collisions between them. This ious kinds could best be run. The main seems to lead to mechanical DETERMINISM, philosophical interest of the work is in though, in an attempt to leave room its analysis of political concepts (‘state’, for freewill, Epicurus and Lucretius Atomism 37 postulated that atoms might ‘deviate’ in subtle form for experience of ‘the ’. their courses. This thoroughgoing materialism, and the According to the atomists, colour, HEDONIST ethics which Democritus and taste, warmth and so forth are the effects Epicurus associated with it, were respon- produced in our sense organs by atoms sible for the disfavour with which atom- which themselves possess none of these ism was long regarded in European properties: a conclusion which, as they culture. were aware, is difficult to establish on the In the seventeenth century GASSENDI basis of sense experience itself. The hypo- and BOYLE detached the atomic or corpus- thetical properties of the atoms were cular theory from its associations with basically ‘geometrical’ (sharp-cornered, atheism and MATERIALISM. Indeed they smooth, etc.), though ‘solidity’ was needed turned the tables on those, like HOBBES, to distinguish them from empty space who believed that the material world was (compare LOCKE). The later atomists also a plenum and who denied the existence of regarded ‘weight’ as an intrinsic property a real ‘vacuum’ on the grounds that of the atoms. Lucretius says that the num- ‘incorporeal substance’ was impossible. In ber of atoms is infinite but the variety of Hobbes’ universe not only must the ‘soul’ shapes and sizes is finite (arguing falla- be material and mortal, but there could be ciously that otherwise there could be no no physical empty space in which his limit to the size of the atoms). ‘corporeal’ God could act. NEWTON, fol- However if ‘what exists’ is ‘atoms’, lowing the example of the Cambridge what of the ‘void’? In different ways both Platonist , justified his intro- ARISTOTLE and DESCARTES denied that duction of ‘Space’ as a real, infinite entity there could be such a thing as literally (and by implication, the existence of ‘empty space’. Physically therefore they ‘hard, massy, impenetrable, moveable par- saw the world as a plenum. Atomism was ticles’) by claiming that Absolute Space is also associated with atheism, since as constituted by the Omnipresence of God. Lucretius put it, ‘Nothing can ever be cre- Newton sought to make the action of ated out of nothing, even by divine power.’ Universal Gravitation across empty space Conversely no thing can ever become believable by reference to the power of nothing. Thus the atomists proposed a God, but as the investigation of electricity, strict principle of conservation of matter. and chemical affinity devel- They strove to provide a complete picture oped in the eighteenth and nineteenth cen- of the world that included a materialist turies attempts were made to find physical account of perception and the nature of explanations for ‘action-at-a-distance’. In mind. The mind is simply a fragile and the theories of Boscovich and Faraday the mortal association of certain subtle atoms dualism of Atoms and the Void is replaced with those of the body; and they are dis- by an all-pervasive ‘field of force’ in ordered and dissipated in disease, insanity which there are many mathematical cen- and death. Visual perception occurs tres. (This vision also informs the account because objects shed physical ‘images’ of gravitation in Einstein’s General (or ‘species’) of themselves in thin of RELATIVITY.) Paradoxically the films which impinge upon our eyes. These attraction of ‘mathematical atomism’ pro- ‘images’ are moving all around us, some- ved an obstacle to the acceptance of times in fragments, and are responsible Dalton’s atomic theory in which ‘atoms’ for dreams, phantoms and in their most of many different sizes and weights were 38 Augustine proposed, each associated with a different ‘structure’ have come under strain in these . That theory provided explorations, and it is by no means clear an explanation of the empirical regulari- that the most elementary entities postulated ties discovered by experimental chemists, at present have properties which are expli- but positivistically inclined regar- cable in terms of any classical atomistic ded atomism as a ‘metaphysical encum- model. brance’ until the early years of the twentieth One of the assumptions of the funda- century. A critical factor in convincing the mental atomist picture is that atoms have doubters was Einstein’s analysis of the intrinsic properties of their own and that ‘Brownian’ motion of microscopic parti- all ‘relational properties’ can be analysed cles, which dimly echoed Lucretius’ dis- in terms of these properties and the spa- cussions of the significance of dust dancing tial relations of the bodies. (This is in sunbeams. Scepticism over the question another way of saying, ‘There is nothing of whether ‘atoms’ can be ‘observed’ raises but Atoms and the Void’.) However questions about the meaning of ‘observa- QUANTUM MECHANICS indicates that the tion’ when sophisticated instruments are elementary constituents presently postu- employed. A thoroughgoing POSITIVISM lated by physical science have properties will continue to hold that ‘atomic theories’ which cannot conceivably be analysed in are simply devices for talking about this way. observable phenomena. The attempt of the ancient atomists to The ancient atomists postulated ‘atoms’ solve a metaphysical problem about the of many different shapes and sizes, but this nature of change resulted in a brilliantly variety itself stands in need of explanation. fruitful strategy for the construction of Reduction of this variety to one single type theories in the physical sciences. But of elementary entity would be more ‘satis- there are unanswered philosophical objec- fying’, though this would not prevent one tions to atomism and the very successes it from asking why this ‘ultimate entity’ had has stimulated suggest that ‘the stuff of its particular properties. A great simplifica- the world’ cannot ultimately be under- tion in the Daltonian atomic scheme was stood in terms of atomism. [J.H.P.] achieved when it was shown that periodic regularities in the properties of different Augustine (354–430) Augustine, ‘atoms’ could be explained in terms of also known as Aurelius Augustinus and inner structures constructed from just three Augustine of , was born to a kinds of more elementary particle (elec- Christian mother and a pagan father at tron, proton and neutron). Subsequent col- Thagaste in Numidia (Souk-Ahras in lision experiments generated a profusion of Algeria on the Tunisian border). He other ‘elementary’ particles, which were received a thorough education in , eventually largely reduced to order by pos- a discipline over which the spirit of tulating entities which are yet more funda- presided, and by the time he was 20 he mental (‘quarks’). It might be supposed turned his back on Christianity, intellectu- that this process could continue forever, ally repelled by the crudity, in style and without any ‘ultimate particles’ (genuine content, of its Scriptures. Its canons of ‘atoms’) ever being identified. Indeed it is behaviour were also uncongenial to him, difficult to see how anyone could ever and as a very young man he was already prove that ‘the end of the road’ had been established in Carthage with a mistress and reached. However ordinary concepts of a professorial chair of rhetoric. Augustine 39

His energetic and curious mind was wisdom therefore implies both lack of fired with a love of philosophy by Cicero’s wisdom and possession of it. This conun- Hortensius, now lost, which he read at the drum was posed for Augustine by the age of 18. This started him on an intellec- Academics, for whom wisdom consisted tual adventure that led him first to in knowing that we can know nothing, MANICHEISM, then to the thoroughgoing and he made use of it in his De Utilitate SCEPTICISIM of the ACADEMICS; next, Credendi against his Manichean friends, about the time he was appointed to a chair who thought they had all the answers. of rhetoric at Milan, to NEOPLATONISM; Dialectically he extricated himself from and finally, at the age of 32, to what he the impasse of scepticism by what has called Catholic Christianity. He was bap- been called ‘the Augustinian Cogito’: Si tized in Milan at Easter 387, about nine fallor, sum (‘if I am wrong, I exist’). But months after his conversion. In 391 he his real method was one that could be was ordained and in 395 he became described as systematic faith. ‘Unless you bishop of the city of Hippo Regius (Bône, believe, you shall not understand’ ( on the Algerian coast). His genius and his 7, 9) was one of his favourite texts. (The strenuous devotion to pastoral duties soon older he got, the more biblical his thought made him the intellectual leader of and language became.) Faith alone can African Catholicism. After an episcopate provide the base from which the quest for of over thirty years, during which he won wisdom must start, because it is both a an Empire-wide reputation, he died at knowing, which makes love of the thing Hippo on 28 August, 430, as the Vandals known possible, and a not knowing, so were besieging the city. that love is still desire, not yet enjoyment. Augustine’s thought was always the Augustine’s conversion was his discovery expression of his personal experience – an of wisdom by faith, and the beginning of experience of conversion to Christianity his exploration of it by understanding. followed by a life spent in teaching it. For The method is deployed most conspic- him, Christianity is the true philosophy, uously in De Trinitate, a work which and pagan schools of philosophy were also displays the extent and bearing of false or defective. Truth is one and divine Augustine’s Platonism. His cosmos is con- (indeed it is what God is), and its posses- structed on a Platonic dialectic; there is sion is happiness, beatitudo. (Augustine the outer and the inner world, the lower defines beatitude as gaudium de veritate, and the higher, the sensible and the intelli- enjoying Truth.) Under the pull of Truth gible, and the carnal and the spiritual. his life had a certain splendid simplicity in wisdom is a movement of about it; first a quest for Truth, then the the mind inwards and upwards to God at discovery of it, and after that a life spent the apex and the centre – an opening to the in its exploration. illumination of incommutable truth, which It is wisdom that gives knowledge of is always available for inspection, pro- Truth, so the quest for Truth is a quest for vided the mind has been purified by faith. wisdom. One of the first philosophical But this progress is, so to speak, a feeling problems to engage Augustine was how one’s way backwards along the channel of one can pass from being unwise to being influence which comes downwards and wise. To do so one must desire the wis- outwards, from the Creator to the creature. dom that one lacks. But desire implies The word ‘Creator’ indicates the limits knowledge of the thing desired. Desire of of Augustine’s Platonism. His crucial 40 Aurelius theme of the divine image in the world Aurelius See MARCUS AURELIUS. and in humanity depends on the wholly Austin, John Langshaw (1911–60) biblical doctrine of creation, and enabled The Oxford Professor of Moral him to regard the material world with a Philosophy J. L. Austin had a very con- reverence impossible for a thorough siderable influence on the development of Platonist. The goal of his vision was the ANALYTIC PHILOSOPHY. His work consists resurrection of the body, not the soul’s mainly of close examinations of the way release from a bodily prison. His doctrine words are ordinarily used, without direct of EVIL as no-thing, as a privation, a lack reference to the traditional problems of of due order, marks his easy independ- philosophy. Austin gives an admirable ence of Platonism as much as his brief account of his reasons for this pro- emancipation from Manicheism. cedure in his ‘A Plea for Excuses’ (1956). The doctrine of Incarnation accords ill Two of his most important sets of lectures with the ultra- and intellectu- were published posthumously. In Sense alism of the Platonists, but fits smoothly and Sensibilia he attempted to show that into Augustine’s God-imagining world. certain traditional philosophical argu- The divine image in man has been defaced ments that are designed to prove that the by sin, which upsets the divine order, ruf- direct object of the senses is always a fles the clear surface. It is restored by a SENSE-DATUM and never a transcendent manifestation of divine derive their plausibility from a systematic order, in which the Word, the image par distortion of key terms from their normal excellence, makes up for pride with use. In How to Do Things with Words he , and disobedience by obedience, first restates his doctrine of ‘performative and restoring life through death, and inno- utterances’, but finds it ultimately unsat- cence through the acceptance of guilt. The isfactory and goes on to replace the dialectical statement of the Incarnation in distinction between performative and St Paul and St John plucks an immediate statemental utterances by a distinction response from Augustine, the trained between the locutionary act (saying rhetorician. The Word incarnate is the something with a certain meaning), the Way back for man to the Word who is illocutionary act (what one does, such as Truth, and the Way on to the risen Christ promising, in saying something), and the who is Life. Like creation, restoration perlocutionary act (what one brings about must come from above. All the initiatives by saying something), all considered as are God’s. Human freedom is fully vindi- abstractable components of the complete cated only when its derivation from divine speech-act. This doctrine has greatly freedom is accepted. Divine grace is dis- influenced later work on the philosophy played in divine charity – ‘God so loved of language. (J.O.U.) the world...’– and the human response is one of charity, which Augustine would Averroes (1126–98) The Arabic almost say is as natural as falling off a log. philosopher, jurist and physician Averroes Amor meus pondus meum (‘My love is my (the name is Latinized from Ibn Rushd) weight’), he said. His ethics stems from was born at Cordova, Spain, and died at grace rather than will-power, and from per- Marrakesh. In the West, he is best known sonal love rather than abstract principle, as a commentator on ARISTOTLE. On many and is quite free from the harsh Puritanism Aristotelian writings he wrote three differ- which has often been ascribed to it. (E.H.) ent kinds of Commentaries: Summaries in Avicenna 41 his own words, and Middle and Long as religious truth inaccessible to human Commentaries quoting portions of the reason, because they are God’s revelation. text and adding explanatory and critical On these grounds, he maintains the supe- comments, in the light of classical com- riority of the SharW’a, which guarantees mentators like , Alexander of happiness to every believer, over Nomos Aphrodisias, and Al-FarabW, AVICENNA (secular law), which is only concerned and (Ibn Bajja). His exposition with the happiness of the élite. is lucid and concise, adhering more Averroes insisted, like Avicenna, on closely to Aristotle than any of the earlier the superior and exceptional character of Falasifa (arabic religious philosophers). as the divinely sent prophetic Not having Aristotle’s Politics, Averroes law-giver, but his vindication of the commented on PLATO’s Republic, which SharW’a as the constitution of the ideal he treated as the second, practical part of Muslim state is combined with a sustained the science of politics supplementing critique, rooted in Plato, of the Muslim Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics which state of his time. (E.I.J.R.) was the first, theoretical part. The significance of Averroes as a reli- Avicenna (980–1037) Persian physi- gious philosopher lies in his polemical cian (the name is Latinized from Ibn Sina) treatises, his spirited rebuttal of attacks on and most original of the Falasifa (Muslim the Falasifa, and his Commentary on religious philosophers). Avicenna pro- Plato. Averroes set out to prove the essen- pounded a philosophical monotheism tial agreement between the religious law which approaches a synthesis between the (SharW’a) and philosophy ( falsafa) by tenets of and the teachings of PLATO claiming that one is ‘the companion and and ARISTOTLE. Unlike Al-FarabW, to foster-sister’ of the other. Truth is one whom he was greatly indebted, and AV E R - and indivisible, but explicable in different ROES, whose original contribution is ways. The theory of ‘double truth’ is largely contained in his Commentaries, wrongly fathered on him; it belongs rather Avicenna succeeded in formulating a to his Latin followers. Averroes asserts the Summa of philosophy out of a critical philosopher’s exclusive ability, right and study of Aristotle, helped by NEOPLATONIC duty to expound the inner meaning of the commentators and the STOICS. His Shifa prophetically revealed Law by demonstra- exerted a strong influence on , tive argument. With Plato he distin- and Christians. In LOGIC, Avicenna’s guishes the few elect philosophers from strict adherence to Aristotle’s concept of the masses. With Aristotle he distinguishes cause and effect led to a logical determin- three classes of arguments (demonstrative, ism which brought him into conflict with dialectical and rhetorical or poetical), , while in psy- which he assigns to three classes of chology he combined Aristotle with believers: philosophers, theologians and PLOTINUS in his widely accepted idea of the masses. The masses must accept the the immortality of the rational soul stories, parables and metaphors of which, as form, is also substance. More Scripture in their plain meaning; but they far-reaching is his contribution to META- also have an inner meaning accessible PHYSICS. Like all Falasifa he was helped only to the metaphysician. All three classes by Plotinus and Porphyry, who had tried must accept certain statements in the to harmonize Plato and Aristotle and, Qur’an (Koran) in their literal meaning by giving Plato’s thought a turn towards 42 Ayer, A. J. religious , enabled Muslims to which, for the Falasifa, illustrated the blend traditional beliefs and convictions political significance of the SharW’a and with Greek thought. Avicenna’s view that enabled them to blend Islamic fundamen- existence and essence coincide in the tals with Greek concepts. (E.I.J.R.) being of God gained wide currency in the West, especially with the Jewish MAI- Ayer, Sir Alfred Jules (1910–89) MONIDES and the Christian AQUINAS. So Born in and educated at Eton and did its corollary, that in created beings Oxford, A. J. Ayer was Professor at the essence is separate from existence, which University of London from 1946, and in is only an accident. Accepting Aristotle’s Oxford from 1959. He was also well concept of the of matter, known as a broadcaster. Ayer achieved Avicenna rejected the theological early fame as the author of Language, of ‘creation out of nothing’. Moreover, Truth and Logic (1936), a work which did creation is a necessary consequence of much to familiarize the English-speaking God’s existence as an absolute, simple world with LOGICAL POSITIVISM. Based on unity whose knowledge, will and power first-hand acquaintance with the VIENNA are one with his essence. He is the CIRCLE, it ranks among the clearest and uncaused First Cause, hence necessarily most forthright expositions of the subject the Creator. and Aquinas in any language. In some respects, also, it opposed this Avicennian concept, main- represents a synthesis of British and taining the Scriptural notion of a creation Continental versions of EMPIRICISM. Ayer in time by God’s free-will. agrees with the latter in rejecting META- To close the gap between revelation PHYSICS and confining philosophy to and reason Avicenna escaped into a form ANALYSIS. He conceives of the analytic of intellectual . The speculative method as the translation of problematic mystic (arif ) who attained the highest expressions into a logically more explicit degree of knowledge, gained intellectual terminology, and he typically makes use of union with God in intuitive perception. it to resolve traditional cruxes in the theory is part of Avicenna’s of knowledge. Material objects, for Metaphysics because the attainment of instance, are not ‘constructed’ out of human happiness is only possible in SENSE-DATA, but statements mentioning society, but and SharW’a (prop- the former can be logically ‘reduced’ to hetically revealed Muslim Law) were statements mentioning only the latter. This indispensable for human survival and linguistic ‘’ is put forward happiness. The prophetic lawgiver brings as a truth already glimpsed in the writings mankind a guaranteeing of BERKELEY and HUME. Apart from its welfare in this world and bliss hereafter. controversial treatment of ethical proposi- Al-FarabW identified the prophetic law- tions (as ‘emotive’ rather than factual), the giver with Plato’s philosopher-king; other main feature of Ayer’s discussion is Avicenna, in contrast, grants the a his proposal to distinguish a weaker form spontaneous, intuitive knowledge which of the verification principle, designed to raises him above the philosopher. The exclude metaphysics while preserving the ideal Muslim state with Muhammad’s law significance of other propositions suppos- as constitution is the counterpart to edly more useful to science. Difficulties of Plato’s concepts of Justice and Law formulation proved far greater than he Ayer, A. J. 43 expected, and were reviewed in his order to elucidate the logical grounds introduction to the second edition (1946). for their acceptance. In pursuit of this Ayer’s later writings (especially The inquiry, Ayer came to doubt the possibil- Problem of Knowledge, 1956) were ity of analysing claims about material largely devoted to retrenchment of his objects into claims about the actual or position in the light of subsequent criti- possible occurrence of sense-data; and he cism. The same epistemological problems at length forsook phenomenalism. His are repeatedly tackled, with substantially later position can be described as that of the same weapons; but there is less dispo- an analytically minded empiricist, dubi- sition to claim finality for the results. ous of claims made for ‘ordinary lan- Commonsense claims to knowledge of guage’, and without commitments to any the external world, the past, the self and really definable school. Ayer is also the other people are now scrutinized, not in author of the article on RUSSELL in this order to ‘reduce’ or repudiate them, but in Encyclopedia. (P.L.H.) B

Bachelard, Gaston (1884–1962) rational thought in science is parallelled French philosopher and historian of by his concern with the subjectivity of science, more widely known to the non-rational, artistically creative thought, English-speaking world for his writings with poetic and reveries. In on aesthetics and poetics, but whose works such as The Psychoanalysis of Fire approach to the history and PHILOSOPHY OF (1938) and Water and Dreams (1942) he SCIENCE influenced a whole generation draws on Jungian depth psychology for his of philosophers passing through French exploration of the trans-subjective power universities, including such figures as of poetic images, images which reverber- CANGUILHEM, FOUCAULT and ALTHUSSER. ate in the readers’ consciousness and lead Bachelard’s first degree was in mathemat- them to create anew whilst communicating ics and he taught physics and chemistry at with the poet. Such is his local college, in Bar-sur-Aube, whilst contrasted sharply with the objectivity working on his doctorate in philosophy. required of scientific discourse, which He thus came to the history and philoso- requires that the power of images (which phy of science from science. This is present epistemological obstacles) be reflected in his approach to the philosophy broken and that the learn to dream of science, which is characterized by an in the austere realm of abstract mathemat- opposition to the imposition of philosoph- ical structures. This duality of objective ical (whether POSITIVIST, EXIS- and subjective, of concept and image, of TENTIALIST, REALIST or PHENOMENALIST) the scientific and the poetic, informs not on science. He insists that any philosophy only Bachelard’s philosophy, but the whole concerned with EPISTEMOLOGY must learn structure of his written corpus. [M.T.] from science, and recognize the distinctive character of twentieth-century science. Bacon, Francis (1561–1626) Francis The overthrow of classical Newtonian Bacon was born in the shadow of the physics by the theories of RELATIVITY and English Court, which dominated his QUANTUM MECHANICS represented a break whole life. He was educated at Cambridge with past science, which in its turn and admitted to the Bar in 1575. In 1584, requires epistemology to break with past through the help of his uncle, Lord of science. (This view is Burghley, he obtained a seat in the House most succinctly expressed in The New of Commons. He was befriended by Scientific Spirit, 1934.) Bachelard rejects , the favourite of Elizabeth, who the picture of the development of science tried unsuccessfully to get him made as a continuous, gradual accumulation of attorney-general in 1593. Under James I, knowledge in favour of a discontinuous, Bacon’s fortunes improved. In 1607 he ruptured development in which what was was made solicitor-general and in 1613 once taken for knowledge undergoes attorney-general; in 1617 Lord Keeper repeated re-evaluation and re-interpretation. and in 1618 . He was also His concern with the development of sci- created Baron Verulam and in 1621 ence and with the objectivity of creative Viscount St Albans. Three days after this Bacon, Francis 45 honour Bacon was accused of bribery, forming a major section of the first part. found technically guilty, and deprived of The parts were as follows. (1) A classifica- office. He had accepted presents from lit- tion and review of existing sciences which igants, the usual practice of the time. To would make the gaps in them obvious. quote his own words: ‘I was the justest (He fulfilled this portion of his plan in judge that was in England these fifty De Dignitate et Augmentis Scientiarum, years. But it was the justest censure in 1623). (2) A new inductive method for Parliament that was these two hundred putting all human minds on a level in years.’ He died in 1626, in retirement, the interpretation of nature. (This was working on his scientific projects. sketched in , 1620.) Bacon always claimed that his aim in (3) or a collection of data seeking political advancement was to and experiments arranged in accordance improve man’s estate and to use his wealth with the principles laid down in Part 2. and influence to forward the cause of a (This was achieved only in extremely new science that might contribute to this fragmentary form: Parasceve ad historiam end. But in spite of repeated attempts he naturalem et experimentalem, 1620; obtained neither a college nor a royal Historia Naturalis et experimentalis ad foundation. He lived lavishly, and his condendam philosophiam: sive phenom- debts prevented him spending much on ena universi, 1622; and a strange collection the advancement of science during his of facts and fables, Sylva Sylvarum, 1627.) lifetime; after his death they also pre- (4) The Ladder of the Intellect, which was vented the implementation of his will, in meant to consist of fully worked out exam- which he provided for lectureships in nat- ples of his method. (None of this is extant ural philosophy at Oxford and Cambridge. save a preface called Scala Intellectus sive His actual contributions to learning filum labyrinthi.) (5) Generalizations and science were similarly incomplete – reached from natural history without the programmatic aspirations rather than con- use of Bacon’s special method of interpre- crete pieces of work. In 1603 he laid the tation. (Only a preface to this exists: foundation for his ‘Great Instauration’with Prodromi sive Anticipationes Philosophiae Valerius Terminus and De Interpretatione Secundae.) (6) The New Philosophy or Naturae Proemium, followed by Cogitata Active Science, consisting of the complete et Visa. He announced that he had con- science of Nature. This was to be built on structed a new method of scientific discov- the facts of Part 3, established by the ery, in which large natural and methods of Part 2. (None of this is extant.) collections of facts were to be amassed, Bacon wrote many other works which preferably within a college, and carefully do not fit into his Great Instauration and are interpreted. The same stress on natural his- not easily regarded as anticipations or off- tory and a new method of interpretation shoots of it. Most famous are his New runs through his Advancement of Learning (his contribution to Utopian litera- (1605), together with a criticism of previ- ture), De Sapientia Veterum (1609) and De ous thinkers and passionate pleas for the Principiis atque Originibus (1623–4), an use of knowledge to better man’s earthly attempt to supplant the Platonic and estate. Aristotelian traditions with a more materi- This was a preliminary to the Great alistic theory deriving from DEMOCRITUS. Instauration itself, which was to consist Also in refutation of earlier philosophers he of six parts, the Advancement of Learning wrote a treatise on ‘the idols of the theatre’, 46 Bacon, Francis

Redargutio philosophiarum (1608). There stressed the importance of looking for the are also several other fragments, such as negative instance, of seeking systemati- Temporis partus masculus and Delineatio cally for exceptions to generalizations. et argumentum, both of which were antici- The Idols of the are due to other pations of his Great Instauration. limitations such as the dullness of our Bacon’s main contribution to philoso- perceptual apparatus. But there are also phy was in the sphere of scientific the Idols of the Den, which are due not so method. He was one of the most powerful much to human nature generally as to and articulate rebels against the individual differences and idiosyncrasies. Aristotelian and Platonic traditions; in Then there are the Idols of the Market many respects he attempted to revive a Place, due to vague words and phrases materialism akin to that of Democritus. that corrupt and muddle our thinking. He claimed that Aristotelian logic was Finally, there are the Idols of the Theatre, useless: it revealed nothing new and which arise from systems of philosophy. dragged experiment along like a captive. The remedy for these obstacles was not In addition, its explanations in terms of simply to expose the faulty reasoning of ‘final causes’ had wonderfully corrupted others, but to set out the new method of philosophy, for such explanations were inquiry clearly for all to use. only appropriate in explaining human This method consisted of accumulat- affairs. The alternative , ing data and dealing with them in a cer- deriving from PLATO, was equally useless. tain manner. Suppose the cause of heat No trust was to be placed in the abstract was sought. A table of presence had first axioms of the geometric method. to be compiled containing all known Definitions could not remedy the evil, instances in which heat was present, then because they themselves consisted of a table of absence with instances corre- words: ‘words are but the images of mat- sponding to those in the table of presence. ter; and except they have life of reason A table of degrees had also to be con- and invention, to fall in love with them is structed with instances where heat was to fall in love with a picture’. Rationalists present in varying degrees. By examining were like spiders spinning ideas out of the the tables, a ‘generating nature’ might be recesses of their mind. The brute empir- found which was co-present, co-absent ics, on the other hand, were no better: they and co-variant with the effect or ‘gener- were like ants, aimlessly collecting data. ated nature’. An interpretation or ‘first vin- The secret lay in natural history, or the tage’ could then be made – for example, amassing and storing of data, and it was that motion is the cause or ‘form’ of heat. the bees that provided the proper model (These tables are very similar to J. S. MILL’s for scientific procedure. joint methods of agreement and differ- In the endeavour to replace rash antic- ence and the method of concomitant ipations of Nature by orderly interpreta- variations.) tions the inquirer is brought up against One of the most vexed questions of certain deep-seated limitations of the Baconian scholarship is the status of the human mind. These Bacon called the ‘forms’. He distinguished physics – Idols of the Tribe. We tend to generalize which investigates efficient and material too readily, to find instances which suit causes but ‘does not stir the limits of things our purposes and to believe more readily which are much more deeply rooted’ – that which we prefer. Bacon therefore from METAPHYSICS, which investigates Bacon, Roger 47

‘forms’. Forms are both ‘generic’ and believed, like Bacon, that science could ‘generating’: heat, for instance, is a limi- reveal the wonders of God’s creation and tation of the more generic nature be used to improve man’s estate. ‘motion’; and it is also in some way pro- Bacon’s thought influenced not only duced by motion. Such ‘forms’ are unlike the development of science but also the Aristotelian formal causes because they typically British conception of knowledge are generators of other and not and as developed by just correlative with matter. It is often LOCKE, BERKELEY, HUME, J. S. MILL and suggested that Bacon had in mind some RUSSELL. But his account of scientific atomic theory akin to that of Democritus. method has been criticized by later Yet his ‘forms’ are observables, discov- thinkers in at least four respects. First, it is ered by compiling tables, whereas argued that he was mistaken in thinking Democritan atoms are not observable. that there is an ‘inductive’ method which Whatever doubts there may be about puts all observers on a level in arriving at the status of ‘forms’, there can be no well-founded generalizations. There may doubt about Bacon’s enthusiasm for the be methods for testing generalizations practical projects which a knowledge of once they have been made, but there are the laws of the combination of forms no recipes for arriving at them. Second, it might permit. He was one of the first to is alleged that Bacon failed to distinguish stress that knowledge gives humanity between rash ‘anticipations’ of nature and power over nature, and he has been her- working hypotheses. Data cannot be alded as a forerunner of both UTILITARIAN- collected without some sort of hypothe- ISM and MARXISM in this respect. Bacon sis, nor can theory be developed. The thought that the aim of his Great nineteenth-century logician WHEWELL Instauration was ‘knowledge of the made much of this defect in Bacon’s causes and of the secret motion of things, account. Third, Bacon was profoundly and the enlarging of the bounds of human ignorant of mathematics and overlooked empire, to the effecting of all things pos- its great importance in the development sible’. He subscribed to the alchemist’s of theories. He rejected the Copernican ideal of transmuting substances of one hypothesis, ridiculed Gilbert’s specula- kind into substances of another, but tions about magnetism and failed to see thought such an undertaking must be the importance of Harvey’s work. He based on a thorough understanding of understood little of continental thinkers ‘what is constant, eternal, and universal like Kepler and Galileo. Finally, Bacon in nature’. ignored problems connected with the jus- Bacon met with little concrete success tification of , which either in developing his fundamental sci- have troubled philosophers since Hume. ence or in inaugurating a college to house But he remains important for his stress on it. But he inspired many with his dream of the observational basis of science and the improving the human condition by the search for the negative instance. (R.S.P.) employment of scientific method. The Royal Society, founded in 1662, was Bacon, Roger (c.1214–c.1292) English Baconian in spirit. It combined his thinker whose long career at Oxford and emphasis on observation and experiment Paris covers the whole of the vital period in with a concern for inventions of practical the thirteenth century when Greek and use. It was founded by who Arabic science and philosophy were 48 Barth, Karl assimilated into Western thought. In many a life-long association, de Beauvoir’s respects he appears conservative and tradi- alertness to the central weakness of the tional, like his fellow Franciscan, BONAVEN- doctrine of – its TURA, being no less observant of religion neglect of the social context of action – and equally convinced of the supremacy of was itself an influence on Sartre’s shift theological knowledge. Yet he differs pro- from a ‘philosophy of consciousness’ to foundly from him in his reaction to the new the more Marxist perspective of his later science. Where Bonaventura saw science as work. An initial focus (see her early nov- a possibly interesting field for human els and The Ethics of Ambiguity, 1947) is investigation, but a regrettable distraction the moral dilemma posed by the existen- from the contemplative activity to which all tialist insistence on our absolute freedom: should aspire, Bacon saw a new method for whilst freedom from social codes and which could radically transform philoso- conventions may be essential to the exer- phy and theology by applying the new cise of responsible moral choice, morality mathematical and experimental techniques itself would seem to demand that our to them. His most characteristic writing is actions be constrained by a ‘conventional’ to be found in his Opus Majus which, concern for their impact on others. together with the shorter Opus Minus and Moreover, all are in fact made in Opus Tertium, elaborates his views on how concrete situations which limit the possi- to reform the teaching of Christian wis- bilities of action. dom. These works were written at the The Second Sex (1949) offers a power- request of Pope Clement IV and urged the ful and sustained exemplification of these political hegemony which would fall to the dilemmas, exploring how the historical West as a result of the advance of science. oppression of women can be reconciled But Clement died and Bacon remained with their possession of freedom, while at frustrated. (J.G.D.) the same time exposing differences in the situation of the sexes which are obscured Barth, Karl (1886–1968) Swiss the- by philosophy’s universalizing preten- ologian, see EXISTENTIALISM, RELIGION. sions. For while women, in virtue of their Barthes, Roland (1915–80) French humanity, have as much need for auton- critic, see STRUCTURALISM. omy as men have, their cultural relegation to the status of ‘Otherness’ in relation to Bataille, Georges (1897–1962) men has condemned them to forms of French surrealist, erotic novelist and neo- dependency and subordination irreconcil- NIETZSCHEAN philosopher of religion. He able with genuine freedom. De Beauvoir was also a disciple of HEGEL in the inter- dismisses any suggestion that women are pretation put forward by KOJÈVE, and incapable by nature of transcending their author of L’expérience intérieure (1943). situation. But her positive valuation of transcendence (which implicitly con- Beauty See AESTHETICS, BURKE. dones the Hegelian and Sartrean associa- Beauvoir, Simone de (1908–86) tion of femininity with ) has Born in Paris, she was a key figure in been unacceptable to some of her readers, French EXISTENTIALISM and a founding as has the political implication that theorist of modern . Though she women can only realize themselves by was profoundly influenced by the philoso- like men. But in drawing atten- phy of SARTRE, with whom she maintained tion to the disparities in the legal and Bentham, Jeremy 49 social situation of women, The Second criticism’. This idea is revealed explicitly Sex helped inaugurate the practical cam- in the ‘Epistemo-Critical Prologue’ to his paigns (around such issues as abortion Origin of German Tragic Drama (1928), and equal rights for women) which led to his ‘Theses on the Philosophy of the growth and diversification of the History’, and some of his early essays; modern feminist movement. and implicitly in his historical–critical De Beauvoir is exceptional among works, especially the unfinished study of philosophers both in the range of her writ- nineteenth-century Paris, the Arcades ings (which include novels, journalism Project. The goal of redemptive criticism and autobiography alongside distinctively was to overcome the modern split philosophical works) and in the extent to between critique, which seeks the truth which she uses fictional forms to convey content of a work of art, and commentary, philosophical ideas. Of note, too, is her which seeks to illuminate a work’s subject practical adherence to the philosophy she matter. In pursuit of this goal Benjamin espoused; she lived her life as a project, developed ideas on the philosophy of his- and not least among her achievements is tory and the philosophy of language, and the record she bequeathed in her memoirs on critical cognition. According to of the existential unfolding of an individ- Benjamin the idea of history as a contin- ual life in its unique and unrepeatable uous slow progress of truth and human passage from birth to grave. [K.S.] freedom is a vision from the perspective of the victors: ‘the continuum of history Behaviourism An approach to psy- is that of the oppressor’. Redemptive crit- chology first formulated in 1913 by icism seeks to reveal moments of discon- J. B. (1878–1958), who held that tinuity and restore that which continuous, a science of mind must be based on out- progressive history has dominated and wardly observable behaviour rather inner repressed. While Benjamin’s philosophi- experience. The term was later extended, cal thought is intensely idiosyncratic and often with a hint of scorn, to philosophi- problematic, especially his theologically cal treatments of mind in the tradition of inspired philosophy of language, it con- WITTGENSTEIN and RYLE. tinues to command attention, in large measure because of the way it informs his Being See ARISTOTLE, DUALISM, EXIS- uniquely powerful critical and historical TENTIALISM, HEIDEGGER, IDEALISM META- writings. [J.M.B.] PHYSICS, MONISM, REALISM. Benjamin, Walter (1892–1940) Bentham, Jeremy (1748–1832) Literary critic and theorist, born in Berlin. originally expected to was a close friend of follow his father and grandfather as a , the historian of Jewish working in the city of London, but mysticism, Bertolt Brecht and THEODOR W. revolted against the unnecessary techni- ADORNO, whose philosophy Benjamin’s cality of current legal procedure and writings significantly influenced. During devoted himself instead to discovering the the 1930s Benjamin was associated with fundamental principles of a just, clear and the FRANKFURT SCHOOL, in whose journal rational legal system. This led him to some of his best-known essays appeared. a profound examination of the nature of Benjamin’s philosophical thought thought, language, law, government and circles around his idea of ‘redemptive public morality. He sought to substitute 50 Berdyaev, Nicholas clear expressions for unclear ones, and wrong acts of others. By taking account of made the fundamental innovation of sub- value, this enables the precise quantity of stituting at the level of sentences rather punishment appropriate for every offence than terms (the method of paraphrasis). to be measured. [R.H.] Unclear sentences are analysed into clear ones and clarity is achieved by closeness Berdyaev, Nicholas (1874–1948) to experience, particularly the sensations Berdyaev lived in his native Russia until of pleasure and pain. Thus, in his account his expulsion in 1922, when he settled of law, Bentham analysed sentences about first in Germany and then in . A rights into sentences about duties, and faithful member of the Russian Orthodox sentences about duties into sentences Church, Berdyaev, in most of his work, about the commands of a person or group should be classed as a religious thinker backed by the threat of sanctions (the pos- and as a social and political propagandist sibility of pain). In this way he hoped to rather than a philosopher; his aim was establish an account of the law as it is. practical – to bring about a Christian Turning to the question of how the law social system – rather than theoretical. ought to be, he appealed to the principle of But his fundamental philosophical thesis utility (as previously used in various ways was a distinction between the material world, subject to natural law and neces- by HUME, Helvétius and Beccaria), declar- ing at the start of his first main work the sity, of which man as an animal is a part, ‘fundamental axiom, it is the greatest hap- and the higher world of freedom of which piness of the greatest number that is the man as spirit is a part, a position rem- iniscent of KANT’S distinction between measure of right and wrong’. This UTILI- the phenomenal and noumenal . TARIAN principle also substitutes clear goals, concerned with pleasure and pain, (J.O.U.) for unclear ones. Finally, Bentham added a Bergmann, Gustav (1906–87) Positi- self-interest psychology describing how vistic analytic philosopher, born in people actually value various states so that Austria, who emigrated in 1938 and the value varies with such factors as cer- transmitted some of the austere logical tainty, distance, intensity or . With formalism he had acquired from the an account of man as he is and an account to the United States. See of society as it ought to be, Bentham spent also . much time designing institutions – in particular his famous prison, the Bergson, Henri Louis (1859–1941) Panopticon – in which these two were French philosopher who produced a united. In these institutions, be they states philosophy of ‘creative evolution’ which or prisons, men would naturally (i.e. fol- made a considerable impression in litera- lowing their own interests) do what they ture as well as philosophy in the early ought to do (i.e. promote the greatest hap- years of the twentieth century (see, for piness of the greatest number). From this example, the Preface to Bernard Shaw’s follow the utilitarian principles of punish- Back to Methuselah). This was not only a ment in which deterrence is its only justi- romantic para-biological theory of a fication. As Bentham puts it, all ‘Life-Force’ designed to counteract mate- punishment is in itself evil (i.e. it causes rialistic or mechanistic notions of the pain); it is only justified therefore if it evolution of life in nature. It was an ingen- causes greater good by deterring the ious speculative theory of the relation of Bergson, Henri 51 life and matter, correlated throughout from within: we are aware not of a suc- with a particular theory of knowledge. cession of distinct states, but of our pres- Indeed, Bergson’s work could either be ent as arising out of our past and turning interpreted idealistically, in which case into a not clearly envisaged future. The the theory of knowledge is prior, and we ‘time’ of this inner experience is not have a certain kind of concept of matter external clock time, or ‘spatialized time’, because our minds work in a certain way; measured for instance by noting successive or it could be interpreted as an evolution- positions of the hands of a clock. It is an ary realism in which our minds have actual experience of change, in which come to think in a certain way because of stages of ‘before’ and ‘after’ interpene- the natural history of their evolution. In trate. Bergson calls this kind of time either case, Bergson’s originality lay in ‘duration’ (durée), and claims that it is not the way he interpreted a theory of evolu- merely a way of measuring a changing tion and a theory of knowledge in terms reality, but is the changing reality itself. of each other. The theory of knowledge The state of mind in which we are aware was presented first, in Essai sur les don- of the quality and flow of inner con- nées immédiates de la (1889), sciousness is called . It is a (translated as Time and Free-will), and in non-conceptual kind of awareness, and Matter and Memory (1896). Here Bergson says it dispenses with , Bergson draws a sharp distinction though what he means by ‘’ is not between our intellectual knowledge of the clear, and indeed his own attempts external world and consciousness as we to express and describe intuition are know it from within. The intellect pro- couched, perhaps inevitably, in metaphors. ceeds by analysis and classification, inter- For a form of consciousness which uses preting the world in terms of limited neither concepts nor imaginative metaphors kinds of discrete units, undergoing would presumably not be explicit thought repeatable arrangements in space. Hence at all, but feeling. Indeed Bergson some- it thinks of static objects in spatial juxta- times speaks of intuition as ‘sympathy’, position; it does not grasp fundamental and ‘integral experience’. In the changes through time, but imagines Introduction to Metaphysics (1903), he change as a succession of static states of speaks of metaphysics as ‘the science affairs, spread out in a succession of which claims to dispense with symbols’. instantaneous – a limitation which If this were the whole truth, it is hard to was brought out by ZENO of Elea in his see how it could become articulate knowl- paradoxes about motion, and which, edge, since any expression must presum- Bergson thought, is never transcended by ably use some form of symbolism. mere concepts, although it may be met Bergson does not, however, present intu- practically by devices such as the infini- ition as able to work apart from intellect, tesimal calculus, where a sequence of though he describes them as if they were very small intervals is treated as though polar opposites. Intuition is compared they formed a continuous movement. The with the creative inner excitement which intellect therefore, Bergson says, ‘spatial- enables a writer to fuse his mass of mate- izes’, and its ideal form of thinking is rials into a unity, which he cannot do geometry. unless he has first gathered the materials Sharply contrasted is self-conscious- by intellectual effort. ‘Any one of us, for ness, where change in time is experienced instance, who has attempted literary 52 Bergson, Henri composition, knows that when the subject Charcot on amnesia, and by experimental has been studied at length, the materials work on hypnotically recovered memo- all collected, and the notes all made, ries. He was writing before Freud’s theory something more is needed in order to set of the unconscious mind had been put about the work of composition itself, and forward, and he uses the word ‘conscious- that it is an often very painful effort to ness’ broadly and not only for such place ourselves directly at the heart of the experiences as are within the focus subject, and to seek as deeply as possible of attention. Indeed he imagines a an impulse, after which we need only let rudimentary form of consciousness in all ourselves go...Metaphysical intuition living organisms, and is prepared to inter- seems to be something of the same kind. pret them by what he calls an ‘inverted What corresponds here to the documents psychology’. and notes of literary composition is the Bergson’s theory of knowledge, for- sum of and experience gath- mulated in terms of the contrast between ered together by positive science. For we intellect and intuition, is correlated with a do not obtain an intuition from reality – view of their function within the process that is, an intellectual sympathy with the of evolution. , Bergson holds, most intimate part of it – unless we have begins with the making of tools. He won its confidence by a long fellowship describes ‘instinct’ as an innate power of with its superficial manifestations.’ In using natural instruments, either parts of neither case, however, can the ‘impulse’ the organism itself, or materials in the produce a synthesis out of the materials environment. Intelligence is first of all a apart from an integrating idea. power of making tools as artificial instru- Bergson’s of intuition ments: the human race at the dawn of seems to be an account not so much of intelligence was homo faber, the smith, such integrating ideas as of the underly- rather than homo sapiens. So intelligence ing state of mind out of which they may starts from the interest in practical con- come. This is a form of feeling intensely struction; it always bears the stamp of this concentrated on the present task, but practical interest, and finds its model of which has behind it the resources of the intelligibility in artefacts, which are dis- person’s whole past experience. Here continuous, isolatable systems, repeatable Bergson’s particular view of memory as specified types. Instinct on the other should be taken into account. He holds hand is continuous with the organizing that consciousness contains implicitly the power of life, but is unreflective and whole of one’s past experience, but the unadaptive. If it becomes disinterested function of the brain of the animal organ- and self-conscious, it is intuition, and can ism is to act as a ‘filter’, selecting for carry forward the original impetus of life immediate awareness such memories as into the creation of new forms. Bergson may be relevant in attending to the situa- interprets evolution as the outcome of an tions in which one is placed. But by impulse of life (élan vital) manifesting reversing the habits of the intellect itself in innumerable forms. This is not (always to Bergson primarily a way of finalist teleology in the classical sense – thinking shaped by practical needs), it development tied to the realization of pre- may be possible to draw on a wider range determined ends, which Bergson calls of the resources of consciousness. ‘inverted mechanism’. Nor is it vitalism Bergson was impressed by the work of as ordinarily understood, since no ‘vitalist Berkeley, George 53 principle’ is invoked over and above the through closed morality are always lim- physicochemical components of organ- ited groups, not just by definition, but isms. Rather, the whole of nature is said because their way of life is maintained to be the outcome of a force which thrusts through real or possible conflict with itself forward into new and unforeseen other groups. Humanity as a whole does forms of organized structure. These store not therefore form a group of this kind; and utilize energy, maintaining their and those prophets and who are power of growth and adaptive novelty up filled with an outgoing love for humanity to a point, before relapsing into repetitive are drawing on a different source. The routine, and ultimately into the degrada- analogy of closed morality to the repeti- tion of energy. tive mechanisms studied by the intellect is The universe, Bergson says, shows apparent; ‘open’ morality and religion are two tendencies: ‘a reality which is making forms of intuition, and their source lies in itself within a reality which is unmaking a direct contact with the springs of life in itself’. The laws of the tendency to repeti- the élan vital. In this last book Bergson is tion and the dissipation of energy are the prepared to call it ‘love’, which is ‘either laws of ‘matter’; the counter tendency is God or from God’. Whether he was the thrust of ‘life’. Here, in Creative received into the Roman Evolution (1907), ‘matter’ is represented is not known; he is reported to have held as a real tendency in nature, inverse to life back until just before his death in order to and representing the running down of life maintain his solidarity with the Jewish into uniformity. Bergson also speaks of people in their time of trouble. ‘matter’ as the picture formed by the arti- Bergson’s works are written in a non- ficial fixing of a system of spatialized technical, flowing and persuasive style. concepts by the intellect. Possibly the link They show wide knowledge of the biology is to be found in the belief that the more and psychology of his day, and an enthusi- things display the tendency inverse to life, astic, sometimes visionary, power. Other the more they are amenable to this kind of philosophers have, however, remarked on intellectual treatment. But the notions of his tendency to write in unexplained pure matter, or of a purely free and cre- metaphors, and on the lack of rigorous ative life impulse, would be abstractions, exposition of his central concepts, notably and Bergson acknowledges that what is those of durée and the élan vital, and of the routine and mechanical and what is living case for their supposed identity. (D.M.E.) and creative are never in fact found in complete separation from each other. But Berkeley,George (1685–1753) George his concern to bring out the difference Berkeley was born in , in the neigh- between them underlies his whole work; bourhood of Kilkenny. His ancestors were and it finds a special application in The English and Protestant, but he passed his Two Sources of Morality and Religion early and later years entirely in Ireland. (1932), where Bergson turned from biol- Although he was always of the Anglican ogy to moral and religious sociology. He faith, he appears to have regarded himself describes the ‘closed’ morality and reli- as decidedly an Irishman. He was excel- gion based on social custom as the con- lently educated, first at Kilkenny College, servative force of a limited society and, from 1700, at College, Dublin, making for the solidarity and preservation of which he was subsequently a Fellow for of a social group. Groups cohering many years. He was ordained in 1707, 54 Berkeley, George became Dean of Derry in 1724 and Bishop developed. It is clear from his correspon- of Cloyne ten years later. He married in dence that for long periods of his later life 1728 and died in Oxford in 1753. he did not occupy his with phi- Berkeley’s life is noteworthy, apart losophy at all. In this respect he differs from his philosophical writings, chiefly strikingly from LOCKE, whose main work for his attempt in middle life to introduce did not appear till he was nearly 60; and a university to Bermuda. The aim of this in fact the young Berkeley, who was early scheme was mainly missionary. Berkeley acquainted with Locke’s writings, is apt to hoped to attract to his college not only the refer to Locke’s thoughts as those of a colonial settlers of America, but also very old man – as admirable, indeed, for some of the indigenous Indians, to be one so advanced in years. trained as ministers of religion and apos- There have been many philosophers tles of culture. Berkeley, whose energies, who have constructed bold and sweeping, powers of persuasion and ingenuous and often extraordinary, metaphysical charm were remarkable, succeeded in systems. There have been some also, par- securing much public and official support ticularly in the English tradition, who for his project. He obtained a charter, a engaged in the clarification and defence large sum of money by private subscrip- of ‘common sense’. There have been tion, and the promise from Parliament of thinkers, again, devoted to the defence of a subvention from public funds. But his religious faith. It is the peculiar achieve- scheme was impracticable, and was in the ment of Berkeley that, with astonishing end seen to be so. Bermuda – as he was and skill, he contrived to pres- perhaps not clearly aware – is far too dis- ent himself in all these roles at once. This tant from the American mainland to have achievement exactly suited his tempera- been a suitable site for his purposes; and ment, in which a taste for ambitious meta- after he left for America in 1728, hesita- physical doctrine was combined with tions and doubts began to prevail at home. strong religious beliefs and with a solid Berkeley waited abroad almost three respect for ordinary good sense; but it years for his grant to be paid over, but in was of course due only to his and 1731 the Prime Minister, Walpole, let it intellectual power that he was able so to be known that his hopes were not to be frame his theories as to yield him rational gratified. The house at Newport, Rhode satisfaction also. His synthesis of these Island which Berkeley built and inhabited usually incompatible roles is doubtless is still preserved. unstable and few readers have been able The works on which Berkeley’s fame to follow him in it. At first, to his great chiefly rests were written when he was a chagrin, he was seen merely as a fantastic very young man. By the time he first - metaphysician; more recently, he has ited England in 1713, being then 28, he found occasional defenders, as an advo- had already published the Essay towards cate of ‘common sense’. But if one is to a New Theory of Vision (1709) and feel the full force of his theories, it is Principles of Human Knowledge (1710) essential to see how these diverse aspects and Three Dialogues between Hylas and are combined. Philonous was published that year. In his Berkeley’s position is best understood later philosophical writings he did little by contrast with Locke’s. The picture of more than defend, explain, and at certain the world which, in his student reading, minor points amend, the views thus early Berkeley found in Locke was roughly as Berkeley, George 55 follows. The universe is really a mechani- But Locke’s doctrine, Berkeley cal system of bodies in space. It is made, believed, was also exceedingly dangerous. as it were, of matter; and material bodies Apart from offering a general pretext for really possess just those qualities required scepticism, its tendency was towards for their mechanical mode of operation– MATERIALISM and atheism, and therefore, ‘solidity, figure, extension, motion or in Berkeley’s view, towards the subversion rest, and number’. These bodies operate of morals. God was brought in by Locke on, among other things, the sense-organs as the designer, creator and starter of the of human beings, who possess minds – great machine; but how could he show ‘immaterial substances’ – as well as bod- that matter itself was not eternal? And if it ies. When this occurs, the mechanical were, would his system not make it possi- stimulation of the sense-organs and brain ble, and even rational, to deny the exis- causes ‘ideas’ to arise in the mind, and tence of God altogether? Again, Locke these are the objects of which the himself had held that consciousness observer is really aware. In some respects belonged to ‘immaterial substances’, these ideas faithfully represent the actual which he would doubtless have regarded character of the ‘external world’, but in as immortal souls. But he confessed others not; ideas of, for instance, sound, that he could not disprove the counter- colour and smell have no real counter- suggestion that consciousness might be parts in the world, but are only modes in just one of the properties of matter, and so, which an observer so constituted is presumably, wholly dependent on the affected by the appropriate mechanical maintenance of certain material, physical stimuli. conditions. His theory was thus in some Berkeley soon came to regard this pic- danger of permitting – if it did not actually ture of the world as at once ridiculous, encourage – denial of the existence of God dangerous and detestable. It was ridicu- and of the immortality of the soul; and lous because it clearly entailed a fantastic with this denial, in Berkeley’s opinion, scepticism, in manifest conflict with good religion fell, dragging morality after it. common sense. For how could observers Finally, it is clear, though less explic- who were aware of nothing but their own itly asserted, that Berkeley was utterly ideas know anything about the ‘external oppressed and repelled by the notion that world’? Locke himself had asserted, the universe is really a vast machine. absurdly enough, that colour, for instance, Those metaphors of clocks and engines, is only an apparent, not a real, feature of wheels and springs, in which Locke that world; but how could he know that delighted, inspired in Berkeley the utmost of our own ideas ever detestation. The world, he felt, could not apprises us of the world’s actual charac- be really like this – particularly if, in ter? If a SCEPTIC suggests the possibility order to maintain that it is, we have to that all our ideas mislead us, Locke could assert that its actual appearance is delu- in no way counter the suggestion. Locke sive; that, in fact, the ‘visible beauty of is thus committed to the ridiculous view creation’ is nothing but a ‘false imaginary that, for all we know, objects in the world glare’. Why should we deny the evidence may be utterly unlike what we take them of our senses, in order to believe that the to be – and perhaps that, for all we know, universe is so repulsive? there may be no such objects. This is Now Berkeley perceived – and it surely repugnant to anyone of good sense. struck him as a revelation – what seemed 56 Berkeley, George to be a bold but beautifully simple means to be caused in the way supposed by of eliminating, at one blow, all these hor- Locke is, he holds, both needless and rors and absurdities. It was necessary only impossible. It is needless, because we can to deny the existence of matter. For what suppose that God causes them to occur in would be the consequences of this? First, our minds as they do, with their admirable the actual course of our everyday experi- order and regularity. And it is in fact ence would be quite unaffected. On impossible, he holds, that they should be Locke’s own admission, we are never caused otherwise; for to cause is to act, actually aware of anything but our own and nothing is genuinely active but the ideas; to deny the existence, then, of his will of an intelligent being. ‘external objects’, material bodies, is not But if matter is denied, what becomes to take away anything that has ever of physics? It is plainly impossible to dis- entered into our experience, and is indeed miss the discoveries of NEWTON and his to leave quite undisturbed the opinions of fellows as mere moonshine; but matter, in the unphilosophical masses. But it must the form of particles or ‘corpuscles’, is also put an end to all sceptical question- precisely that of which they have discov- ing. Locke was obliged to concede that ered and proved so many of the proper- our ideas might mislead us as to the char- ties. What is there for the laws of physics acter of things, precisely because he to hold true of, if there are really no regarded things as something other than material bodies? our ideas. But if instead we adopt the Berkeley’s earliest reflections on this view that things – the ordinary objects of objection were rather evasive; but later, experience – are just ‘collections of notably in the De Motu of 1721, he ideas’, it will be manifestly impossible to devised a strikingly ingenious reply in suggest that they are not as they appear to which, though running against the main us, and even more so to suggest that their tendency of his age, he anticipated the very existence is doubtful. If an orange is ideas of many twentieth-century PHILOSO- not an ‘external’ material body, but a col- PHERS OF SCIENCE. He answered, in effect, lection of ideas, then I may be – as of that scientific theories are not true of any- course anyone of good sense actually is – thing at all. If correct, they apply to the entirely certain that it exists, and that it world of our experience, in that they really has the colour, taste, texture and enable us both to predict and in some aroma that I find in it. Doubts on so sim- degree to control its course; but their ple a point could only arise as a result of function is no more than that of predictive the needless assertion that things exist, devices. The theory of the corpuscular distinct from and in addition to the ideas structure of matter, for example, makes we have. possible the exact mathematical expres- We may next see how Berkeley coun- sion of formulae, by the use of which we ters two serious objections. First, must it can make invaluable predictions; but not be admitted that our ideas have there is no need to suppose that the cor- causes? We do not simply produce our puscles and particles of that theory actu- ideas ourselves; they plainly come to us ally exist. That there are such corpuscles from some independent source; and what is a theoretically useful supposition; so could this be, if not the ‘external objects’ long as it proves useful it should con- of Locke’s theory? Now Berkeley admits tinue to be made; but it should never be that our ideas are caused; but to take them regarded as a literal truth. Thus, the practice Berkeley, George 57 of science need not be disturbed by mind of God, was at least a triumph of Berkeley’s doctrines; it is necessary only ingenuity. But this doctrine was too for scientists to admit that they are not extraordinary to be taken seriously; the investigating ‘the nature of things’, but fact that, so far as actual experience went, rather perfecting the formulation of pre- he could represent it as coinciding with dictive devices. the customary views of ordinary people Believing that the errors of earlier was not enough to make it actually the thinkers, notably Locke, had been due in same; and Berkeley was not welcomed as part to linguistic unclarity, Berkeley the defender of common sense. Even his devoted the Introduction to the Principles criticism of Locke was deprived of much to an investigation of language. He rather of its effect, since it appeared to lead unfairly interprets Locke’s vague expres- straight into a position still less defensible; sions in their most vulnerable sense, but and his philosophy of science was much his own insistence that the essence of lan- less acceptable then than it would be guage lies in its use, and on the concrete today. It was then generally accepted that understanding of expressions in definite physical theory was merely a kind of contexts, makes this one of his most extension of ordinary observation, reveal- original and stimulating contributions to ing truths of just the same kind as those of philosophy. common experience. Today this has Two of Berkeley’s later works may be become somewhat difficult to believe; but mentioned briefly. His Alciphron is a long to deny it then was probably felt to consti- work in dialogue form, in which the tute an attack on the physicist’s prestige. tenets of Anglican orthodoxy are There is no doubt that this was Berkeley’s defended against various current types of intention: he had the bad luck to detest the ‘free-thinking’ and . Though able ‘scientific ’ at a time when it enough, it has little interest now that the was in the first flush of its ascendancy. controversies which prompted it are dead. Today the ordinary reader of Berkeley Berkeley’s last work was Siris, in which a is most likely to regard him as a pioneer strangely rambling, ponderous and specu- of PHENOMENALISM. It is certainly part of lative statement of some of his earlier his doctrine to maintain that material opinions leads on to an inquiry into the objects could be reduced to collections of virtues of tar-water, a medicine which ideas, or SENSE-DATA as his successors Berkeley made popular, and for the pro- would say. This is, moreover, the classic motion of which he worked in his later rejoinder to theories of ‘indirect’ percep- years with almost eccentric zeal. tion, such as Locke had classically Berkeley’s main work was slow to expounded. But Berkeley was not exert any influence on philosophy, though engaged in cool and neutral philosophical his early essay on vision became fairly analysis. His phenomenalism was prima- well known. His criticisms of Locke were rily an ontological thesis; he genuinely for the most part powerful and well taken; wished to deny that there are any really and the transition to his own remarkable material things. He was happy to believe doctrine of a theocentric, non-material that ordinary opinions could be so universe, whose esse was percipi (which analysed as to conform with his ontology, existed only insofar as it was perceived), and he believed that they ought to be and in which human beings were con- understood in that way. He was, however, ceived of as conversing directly with the consciously and deliberately, as Locke 58 Berlin, Isaiah had been almost inadvertently, a meta- being allowed to do whatever you like with- physician, not merely an analyst. out unnecessary interference, and freedom It was remarked above that the result of in the romantic, demanding and totalitarian Berkeley’s ingenious attempt to unify sense of realizing your better self by doing metaphysics and common sense is unsta- what you should. Although it was clear that ble. This instability may be located in his Berlin favoured the first, ‘negative’, kind of use, adopted from Locke, of the term freedom, he did not offer explicit argu- ‘idea’. Berkeley’s use of this term (like ments for it. Indeed he thought that con- Locke’s) is not so much ambiguous as ceptual diversity was an ineliminable insufficiently determinate. When he feature of intellectual life in general, and wishes to bring out the common-sense that philosophers should do whatever they aspect of his doctrine, he stresses that he could to preserve it. He believed that the means by ‘ideas’ the things that we per- root of evil, in politics as in philosophy, lay ceive; when he speaks as an ontologist, in the assumption that there must be some affirming that esse is percipi and that mat- ‘single true solution’ to all the tragic con- ter does not exist, he insists that ideas are flicts that beset us – an assumption he con- ‘only in the mind’. It seems likely that, if sidered typical of all enemies of liberal or his use of this term were more closely negative freedom, especially Marxists. It scrutinized and made more precise, his followed that the only justifiable attitude, in theory would become not so much less politics and philosophy, was ‘relativism’, or plausible, as almost impossible to state. In ‘’ as he and his disciples preferred so far as it rests on fluidity at this key to call it. He was perhaps unaware that his point, it does not stand firm. (G.J.W.) all-purpose pluralism risked becoming a ‘single true solution’ in its turn. Berlin, Isaiah (1909–97) Most of Berlin’s other writings are was born to a wealthy family in Latvia, exercises in European , moved to England at the age of 11, and designed to reinforce his passion for plu- rose without apparent effort to become a ralism. The main protagonist in all of tutor in philosophy at Oxford University them is the ‘’ or ‘irrational- in 1932. He was a follower rather than a ism’ of the nineteenth century, which leader in the attempts by colleagues like Berlin saw, conventionally enough, as an RYLE, AUSTIN and AYER to give a British understandable but dangerous reaction to philosophy a LINGUISTIC TURN, and his something called ‘the enlightenment’– an interest drifted towards high politics and eighteenth-century movement supposedly Russian literature. After spending much of founded on a monolithic belief in the ulti- the Second World War on Government mate harmony and intelligibility of both work in the United States, he reinvented society and nature. Responses to Berlin’s himself as a historian of political thought, historical writings have been divided and a great talker. (It was said that the between admiration for their confident knighthood conferred on him in 1957 was range of reference and frustration at ‘for services to conversation’.) their superficiality, vagueness and repeti- The course of his intellectual career was tiveness. In the last twenty-five years of defined by a celebrated lecture delivered in his life Berlin seems to have been more 1958 on ‘Two Concepts of ’. Here interested in his work as a public figure Berlin explored the distinction between and as the founding president of Wolfson freedom in the relaxed, liberal sense of College Oxford. {J.R.} Bloch, Ernst 59

Bioethics See APPLIED ETHICS. Ludwigshafen. Against the reigning positivistic and reductionist philosophies Black, Max (1909–88) Though born in of the twentieth century, as well as against Russia, Black obtained his formal educa- Marxism’s own scientific variants of the tion in England, and after 1940 taught phi- dominant culture, Bloch defended a losophy in the United States. His major ‘process METAPHYSICS’ oriented towards interests were in the foundations of logic practice and the future, a philosophy and mathematics, the theory of knowledge, in which ‘that-which-is-not-yet’ surfaces and the philosophies of language and of from beneath social repression to provide science. Although his outlook was influ- a focus and guide for revolutionary enced by RUSSELL, MOORE and the LOGICAL thought and action. POSITIVISM, he was an acute critic of various Bloch’s metaphysics of the future, doctrines advocated by these thinkers. revolving around the concept of the ‘not- Moreover, while he was a prominent expo- yet’, argues that in utopian ideas and nent of the linguistic method of philosophic ideals we possess anticipations of a radi- analysis associated with WITTGENSTEIN, he cally different future. We are ‘not-yet- was not an orthodox follower of this conscious’ of what we really desire, but a approach. His principal works include The different future is adumbrated in the Nature of Mathematics (1950) and The unrealized ideals of the past. More sig- Labyrinth of Language (1968). See also nificantly, that different future may be METAPHOR. (E.N.) really possible even if the necessary con- ditions for its realization are not all pres- Blanshard, Brand (1892–1987) The ent, for in becoming aware of what is most prominent American exponent of a ‘not-yet-conscious’ we give the hoped- viewpoint developed from the absolute for future a practically efficacious place idealism which flourished in Oxford at in the present. the beginning of the twentieth century. There is an indecision in Bloch’s Blanshard’s most important work is The thought between a heuristic, practice- Nature of Thought (1939), which describes, oriented side, which seeks to change the in both psychological and logical terms, present by introducing utopian ideas into the development of human thought. it, and a systematic, metaphysical side Thought can, and must, be described in which labours to underwrite the claims of psychological terms, but we will not utopian reason through the development understand its development unless we see of an expanded conception of ‘real possi- it as guided by a logical ideal. The logical bility’. Such indecision, however, is sys- ideal is a system, such as is conceived in tematic and necessary in a theory seeking the coherence theory of TRUTH in which to make the imagination integral to reason all thoughts are necessarily connected and rationality. Bloch was a prolific with each other. We must seek necessity writer. His most important work is the everywhere, and attempts to reduce it to massive The Principle of Hope (1954–9). the empirical, as in HUME’s theory of cau- Other significant works include Spirit of sation, or to the trivial, as in convention- Utopia (1918), Thomas Münzer as Theo- alist or linguistic theories of the A PRIORI, logian of Revolution (1921), Subject – are subjected to sustained attack. (J.O.U.) Object, Commentaries on Hegel (1949) Bloch, Ernst (1885–1977) Marxist and Natural Right and Human Dignity philosopher of hope and utopia, born in (1961). (J.M.B.) 60 Boethius

Boethius, Anicius Manlius Severinus In his theological writings Boethius (c.480–c.524) Boethius was born into provided a model of theological method one of the great senatorial families in and the rigorous application of LOGIC Rome, accepted public service under to the analysis of Christian doctrine. Theodoric, and rose to high office. Later, The opening sections De Consolatione he was disgraced as a result of political Philosophiae give, through the mouth of intrigue, and wrote his most celebrated the lady Philosophy, conventional STOIC work, the De Consolatione Philosophiae, and Platonic answers to Boethius’ account while in jail awaiting execution. His of his misfortunes. Thereafter his importance in the history of philosophy, Christian convictions give a positive however, rests not only upon the direction to the argument, and true good- Consolation, but also on his effort to trans- ness is found to consist in union with God. late and transmit to the Latin West the col- There follows a discussion of the problem lected wisdom of the Greeks. His declared of the existence of EVIL in a world gov- intention was to translate and comment on erned by a benevolent providence and the all the works of PLATO and ARISTOTLE, but difficulty of establishing a relationship he achieved no more than the translation of between human freedom and God’s fore- the Aristotelian logical writings together knowledge. The Consolation was both a with PORPHYRY’s introductory Isagoge. For vehicle for the transmission of ancient centuries, however, these remained the wisdom and a model for philosophizing only sources of Aristotle’s philosophy for the next thousand years. (J.G.D.) available to Western thought. In his commentary on Porphyry, Bonaventura (1221–74) John of Boethius showed his Platonizing sympa- Fidanza, known as Bonaventura, was born thies in a famous formulation of the prob- in Italy, joined the Franciscan order and lem of UNIVERSALS: ‘whether genera and studied in Paris, where he later held the species actually subsist or are found in the Chair of Theology contemporaneously mind and intellect alone’. This formulation with his Dominican counterpart, Thomas proved both a starting point and a stum- AQUINAS. He died while taking part in the bling block in the controversy which played Council of Lyons and was canonized in so large a part in early . 1482. His philosophical doctrines are Boethius was also instrumental in trans- found mainly in his commentary on mitting knowledge of Greek scientific the Sentences of and in by his translations and classi- the two short treatises, the Itinerarium fication of the four mathematical disci- Mentis in Deum and the De Reductione plines as Arithmetic, Music, Geometry and Artium ad Theologiam. . This of study built Bonaventura’s work in Paris coincided on the of Grammar, Rhetoric and with debates occasioned by the reception of Dialectic and thus provided a systematic the full ARISTOTELIAN corpus of scientific approach to education by way of the ‘Seven writings in the West and the rise of AV E R RO - Liberal Arts’. Elaborated later by ISM in the Universities. His philosophical Cassiodorus and by , this position can be understood as the relatively arts survived the dark ages in conservative reaction of a theologian who the monastic and court schools of the West, preferred to elaborate the Platonizing to become fully established in the medieval content of the writings of AUGUSTINE. university system. Thus he presents explicit formulations of Bosanquet, Bernard 61

Augustinian theses concerning man’s universal class and the empty class (though knowledge of God, seminal reasons, soul as the use of these terms was not introduced SUBSTANCE, and an illuminationist theory of by Boole himself). In Boole’s symbolism, knowledge. Bonaventura regarded all true if ‘x’ represents a class, say, the class of speculation as a search for God, which red things, then ‘(1Ϫx)’ stands for the might begin with an investigation of the complementary class of things that are physical world which bears the imprint of not red. Operations corresponding to its Creator, vestigia Dei. It is only in the addition, subtraction and multiplication in study of ourselves, however, and through ordinary algebra are introduced. If ‘x’ acquaintance with our soul as an image of stands for the class of red things and ‘y’ God, imago Dei, that we can begin to for the class of square things, then ‘xy’ achieve true knowledge. Exercising our stands for the product of the two classes, memory, understanding and will under the the things that are both red and square. influence of , we are led And ‘xϩy’ stands for the class of things to the contemplation of God, not as a that are either red or square but not both. cause through its effects but immediately (This exclusive sense of ‘ϩ’ distinguishes and ecstatically. Though Boole’s algebra from most later versions.) later became the official Doctor of the With this notation we can represent a Franciscans, Bonaventura, the Doctor limited class of statements of logical Seraphicus, is perhaps more truly charac- importance. For example, ‘All men are teristic of the deeply religious outlook of mortal’ becomes: ‘x(1Ϫy)ϭ0’, in other the Order. (J.G.D.) words ‘the class of men who are not mortal is empty’. Moreover, we can combine these Boole, George (1815–64) George expressions and operate on them in accor- Boole, who was born in Lincoln, dance with the rules of the algebra to derive England, was entirely self-educated but other expressions from them and solve became a mathematician of distinction problems involving logical relations and in 1849 was appointed to the Chair of between classes. These include the simple Mathematics at Queen’s College, Cork. SYLLOGISM of as well as Two years earlier, he had published The other much more complex problems. In an Mathematical Analysis of Logic, which application of the algebra to hypothetical has come to be regarded as the first sub- propositions, Boole came near to discover- stantial step towards modern mathemati- ing the truth-table technique later devel- cal LOGIC. An Investigation of the Laws of oped by C. S. PEIRCE and modern logicians, Thought, published in 1854, though better and Boolean algebra is a recognized branch known, is important chiefly for its appli- of modern mathematics. (D.J.O’C.) cation of Boole’s logical algebra to the theory of probability. Earlier mathemati- Bosanquet, Bernard (1848–1923) cians had shown that algebraic methods Bosanquet, who was born in Alnwick, can be used to represent relations between England, gave up his Oxford teaching in entities other than numbers. Boole’s basic 1881 to devote the rest of his life to writing innovation was the use of methods sub- and social work. He was the last British stantially equivalent to those of ordinary philosopher to work out a complete system algebra, to operate on variables, x, y, of philosophy covering all types of human z,...standing for classes and the symbols experience. His work was influenced 1 and 0 standing respectively for the mainly by HEGEL and was based on a 62 Boyle, Robert conception of individuality as the harmony isolated self-cultivation. The essay entitled of a variety of differences in the ‘concrete ‘My Station and its Duties’ is the best short universal’, in contrast to the ‘abstract uni- statement in English of the Hegelian con- versal’ of scientific reason operating by ception of morality. But in the next essay general laws. This notion of individuality ‘Ideal Morality’ Bradley passes beyond he found expressed in human persons, in these Hegelian concepts of rational unity works of art, in the State, and supremely in and of moral right as supremely embodied the Absolute as the final ideal transcending in Law and the State. Many fields such as and unifying all these subordinate ‘con- science, art and philosophy itself, provide crete universals’. Late in life he fell under moral ends and fields of self-realization the influence of F. H. BRADLEY and became independent of national frontiers and civic more doubtful about the power of reason to allegiance; and in the last resort morality grasp the unities met with in experience. itself attains its completeness only by The individuality of a person or picture moving on into religion. required the conception of a type of unity in In Principles of Logic (1883) Bradley which the variety could not be so clearly worked out a complete survey of logical distinguished nor the elements so rationally forms showing how each finds its place in related as Hegel had supposed. (J.D.M.) the of human reason. But he emphasized at every point that these Boyle, Robert (1627–91) Natural forms arise from a basic experience whose scientist and pioneer of ‘copuscularian- unity they all fail to express, and hence ism’, an undogmatic form of atomism that they always involve an element of which was meant to bring mathematical subjectivity and error. But Bradley’s great- natural science into harmony with est work is Appearance and Reality Christianity. (1893). In the first part, he offers a relent- Bradley, Francis Herbert (1846–1924) less dialectical criticism of all the general English philosopher, a research Fellow of categories of human thought and experi- Merton College, who lived the whole of ence. In arguments reminiscent of ZENO of his adult life at Oxford. He suffered from Elea and of KANT’s , he shows poor health and was naturally retiring and that quality and relation, substance and reserved, devoting himself completely to cause, space and time, self and object, are philosophical thinking and writing. He all of them, if taken as real, beset by insol- wrote in a brilliant and trenchant style, uble and must therefore be with a force and vigour seldom equalled dismissed as ‘appearance’. Absolute real- in English philosophy. He was influenced ity must transcend all these categories. in his youth by HEGEL and the German Relations are grounded in the nature of logicians who followed him, but his phi- their terms, and no term can be under- losophy was uniquely his own. stood apart from its relations. Whether In his first book, Ethical Studies relations are regarded as completely (1876), he criticizes utilitarian theories external (in a LOGICAL ATOMISM such as from a Hegelian angle and works out a the- RUSSELL’s) or as completely internal (as in ory of self-realization which is also the of LEIBNIZ), they fail to Hegelian in its general design. The self is satisfy the demands of reason. Thus the to be realized in self-conscious member- relational mode of thinking – and in the ship of the state (which is understood as an end all modes of thinking are in one way organic unity of spiritual beings) and not in or another relational – can never attain Braithwaite, R. B. 63 knowledge of reality. Reality must have a England produced in the nineteenth cen- unity unlike anything in our worlds of tury; and in brilliance and acuteness his rational thought, a unity above and beyond only rival is HUME. Yet his influence was relations, and to whose nature only the slight and his followers few. This was undifferentiated unity of feeling gives any partly because he came at the end of the clue. This absolute reality differentiates idealist movement, and partly because he itself into finite centres of experience was a very unorthodox representative of which however cannot be identified with it, so that later idealists looked back not to human persons because of the element of him but to Hegel for their inspiration. time which infects all human life. In the Though his main tenets have won little second part of Appearance and Reality it acceptance he can still be read with profit is argued that each category of human for three reasons: first for the vigour and experience, whose final inadequacy had effectiveness of his style; second, for his been demonstrated in the first part, must devastating criticisms of utilitarian, asso- somehow find a place in the real, though ciationist, individualist and pragmatist transmuted in it; and each of them has a theories; third because his work in philo- degree of reality corresponding to the sophical psychology on such subjects as extent to which it is comprehensive and memory, imagination and self-consistent. has permanent importance. (J.D.M.) In his later work Bradley did not go back on his fundamental metaphysical Braithwaite, Richard Bevan (1900–88) position and the suprarational and even English philosopher, based in Cambridge. mystical or religious view of the real to Though mainly a philosopher of science, which it leads. At the time of his death he he was also interested in giving an account was working on a long essay on relations, of religious belief which would make it and the incomplete draft published in his tenable for the thoroughgoing empiricist, posthumous Collected Essays gives the and in putting moral choice on a rational best exposition of this central part of his basis by applying the mathematical theory philosophy. But he also developed the of games to conflict situations. This use of positive argument of the second part of the theory of games developed by statisti- Appearance and Reality, emphasizing the cians is the chief innovation in his main partial truth to be found in the various work Scientific Explanation (1953), where logical and epistemological categories he draws on it for ‘the prudential policy’ which many of his readers thought he had for making choices between statistical intended totally to destroy, and by elabo- hypotheses; this provides a rejection rating a theory of degrees of truth. Each procedure, and so guarantees that proba- of these categories is now justified in its bility statements have an empirical mean- own sphere and degree; what is resisted is ing, by allowing them to be provisionally the claim of any one of them to be (or to refutable by experience, the rejection be the model for) the whole truth. At the being subject to revision after each new same time, and no doubt for similar rea- series of tests. This procedure is unneces- sons, his work became less polemical and sary for the limiting case, that of universal his style more mellow and tolerant. statements, which are of course open to Bradley’s position in the history of conclusive refutation (by a single counter- philosophy is thus a curious one. He was instance). In the same book he explains probably the only first-rank philosopher the use of ‘models’, theoretical concepts, 64 Brandom, Robert and mathematical reasoning in scientific objects; and second, direct and inerrant theories, and discusses the status of laws accessibility to an ‘inner perception’ of nature. (R.HALL) which is identical with the act perceived. By the term ‘’ (derived from Brandom, Robert (1950– ) American the scholastic esse intentionale) Brentano philosopher, student of Richard Rorty and means what is revealed by the fact that David Lewis. In Making it Explicit (1994) most mental verbs are incomplete until he defended a notion of ‘discursive they are supplemented with appropriate commitment’ which combined the anti- object-expressions, stating what the men- of the American pragma- tal activity expressed by the verb is con- tists with an uncompromising rationalism cerned with. Thus if I observe, my derived from KANT and HEGEL. He is observation must be of a house or a tree, also the author of Articulating Reasons: An for example; if I doubt, my doubt is about Introduction to Inferentialism (2000). the equality of 2ϩ2 to 4, for example; if Brentano, Franz (1838–1916) The I am pleased, there must be something I German-Austrian philosopher Franz am pleased with, etc. In his second edition Brentano is remembered for his contribu- Brentano makes the point that intentional- tions to philosophical psychology. He ity is not a relation between the mind and became a Professor of Philosophy at the an object: it is merely relational or rela- Catholic University of Würzburg, but tionlike (relativlich). A relation to an resigned his chair and his priesthood after object would normally entail that the the declaration of in object existed, whereas a mental directed- 1871. He accepted a philosophical chair ness to an object usually does not. What is at Vienna, but resigned in 1880, returning distinctive of Brentano’s position is that later as an instructor. His last years were he thinks this ‘relationlikeness’ is ulti- spent in Florence. His two most important mate and needs no further analysis. works are Psychology from the Empirical Brentano’s classification of mental Standpoint (published 1874, second phenomena admits only three basic edition 1911) and The Origin of classes: (a) presentations (Vorstellungen), Ethical Knowledge (published 1889), in which some object is simply present which influenced MOORE’s Principia to mind; (b) judgements, in which Ethica. His posthumously published work something is accepted as real or factual, is considerable and valuable. or rejected as the reverse; (c) phenomena In his Psychology Brentano seeks to of love and hate, that is cases of provide a ‘psychognosy’, that is, a logical affective conative acceptance or rejec- geography of mental concepts, which will tion. In the case of (a) there is no serve as a preliminary to an empirical distinction between correctness and psychology. He assumes that the world incorrectness, but in the case of (b) there contains two sorts of ‘phenomena’, the is, the criterion being an inward self- physical and the ‘psychical’, and seeks evidence (Evidenz). In regard to both to identify the distinctive features of (c) Brentano holds that certain acts of ‘psychic phenomena’ and to discover liking, disliking or preferring have an the ‘basic classes’ into which psychic inwardly self-justifying character which phenomena fall. Brentano holds the dif- mediates the knowledge of what is ferentiae of psychical acts to be, first, absolutely good, better, or evil. Pleasure, ‘INTENTIONALITY’, or directedness to for example, is absolutely good. (J.N.F.) Burke, Edmund 65

Broad, Charlie Dunbar (1887–1971) Jerusalem from 1938 and advocated English philosopher, based at Cambridge, peace with the Arab world. In I and who was strongly influenced by many Thou (1922) he argued that our relation to previous Cambridge philosophers, includ- others – including God – must be under- ing RUSSELL and MOORE as well as stood quite differently from our relation W.E. Johnson and MCTAGGART. Broad owed to objects. little to foreign influences, and nothing at all to WITTGENSTEIN. He claimed for him- Burke, Edmund (1729–97) Irish- self neither the task of construction nor of English writer and Whig politician, whose demolition, but ‘at most the humbler (yet late work, Reflections on the Revolution useful) power of stating difficult things in France (1790), was an attack on the clearly and not too superficially’. While of 1789 together with admitting that speculative philosophy has their supposed intellectual progenitors value he doubted that any attempt to con- such as and ROUSSEAU. As struct one could be profitable without there the Revolution proceeded through the first being a considerable advance in criti- September Massacres, the execution of the cal philosophy. This type of philosophy King and Queen, and the Reign of Terror, makes progress, according to Broad, by Burke’s philosophical criticism of what he replacing vague and instinctive beliefs by ironically called ‘this enlightened age’ clear and explicit ones which have stood up was widely regarded as confirmed, and to criticism. In a series of large books, he Reflections became one of the classics of dissected existing theories and possible conservative political thought. alternatives and the arguments for and Burke argued above all for the dignity against them, as for example in The Mind of tradition in politics, praising English and its Place in Nature (1925), where institutions for treating political liberty seventeen different theories of the relation not as a claim or right but an ‘inheri- between mind and matter are considered, tance’ – a fragile heirloom to be cherished the one most favoured being a type of ‘as if in the presence of canonised fore- ‘emergent materialism’. Broad took an fathers’. The French revolutionaries, he interest in psychical research: though not complained, had been undone by ‘the prepared to accept the possibility of sur- metaphysics of an under-graduate’, in vival, he regarded alleged paranormal phe- other words ‘the mechanic philosophy’; nomena as due to the persistence after they were ‘only men of theory’ and lacked death of a ‘psychic factor’, which had pre- ‘practical experience in the state’. Their viously formed with the brain and nervous airy talk of ‘rights’ might be ‘metaphysi- system a compound of which mentality cally true’, but was ‘morally and politi- was an emergent quality. Broad also wrote cally false’. It appeared indeed that on ethics, though here his interpretations of experience in general was ‘out of fashion some great philosophers are highly ques- in Paris’. For Burke, the best antidote to tionable. His greatest achievement, and the excessive revolutionary zeal was ‘a strong most difficult to follow, was his monumen- impression of the ignorance and fallibility tal Examination of McTaggart’s Philosophy of mankind’ – a wry political scepticism (1933–8). (R.HALL) that he hoped would equip his readers to ‘admire rather than attempt to follow Buber, Martin (1878–1965) Jewish in their desperate flights the aeronauts of thinker born in Vienna who taught in France’. 66 Butler, Joseph

But Burke’s traditionalist political contained primarily in Fifteen Sermons did not always point in a conser- (1726) and Dissertation upon the Nature vative direction. Earlier in his career it led of Virtue; his philosophy of religion in him to advocate Catholic emancipation Analogy of Religion (1736), to which the and the removal of restrictions on Irish Dissertation was an appendix. The two trade, and to support the native peoples of sides of Butler’s thought are closely inter- and the rebels in the American connected: conscience is not only the cru- colonies. And if he was hostile to the ‘phi- cial concept of his ethics, but also losophy’ behind the , it provides an impressive disclosure of the was because it was ‘false and unfeeling’, being and nature of God. Virtue, to not because it was philosophical. Butler, is natural to man, vice a violation Following his education in Dublin, he of our nature, a kind of self-mutilation. always advocated a broadly empiricist Human nature is a complex structure that method of analysing ideas by tracing Butler likens to a watch with intricately them to their origins or causes in experi- cooperating parts, to a political constitu- ence, and, like LOCKE, he emphasized the tion, and to a body with its component ways in which mere words can frame our members. The full realization of this thinking without our conscious aware- nature (and the attainment of virtue) ness. In A Philosophical Enquiry into the involved the hierarchical subordination of Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and its various elements under conscience. Beautiful (1757), he proposed a new The promptings of hunger, thirst and ‘Logic of Taste’ based on anatomizing the other kinds of appetite form the base of norms of both passion and understanding the hierarchy. These ‘particular passions’ which must guide our judgements in the are disciplined and regulated by benevo- field of fine art. His principal conclusion lence and self-love, which involve not was that artistic taste has two sides: as indulging the passions, but managing well as the familiar pleasures provided by them with a view to one’s long-term, total whatever is beautiful, delicate and lovely, well-being. Butler denied that self-love there were the darker joys of ‘delightful and benevolence were mutually antago- horror’, stemming from things that are nistic principles; indeed, the policies they terrible and astonishing, rugged, wild and initiate tend to coincide – for the most vast – in short, ‘sublime’. (KANT would part in this world, and perfectly hereafter. seek to give a ‘transcendental’ spin to Conscience is an essentially reflective and Burke’s ‘physiological’ account of the rational principle, which refuses to reduce sublime in the Critique of Judgement, all duties to one alleged supreme duty 1790.) It could be said that in his later such as the production of the general hap- work on the French revolution, Burke piness. Our duties are multiple, and only simply elaborated his early interest in the God, with his synoptic and omniscient combined operation of passion and view, could afford to play the UTILITARIAN. understanding, extending it from the fine A measure of pervades arts to the arts of politics. {J.R.} Butler’s thought on account of his strong sense of human ignorance (the Fifteenth Butler, Joseph (1692–1752) Bishop Sermon is devoted to this theme). Perhaps Butler holds a lastingly important place the most memorable features of his in English moral philosophy and philoso- ethical thought, however, are the many phy of religion. His ethical thought is shrewd analyses that make up his moral Butler, Joseph 67 psychology – analyses of such concepts treatise will be to show, that the several as forgiveness, resentment, self-deceit parts principally objected against in this and . Particularly effective are moral and Christian dispensation...are his arguments against HOBBES’S egoistic analogous to what is experienced in the interpretation of pity. constitution and course of Nature, or The Analogy of Religion was con- Providence; that the objections them- ceived as an answer to DEISM. The deists selves which are alleged against the for- held that a natural and rational religion mer, are no other than what may be escaped a great many intractable difficul- alleged with like justice against the latter, ties that beset a religion based on alleged where they are found in fact to be incon- revelation. But Butler maintained that clusive.’ As this suggests, Butler does not analogous difficulties affect both spheres, claim a priori certainty for his apologet- though they are decisive against neither. ics, but only a probability high enough for ‘The design’, he wrote, ‘of the following faith. (R.W.H.) C

Cajetan, Thomas de Vio (1468–1534) century, to restore the emphasis upon reli- Born in Gaeta, Italy, died in Rome, he gion as above all a way of living, and to was Dominican Master-General, later give primacy to religious – often mystical – Cardinal and the classical commentator on experience. To Henry More, who was the Summa Theologica of Thomas AQUINAS. most in sympathy with mysticism, the His criticism of brought him to the path to knowledge of God was not learn- problem of analogy, the use of the same ing but moral purification, a view that name for different objects in more than a carries echoes of PLOTINUS. Joseph purely equivocal or METAPHORICAL sense. Glanvill’s Vanity of Dogmatizing is in the He distinguished two proper types: analogy main a repudiation of intellectual preten- of attribution, based on a causal connec- tion and arrogance, whether among the tion; and analogy of proportionality. Only over-revered Ancients, in the scholastics this, he held, meets the requirements of or in moderns infected with the same metaphysical thinking. Most Thomists have vice. Real understanding, to Glanvill, agreed with him, but not Francis Sylvester starts only from a wholesome scepticism. of Ferrara (1474–1528), his successor as The Platonists had themselves, however, a Master-General, who tried to vindicate humble confidence in reason. Whichcote attributional analogy. (T.G.) repeatedly reminded his reader that rea- son is ‘the candle of the Lord’. A group of Irrationalisms were indeed as much part English philosophical theologians, cen- of their target as ; and the tred on Cambridge and predominantly reconciliation of reason and revelation Puritan, who wrote and preached in the was the dominant aim of their work. The later seventeenth century. Best known controversial issue to which they were among them are most single-mindedly devoted was Richard Cumberland, Henry MORE, undoubtedly the refutation of the philoso- , John Smith and phy of HOBBES. Against his claim that . matter and motion were adequate con- Their writings contain a mass of cepts for a philosophy of nature, erudition, philosophical, mystical, ancient Cudworth protested: ‘as if there were not as and ‘modern’, often uncritically much reality in fancy and consciousness employed and on the whole lacking logi- as there is in local motion’. The activity of cal coherence. The thought of PLATO, in mind, the reality of non-corporeal spirit, particular, is seldom accurately differenti- were thus strenuously argued for by the ated from the speculations of NEOPLATON- Platonists against all brands of material- ISTS. Nonetheless, the Cambridge ism. More insisted that spirit must be Platonists made a considerable impact on thought of as extended for otherwise it EPISTEMOLOGY and ETHICS as well as would lack full reality, so he regarded theology. They attempted to disengage infinite extension as an attribute of God. theological thinking from the polemics of Also against Hobbes, the Platonists the and the earlier seventeenth affirmed that moral right and wrong, good Carnap, Rudolf 69 and bad are ‘eternal and immutable’, the out not to be a constant of human thought products of no decrees, orders or agree- but, on the contrary, to have undergone ments, whether human or divine. sharp alterations which have redirected (R.W.H.) the entire course of medical inquiry. Further reflections on this theme are to be Canguilhem, Georges (1904–95) found in his The Understanding of Life French philosopher based at the (1965). See also HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY, Sorbonne, who specialized in the history PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE. [I.H.] and epistemology of the life sciences. Cantor, Georg (1845–1918) German Canguilhem trained as a medical doctor, mathematician, born in St. Petersburg, and his thesis on The Normal and the one of the creators of and Pathological (1943; republished with originator of the suggestion that it is the supplementary essays, 1966) honed his foundation of mathematics. interest in the origin and transformation of concepts. His ability to combine Carnap, Rudolf (1891–1970) Rudolf detailed historical analyses with major Carnap was born in Germany and taught speculations on IDEOLOGY and rationality at the University of Vienna and later at was an inspiration for a whole gener- the German University in Prague. ation of students, including FOUCAULT, In 1936 he left Europe for the United whose Birth of the Clinic (1963) is a States, where he became Professor of notable development of Canguilhem’s Philosophy at Chicago and from 1954 at approach. Los Angeles. He is generally acknowl- Canguilhem shared with BACHELARD edged as the leading exponent of LOGICAL (whom he succeeded as director of the POSITIVISM, the internationally influential Institute for the and that originated Technology in Paris) a belief that there are with the VIENNA CIRCLE. This was an radical breaks in the development of informal discussion group of scientifi- knowledge. Science, for Canguilhem, was cally oriented thinkers, who combined a matter of constituting the world and the anti-metaphysical positivism of the determining possible ways of interacting Viennese physicist-philosopher MACH with it, rather than uncovering the hidden with the logical ANALYSIS as practised by structure of nature. The distinction Russell and the early WITTGENSTEIN. between normal and pathological states, Carnap was a member of this group for for example, was not a fact about the body some years; and served as co-editor of and its organs but a way of structuring , the semi-official organ of medical thought, and could be understood logical positivism, until it became a casu- only by analysing its specific historical alty of the Second World War. He contin- origins. Canguilhem combined detailed ued as an editor of the International studies of scientific research and its con- Encyclopedia of Unified Science, an troversies with wide-ranging analyses of uncompleted series of monographs the situations in which they occurred. designed by , another mem- Thus his most characteristic work, The ber of the Vienna Circle, to exhibit the Formation of the Concept of Reflex in the essential methodological unity of the 17th and 18th Centuries (1955), is both an major scientific disciplines. essay about a single organizing idea and a Carnap was a prolific contributor to study of the concept of ‘life’, which turns the theory of knowledge, mathematical 70 Carnap, Rudolf

LOGIC, the PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE, and Carnap’s ideas on the province of the foundations of probability and induc- philosophy underwent an analogous liber- tion. His writings are a large storehouse alization. In The Logical Syntax of of ingenious technical analyses and inno- Language (1934), in which he formulated vations, and models of formal precision some characteristic views on logic, math- and clarity. They also exhibit his readi- ematics and the philosophy of science in ness to revise his ideas repeatedly. One of rich detail, he defined logical syntax as Carnap’s long-standing concerns was the the study of how the signs in a language construction of an adequate criterion of are related to one another in virtue of their cognitively meaningful discourse. He purely structural properties. He main- first adopted and developed a stringent tained that the laws of logic and mathe- form of what is commonly called ‘the veri- matics make no assertions about any fiability theory of meaning’. He main- subject matter, but are simply linguistic tained, in effect, that the meaning of a structures whose a priori necessity within statement consists in the sensory or intro- the language in which they occur is spective data which establish it directly derived entirely from conventional syn- and conclusively. However, although it tactical rules. Moreover, he declared that can readily be shown that on this criterion philosophical controversies are usually metaphysical utterences whose alleged generated by the confusion of ‘pseudo- content transcends the domain of possible object’ statements (such as the claim that experience are nonsensical (and not even time extends infinitely in both directions, false), Carnap soon recognized that the which he held to be equivalent to the syn- criterion also rules out as meaningless tactical statement that any positive or neg- most if not all scientific statements. For ative real-number expression can be used various technical reasons he also came to as a time-coordinate) with genuine state- view as unpromising the task he had set ments about some non-linguistic subject himself (in The Logical Structure of the matter. He concluded that philosophy World, 1928) of indicating in detail how should be identified with the logical syn- every purportedly factual statement can tax of the language of science. This be translated into statements about sense- recommendation apparently made illegi- data; and he eventually came to doubt the timate any consideration of the relations feasibility of such translations even into of signs to what they represented, and in the language of everyday affairs and particular outlawed any analysis of what experimental physics. He subsequently is meant by factual truth. However, as was sought to develop a more liberal version made evident by the work of Alfred of the verifiability criterion of cognitive TARSKI, it is possible to develop a precise significance, one which could be a guide theory of , dealing with the rela- in constructing symbolic systems for the- tions of signs to what they signify; indeed, oretical science but which would also Carnap eventually made important contri- help to demarcate metaphysical vagary butions to this branch of logical analysis. from genuine scientific hypothesis. The In any event, he now enlarged his earlier general import of Carnap’s proposed cri- conception of the scope of philosophy, terion was that a statement is meaningful and identified the latter (using the termi- if, and only if, the statement itself or some nology of Charles MORRIS) with the of its logical consequences can be tested semiotical analysis of the structure of by sensory observation. cognitive discourse. Categorical Imperative 71

Carnap’s main preoccupation during to and finally to the United States, later years was with the technical develop- where his work came to be highly valued. ment of the logic of inductive . He never rejected the Kantian philosophy, On his view, statements such as ‘It is though he developed it. KANT had taught highly probable on the available evidence that human experience was conditioned by that Smith is guilty as charged’ cannot be the categories, the forms of thought under explicated in terms of empirically ascer- which all phenomena were subsumed. tainable relative frequencies in some class Cassirer maintained (in his Philosophy of of repeatable events, as can be done for a Symbolic Forms, 1923–9) that in addition statement like ‘The probability of obtain- to the Kantian categories, which inform ing heads with a fair coin is one-half’ scientific thought, there are also forms of (which in effect asserts that in a long mythical, historical and practical thinking, series of tosses a coin falls uppermost and that they could be brought to light by about half the time). In statements of the the study of forms of expression in lan- first type, Carnap believed, the word guage. Each of these kinds of thinking ‘probable’ refers to a logical relation was valid in its own right, and though sci- between the evidence and the hypothesis entific thought is a later development than based upon it. Since it was this logical mythical thought the latter is not merely sense of probability that Carnap thought primitive science. Cassirer’s thought is relevant in evaluating the weight of the difficult and expressed at very great evidence for any conclusion in inductive length; his works all contain long and inquiries, he attempted to construct an learned discussions of the linguistic, explicit symbolism for it, and also devised anthropological and philosophical work of a variety of numerical measures for his predecessors. (J.O.U.) degrees of logical probability. However, although Carnap developed an imposing Categorical Imperative According to range of ideas and theorems on this sub- KANT, the value of a morally worthy action ject, the structure was not completed, and depends neither on its happy conse- its eventual value for scientific practice quences nor on any kindly sentiments it remains an open question. (E.N.) may spring from, but only on the ultimate principle or ‘maxim’ to which it gives (c.213–c.129 BC) Leading expression. In the Groundwork for the exponent of the sceptical turn at Metaphysics of Morals (1785) he argued the ACADEMY, and fierce opponent of that morality is rooted in just one supreme STOICISM; see SCEPTICISM, SCEPTICS. principle: always to act ‘in such a way that I can also will that my maxim should See DESCARTES. become a universal law’. (For example, I Cassirer, Ernst (1874–1945) Cassirer should never make a false promise, since built up his original reputation as a histo- that would imply that everyone could rian of philosophy, especially that of the break their promises with impunity, which seventeenth century, and as a philosopher would undermine the entire practice of of science. He was a product of the neo- promising.) According to Kant, this Kantian school of Marburg and spent supreme principle was absolutely binding most of his teaching life at Berlin and for all free and rational beings regardless Hamburg; but on the advent to power of of their circumstances, and as such it was the Nazis he moved first to England, then not ‘hypothetical’ but ‘categorical’. {J.R.} 72 Categories

Categories ARISTOTLE borrowed ‘cate- predicates. ‘Possible’ is not a predicate, goria’ from legal parlance, where it meant for example, of Socrates, so we cannot ‘accusation’, and stretched it to mean ask to what category possibility belongs. anything that could be asserted truly or Predicates of Kind, like ‘...a man’ falsely of anything. If we complete and ‘. . . ’ do not naturally yield ‘Socrates is. . .’ with any noun or adjec- abstract nouns. We speak of the bright- tive, or ‘Socrates...’with a verb, we ness or remoteness of the planet Venus, ascribe a predicate to Socrates. Aristotle but not of her ‘heavenly bodihood’. Her saw that predicates are of different brightness or remoteness might alter or types. To say of what kind Socrates is, for cease, but Venus could not become less or example a man or an animal, is very dif- more of a body. If she ceased to be a body ferent from saying merely where or she would cease to be at all. how heavy he is. Aristotle disting- Moreover, to find a particular instance uished several ultimate predicate-types or of brightness we have to find a particular categories. bright star or bright torch, etc. An instance of brightness can be found only 1 Kind, for example ‘...a man’. in a member of a Kind. But we find a 2 Quality, for example ‘...pale’. specimen of star or torch, just in finding 3 Quantity or size, for example ‘...six- a star or torch. Brightness is something foot’. that, for example, this star possesses. But 4 Relation, for example ‘...older than being a star is not something extra that Plato’. this star also possesses – else the question 5 Location, for example ‘...in Athens’. ‘Of what Kind is it?’ would arise again 6 Time or date, for example ‘...in the about the possessor of this postulated fifth century BC’. property of being a star. 7 Action, for example ‘...argues’. What made Aristotle want to discrimi- 8 Undergoing, for example ‘. . . being nate predicate-types was perhaps partly prosecuted’. this. When a thing alters, it ceases to be Aristotle called several of his predicate- what it was. So, apparently, Socrates, who types after ordinary interrogatives, like is getting warm, being no longer what he ‘what?’, ‘where?’, ‘how big?’ and ‘when?’ was, cannot still be a man or Xanthippe’s Any answer to ‘what is Socrates?’ speci- husband; which is absurd. To resolve this fies a Kind, any answer to ‘where...?’ a paradox it is helpful to be able to say that Location and so on. All predicates of one Socrates has changed from having one type will answer, truly or falsely, one inter- Quality to having another, but that this is rogative and will not answer any other not a change from one to another Kind, or interrogative. from one to another Relation. We specify To most predicates, for example ‘... the general field of a change by specify- laughs’ or ‘...shrewd’, there correspond ing the category of the predicates between abstract nouns, like ‘laughter’ or ‘shrewd- which the transition is. Though Socrates ness’. If we ask ‘what, ultimately, is is never continuously the same age, he is laughter? or shrewdness? or slavery?’ the continuously a human being. Not every- answer names the appropriate category: thing is in flux. ‘Laughter is an Action’; ‘Shrewdness is KANT gave to the word ‘category’ a dif- a Quality’; or ‘Slavery is a Relation’. ferent philosophical use. For him a cate- But not all abstract nouns correspond to gory is a structural principle exemplifiable 73 in scientifically ascertainable facts. Thus SAUSSURE’s distinction between langue all facts of the form ‘X’s happening was and parole, which is fundamental to due to Y’s happening’come under the cat- STRUCTURALISM. According to Chomsky, egory of Cause and Effect. We know, transformational grammars are not just before we find out the actual explanation scientists’ theories; they are actually of X, that there has to be an explanation encoded in language-users: thus to know with this structure. Today the word ‘cate- a language is to know, implicitly, its gory’ is used by philosophers, if at all, for grammar. In Language and Mind (1968) any supposedly ultimate type, without any Chomsky argued that his analyses of lin- settled convention about what it is a type guistic competences in terms of abstract of. Without ad hoc elucidations the word mental structures could be generalized is therefore nowadays a vague one. (G.R.) into ‘a remarkably favourable perspective for the study of human mental processes’; Cavell, Stanley (1926– ) American and this vision partly inspired the subse- thinker whose philosophical development quent development of ‘Artificial started with the teachings of AUSTIN and Intelligence’ at the border between com- WITTGENSTEIN, which he took to involve not puting science and psychology. so much a cool, detached description of the Chomsky holds that it is impossible operations of ‘ordinary language’, as an that children should learn a language earnest effort towards self-understanding. from scratch: they must, he believes, be This demanding intellectual programme already equipped with ‘innate knowl- subsequently led Cavell into studies of edge’ of ‘linguistic universals’. According Shakespeare and of Hollywood movies, as to Chomsky, this theory places him in the well as to attempts to rehabilitate the work Cartesian, ‘rationalist’ tradition in philos- of Emerson and Thoreau (see AMERICAN ophy, as opposed to the Lockean ‘empiri- PHILOSOPHY). His books include Must we cist’ one; and moreover supports the mean what say? (1969), The Claims of belief in the worth of all human beings Reason (1979) and In Quest of the which underlies his outspoken anarchistic Ordinary: Lines of Scepticism and . [J.R.] Romanticism (1988). {J.R.}

Chomsky, Noam (1928– ) American Chrysippus (c.280–207 BC) In 232, linguist whose Syntactic Structures (1957) Chrysippus of Soli, Cilicia, succeeded revolutionized by centring it as third head of the Stoa (see on grammar, and turned grammar itself STOICISM). On coming to Athens about into a powerful formal theory. Grammar, 260, he became a pupil in the ACADEMY of according to Chomsky, is a device which Arcesilaus, from whom he acquired an produces all and only the grammatical extreme virtuosity in logic and dialectic. sentences of a language. Although this set When he converted to the Stoa, it was suf- is infinite, the grammar must be finite. fering from the divergent and unorthodox The only kind of grammar which matches systems of Ariston and Herillus, and from actual human competences is, according a severe attack from Academic SCEPTI- to Chomsky, one which postulates a CISM. Chrysippus, in an enormous literary ‘deep structure’ together with a set of output displaying great dialectical power, ‘transformational rules’ which generate repelled the attacks and formulated in ‘surface structures’. Such a ‘transforma- great detail what became the definitive tional grammar’ can be seen as revising system of STOICISM. He was not an original 74 Church, Alonzo thinker, but showed great skill in refurbish- Antiochus, , ), but he ing the fundamental doctrines of ZENO of claimed the right of independent presenta- Citium, the first of the stoics, an achieve- tion and criticism. His aim was perhaps to ment which won him the title of Second naturalize Greek philosophy, as his prede- Founder. ‘Give me the doctrines’, he said cessors, beginning with translations, had with characteristic dry humour, ‘and I shall naturalized ; he thought supply the proofs’. But his relentless logic that his mastery of language and style led to differences of detail most noticeable could initiate the process. The creator of a in his psychology and theory of knowl- Latin philosophical vocabulary which was edge. And as his logic drove him towards to become dominant, his influence was extreme positions, so the paradoxes inher- immense, and he remains invaluable as ent in Stoicism were spotlighted. To his a source for the history of scepticism, boast ‘Without Chrysippus, there would stoicism and . (I.G.K.) have been no Stoa’, CARNEADES, the most formidable opponent of Stoicism, could Clarke, Samuel (1675–1729) English answer, ‘Without Chrysippus, there would philosopher who championed a Newtonian have been no Carneades’. (I.G.K) philosophy in opposition to the prevailing Cartesian climate of thought in the Church, Alonzo (1903–95) American Cambridge of his day. In a famous corre- logician, author of Introduction to spondence with LEIBNIZ, he maintained that , 1956; see FREGE, space and time were infinite homogeneous LOGIC. entities, against Leibniz’s claim that they Cicero, Marcus Tullius (106–43 BC) were ultimately relational. In A Discourse Roman lawyer, politician and writer. Concerning the Being and Attributes of Trained in philosophy from youth up, audi- God (1704–5), he contended against tor and friend of the leading professors of ‘deniers of natural and revealed religion’, HOBBES SPINOZA the ACADEMY, Stoa and Epicurean School, and being his most notable he maintained his philosophical reading targets. Morality is based, according to even during his busiest years in public life. Clarke, not on the power or command of At 45, personal distress and political help- God, nor upon ‘contracts’ brought into lessness led him to concentrate his full being by human communities, but on inde- energies on making Greek philosophy pendent and self-evident relations between accessible in Latin literary form. Within situations and the kind of actions they the next two years he produced a long demand. A mistaken moral judgement is of series of dialogues, covering the various the same logical order as a contradiction in departments of mathematical reasoning. by expounding and criticizing the doc- found this rather too abstract a presentation trines of the three leading schools. By tem- of moral philosophy, but the most powerful perament and training an Academic criticisms came from HUTCHESON and HUME, SCEPTIC, in ethics he followed and widened who denied that moral judgement lay in the the electicism introduced to the Academy perception of relations, or in the activity of by Antiochus. He admired the noble ideals reason alone. (R.W.H.) of STOICISM; to EPICURUS he was unsympa- ‘Cogito ergo sum’ See DESCARTES. thetic. He thought of himself as a transla- tor (in some cases his source books can be Cohen, Morris R. (1880–1947) Born in traced, for example, to Clitomachus, Philo, Russia, he emigrated to the United States Collingwood, R. G. 75 as a boy, and taught philosophy in New came from Germany, and he spent much York. He was an outspoken NATURALIST, of the rest of his life struggling to give and a vigorous exponent of liberalism form to the inspiration he drew from conceived as a faith in rational analysis. SCHELLING and KANT. The record of these He subscribed in essentials to philosophi- encounters can be traced not only in his cal REALISM as advocated by the early poetry, but also in Biographia Literaria RUSSELL, maintaining that philosophy, like (1817), and a series of lectures on the the sciences, makes significant intellec- History of Philosophy given in London in tual advances only when it grapples in 1818–19, first published in 1949. {J.R.} piecemeal fashion with limited and clearly formulated problems. Cohen Collingwood, Robin George (1889– believed that the truths of LOGIC formu- 1943) English philosopher who spent late the absolute invariants exhibited by all his working life at Oxford. He was a all possible objects. On the other hand, he very eminent authority on the archaeol- construed the laws of the positive sci- ogy and history of Roman Britain, but his ences as expressions of relations which main life’s work was as a very original are invariant only in certain specialized philosopher, and his bold, fresh style domains. He therefore maintained that makes him an unusually stimulating and factual statements are inherently inca- exciting author even for readers who are pable of a purely rational demonstration. not in agreement with him. Contrary to Accordingly, he recognized a fundamen- his own statement in his Autobiography tal polarity between what he called the (1939), his views appear to have under- rational and the empirical elements in gone considerable change. Brought up in existence; and his writings contain spir- the Oxford REALIST school, led by Cook ited criticisms of philosophies that ignore WILSON and PRICHARD, he early reacted to these as well as other polar aspects of a position more nearly in sympathy with nature. He expounded this principle of IDEALISM; in his Essay on Philosophical polarity in his major book, Reason and Method (1933) perhaps the best of his Nature (1931), which contains, in addi- earlier writings, he took the view that phi- tion to an uncompromising critique of losophy was essentially an attempt to set anti-rational currents in contemporary forth human knowledge in systematic philosophy, a general account of scien- form. But he insisted that this was but a tific method, and numerous analyses of transmutation of knowledge already pos- philosophical questions raised by sub- sessed in a less developed form; thus stantive issues in MATHEMATICS, physics, moral philosophy should simply system- biology, the social sciences and ethical atize existing moral beliefs, transmuting theory. (E.N.) but not challenging or adding to them. The other main contention was that phi- Coleridge, Samuel Taylor (1772–1834) losophy works with concepts which over- English romantic poet and philosopher lap in a way not found in science and that whose early adherence to LOCKEAN princi- this gives it a special character and special ples was shaken when he encountered methods of argument. In later life, how- BERKELEY’s idea of nature as a form of ever, Collingwood became more scepti- divine language. A subsequent visit to cal; in An Essay on Metaphysics (1940), continental Europe in 1798–9 convinced ostensibly a continuation of the Essay on him that the best philosophical work Philosophical Method, he abandons the 76 view that philosophy has a distinctive principal author of much that was pub- character and sees it rather as a part of lished in Saint-Simon’s name at that period. history. Metaphysics now has the purely In 1822, there appeared under Saint- historical task of bringing to light the Simon’s auspices Comte’s Plan of the absolute of human Scientific Works necessary for the Reorgan- thought at some date in history; to any ization of Society, in which most of the metaphysical statement in traditional ideas of his subsequent philosophy are con- form should be supplied at the beginning tained. In 1824, Comte quarrelled with the ‘metaphysical rubric’ that ‘it was an Saint-Simon and left his service. absolute of thought at In 1826, Comte began a course of pub- such and such a time that. . .’. No assess- lic lectures on ‘Positive Philosophy’, but ment of the merits of these presupposi- had to abandon them owing to mental ill- tions is apparently possible. In identifying ness. The next year he tried to drown him- philosophy with history he was adopting self in the Seine. In 1829, he restarted his a position, similar to that of DILTHEY and public lectures, which were published in CROCE, which gave an appearance of unity six volumes from 1830 to 1842 as the to his historical and philosophical con- Course on Positive Philosophy. This is his cerns. The attempts to trace out absolute major work, in which he sets out his the- presuppositions at the end of the Essay on ory of knowledge and the sciences and Metaphysics and in his Idea of Nature are lays the foundations for a new science, of great independent interest, as are his which he first called ‘social physics’ and views on the nature of history (see his then ‘sociology’. The central thesis is that Autobiography and the posthumous Idea the attempt to discover extra-mundane of History). He expresses contempt for causes of the natural world, whether in ‘scissors and paste’ history, and takes theological or in metaphysical terms, seriously the view that history is the should be abandoned in favour of the pos- and that the itive method of correlating the facts of task of the is to relive past observation with one another. The posi- thoughts. He was also a major contributor tive sciences, he argued, have been devel- to aesthetics, especially in his Speculum oped progressively, the earlier ones Mentis (1924) and The Principles of Art forming the basis for those that came (1938). (J.O.U.) later. The sequence he sets out, in ascend- ing order of complexity is: mathematics, Communitarianism See LIBERALISM astronomy, physics and chemistry, and AND COMMUNITARIANISM. biology (including psychology). There Comte,Isidore-Auguste-Marie-François- remains sociology, of which Comte Xavier (1796–1857) claims to be the founder. As conceived by was born in Montpellier to Catholic par- him, this science comprises social statics ents. In 1814 he became a student at the and social dynamics. As to the former, he École polytechnique in Paris, and in 1816 held that the various elements are so led a student revolt which resulted in his closely bound together in a ‘social con- expulsion together with the rest of the stu- sensus’ that no part can be radically dents of his year. In 1817, he became sec- changed without serious effects upon the retary to the Utopian socialist writer rest. As to the latter, he held that intellec- Saint-Simon (1760–1825), who influenced tual development was the prime cause of him greatly. It has been held Comte was the , and that human society 77 therefore passes through the same theo- female form) in chapels containing the logical, metaphysical and positive stages busts of the benefactors of mankind. as the sciences. First, there was a theo- There is the Positivist Calendar with cratic and traditional stage which came to months named after , be organized around the secular power of and Frederick II, and with days for the kings and the spiritual power of . At celebration of great men (among whom the metaphysical stage there is a sort of Comte gratefully included friends who anarchy in which both temporal and spir- had vainly worked to get him a professor- itual authority are attacked. This transi- ship at the École Polytechnique). On the tional stage would be succeeded by the other hand, Comte had pondered seri- positive era when men of science would ously the ritual and ideology of a society form a new and durable spiritual power, from which religious beliefs and institu- and an ordered society would come into tions had been eliminated. He saw that in existence based on the cooperation that the absence of unifying sentiments a sci- positive knowledge of social facts would entific society might degenerate. One of bring with it. his ideas was that scientific activity itself Comte had hoped for a professorship has moral implications. Thus he held that at the École Polytechnique, but obtained submission to the facts of nature curbed only minor teaching and examining posts the exorbitance of , that the there. J. S. MILL and others organized acceptance of a scientific argument had a financial support to enable Comte to con- certain with justice, and that tinue his researches. In 1844, Comte understanding was very close to sympa- made the acquaintance of Clotilde de thy. Yet his principle of the subordination Vaux. Comte claimed that she taught him of the intellect to the heart is an admission the importance of subordinating the intel- that there is more to morality than can be lect to the heart, and after her death in got from science. The intellect, he held, in 1846 his writings take on a new emphasis. a phrase that echoes and corrects HUME, It is not merely by means of the natural should be not the slave but the servant of and social sciences and the spiritual the heart. See also HUMANISM, PHILOSO- power of scientists that society is to be PHY OF SCIENCE. (H.B.A.) regenerated, but by means of a secular religion, the Religion of Humanity, of Conceptualism The view that the which Comte was to be the High Priest. objects of thought and the meanings of The details of this new religion are set out general terms are concepts – mental entities in The General View of Positivism (1848), which exist only in minds and are formed The Catechism of Positive Religion or constructed by them. On this view when (1852) and the four volumes of The I think about redness – when, for exam- System of Positive Polity which appeared ple, I infer from the fact that something is between 1851 and 1854. Having made red the fact that it is coloured – I am scru- arrangements for the perpetuation of the tinizing the concept of red that I possess cult, Comte died in 1857. and discovering that it contains as a part Comte’s later writings are a strange the concept of colour. Again, when I rec- mixture of absurdity and insight. On the ognize something as red, I see that it falls one hand, there is the Religion of under or satisfies the concept. Stated in Humanity, with details for the worship of this way the theory has a somewhat unin- the Great Being (symbolized by the formative appearance. It seems to repeat, 78 Condillac, Étienne Bonnot de in less familiar words, the state of affairs further than Locke had ever done. Not to be explained. It is more compelling in only are all our ideas derived from sensa- the form of imagism, where the concept is tion, but all the activities of the mind are identified with mental imagery of some mere transformations of sensations: a kind. Imagery is used as a standard of memory, for example, is a mere after-effect classification. To tell if a thing is red I of sensation and attention is the occupation must compare it with my standard of consciousness by one sensation to the imagery of red. For LOCKE this imagery exclusion of others. Condillac expounds was abstract, but BERKELEY found abstract this doctrine by the device of imagining a and indeterminate images unintelligible statue being gradually endowed with senses, and proposed instead a theory of repre- first smell, then touch and so on; he can sentative images. But a specific represen- thus consider the contribution of each tative image will have a multitude of separately. It is important to his doctrine features and so will be ambiguous. that he conceives of sensations as arousing HUME’s theory of a series of similar pleasure and pain at the promptings of images overcomes this difficulty. which our wants, instincts and habits are Conceptualism, like other theories of UNI- formed. This doctrine, which Condillac VERSALS, is implicitly regressive. To use a expounds with grace, simplicity and mental standard of classification I must clarity had a great success in France for a compare the things to be classified with time; but his views have had a more abid- the standard; but this act of comparison is ing influence in Britain, largely because of itself a classificatory undertaking, requir- their influence of and Herbert ing the use of a further mental standard SPENCER.(J.O.U.) and so on. A difficulty peculiar to ima- gism – the price, perhaps, of its ready Condorcet, Marie-Jean-Antoine- intelligibility – is that it seems psycholog- Nicolas Caritat, Marquis de (1743–94) ically false. The use of images in recogni- Condorcet was one of the ENCYCLOPED- tion is the exceptional case. It is often said ISTS and an early supporter of the French that images are themselves symbolic Revolution. But he was soon proscribed in character and thus raise the same and went into hiding where he wrote his problems about meaning as words. (A.Q.) most famous work, the Sketch for a Historical Picture of the Progress of the Condillac, Étienne Bonnot de Human Mind; he was captured and (1715–80) Condillac was born in imprisoned and immediately died, possi- Grenoble and took holy orders before bly from poison. He wrote biographies of coming into contact with DIDEROT and Voltaire and Turgot and his Essay on other ENCYCLOPEDISTS, by whom he was Methods of Analysing Probability in its greatly influenced; he was also for long a Relation to Majority Decisions (1785) is friend of ROUSSEAU. He began as a disciple important in the development of the the- of LOCKE, whose philosophy was very ory of probability. But it is as a philo- popular among advanced thinkers in sophical theorist of progress that he is France at that time. In his first book, best known. He believed in a permanent Essay on the Origin of Human Knowledge human nature and invariant moral princi- (1746) he was content to follow Locke, ples derived from this nature and inde- but in his main work, the Treatise on pendent of custom and religion (of which Sensations (1754), he took EMPIRICISM he was a fierce opponent); progress was Continental Philosophy 79 therefore a matter of improving institu- degree at Cambridge University. A letter tions and education. He distinguished ten to the press signed by an international epochs of human society, beginning with team of nineteen analytic philosophers, the hunter, then the pastoralist, then the including QUINE, informed the public that agriculturalist; the eighth stage was that ‘in the eyes of philosophers, and certainly of scientific culture inaugurated in the those working in leading departments of sixteenth century, and the triumph of this philosophy throughout the world, M. culture ensured indefinite further Derrida’s work does not meet accepted progress. The ninth period began with the standards of clarity and rigour’. The spec- French Revolution and the tenth was yet tacle of a band of philosophers appealing in the future. For his idea of indefinite to their own authority as professors in progress he relied on an analogy with the order to validate their status as arbiters of sciences. Though human intelligence is philosophical truth caused some amuse- essentially limited, there can always be ment at the time, and Derrida was progress in mathematics and the other awarded the honour anyway. sciences; similarly an indefinite progress Thinkers grouped under the heading in human affairs does not presuppose ‘Continental Philosophy’ share a number perfection in human nature. These views, of distinctive features. On the whole they very influential in their time, were are happy to admit the works of HEGEL, severely attacked in the nineteenth MARX, KIERKEGAARD, NIETZSCHE and FREUD century. (J.O.U.) into the philosophical canon; they regard and obscurities as part of the Continental Philosophy The rubric fabric of language and existence, rather ‘Continental Philosophy’ has been used than undesirable excrescences that need to since the 1970s to designate a range of be pruned away; they take the task of read- twentieth-century French and German ing and criticizing classic philosophical thinkers – notably HUSSERL, HEIDEGGER, texts very seriously; and they are not par- GADAMER, SARTRE, DE BEAUVOIR, FOU- ticularly fussy about the supposed bound- CAULT, DELEUZE and DERRIDA – whose aries between philosophy on the one hand work has been condemned as ‘unclear’ and history, art, science and politics on the and generally disreputable by self- other. They also share an indifference to appointed guardians of the purity of the notion of ‘Continental Philosophy’. ANALYSIS in general and ANALYTIC PHILOS- The pre-history of Continental OPHY in particular. The label is also Philosophy in Britain goes back at least as applied to the movement within anglo- far as COLERIDGE with his crippling fixa- phone philosophy which has undertaken tion on the hidden depths of German ide- to translate, paraphrase and promote the alism. The phrase itself came into use in works of ‘continental’ thinkers: indeed it the first half of the nineteenth century, has been argued that Continental and gained wide circulation in a cele- Philosophy is essentially an English- brated pair of essays in which J. S. MILL language , only indirectly contrasted BENTHAM’s ‘short and easy related to the movements in continental method’ in philosophy with the agonized Europe which it celebrates. Controversy elaborations of Coleridge (1838, 1840). over Continental Philosophy came to a ‘By Bentham, beyond all others, men have head in 1992 with a campaign to prevent been led to ask themselves, in regard to Derrida from receiving an honorary any ancient or received opinion, Is it 80 Contract, Social true?’ Mill wrote; ‘and by Coleridge, young PLATO that there could be no What is the meaning of it?’ The future of knowledge of the unstable physical world. ‘English philosophy’, in Mill’s opinion, In Plato’s he is shown as defend- lay with the ‘Germano-Coleridgian ing the natural correctness of names – a school’, or with the ‘Continental philoso- development of ’ view that a phers’ – ‘for, among the truths long recog- thing’s essence is often revealed in its nised by Continental philosophers, but name. Aristotle asserted that he also went which few Englishmen have yet arrived at, beyond Heraclitus in saying that you one is, the importance...of antagonist could not step even once into the same modes of thought: which, it will one day river, and that he ultimately avoided be felt, are as necessary to one another in speech and merely pointed. Cratylus speculation, as mutually checking powers seems to have been an extravagant and are in a political constitution’. somewhat uncritical person, who must The idea that England, or Britain, or have had difficulty reconciling his exag- the is the repository of a gerations of Heraclitus’ belief in the ulti- proud national tradition that is rooted in mate of objects with the empiricism and suspicious of flighty for- significance of some names. It is possible eigners can be traced back to the time of that Plato’s interpretation of Heraclitus as the French Revolution and BURKE’s positing constant and universal physical polemics against the ‘men of theory’ he change was derived from Cratylus. See held responsible for it; but even before also PRE-SOCRATICS. (G.S.K.) that it was anticipated in the eulogies to see KANT. BACON, LOCKE and NEWTON in VOLTAIRE’s Letters concerning the English Nation Critical Theory The interpretation of (1733). The entire doctrine of philosophi- Marxism associated with the FRANKFURT cal national characters is highly question- SCHOOL. able however (see ‘AFRICAN PHILOSOPHY’). In any case, philosophers have always Croce, Benedetto (1866–1952) cultivated an interest in the exotic, and if was born in Naples and there are such things as national intellec- his first scholarly work was on the history tual currents, then perhaps they have an and antiquities of that area. He turned obligation to swim against them. {J.R.} to pure philosophy after a considerable period as a historian and art critic, and to Contract, Social See SOCIAL CON - the end of his life he continued to work in TRACT, HOBBES, LOCKE, ROUSSEAU, HUME, those fields. He held no academic post, POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY. but was Minister of Education in the Cook Wilson See WILSON, COOK. Italian government from 1920 to 1921, and again after the Second World War. He Cosmogony An account of the origin retired from active politics on the advent of the universe. of , with which he never compro- mised. Croce’s main fame is in the field See . of AESTHETICS, but his aesthetic theory is Cratylus Cratylus of Athens was a essentially part of his general philosophi- sophist who lived around 410 BC. He devel- cal system, which is a form of idealism oped an extreme form of Heracliteanism indebted to HEGEL. His general system he and, according to ARISTOTLE, persuaded the called the philosophy of the spirit. Spirit is Cudworth, Ralph 81 for him the sole reality, and the physical not separate the feeling as content from world is a construction of the mind; but the image as its form; art is the a priori spirit does not transcend experience: it is aesthetic synthesis of feeling and image. the world. Though spirit is one it contains Art then is simply the representation four varieties of experience: cognitive of feeling in an image. Though this will experience of the particular, where the normally give pleasure we must not be spirit expresses itself in particular embod- misled into thinking that art is the utilitar- iments, the sphere of aesthetics; second, ian act of producing images as a means to cognitive experience of the universal, the pleasure; nor is art a moral activity; nor sphere of logic; third, practical experience again must we confuse art with concep- in particular matters, the sphere of eco- tual knowledge. Since art is an activity of nomic interests; fourth, practical experi- spirit it is a mistake to claim that there can ence concerned with the universal, the be beauty in nature; but nature, as much sphere of ethics. History is the description as a block of carved marble, can prompt of the activity of spirit in these four and fix in our memories an aesthetic grades; philosophy can be regarded as a image: ‘nature is mute if man does not systematic account of the task and make her speak’. Expression and beauty methodology of history, and Croce often are a single concept in different words. says that philosophy and history are one; Such is Croce’s theory of aesthetics in hence the systematic treatise on the spirit a narrow sense. But for Croce aesthetics contains a final part on the theory and his- is the field of the entire manifestation of tory of historiography. spirit in which it expresses itself in partic- Croce stated his aesthetic views not ular embodiments; thus it includes all only in the first volume of the Philosophy expression except pure logical thinking. of the Spirit (1902) but also in a shorter This accounts for Croce’s claims that his Breviary of Aesthetics (1913) and an aesthetics is also a general linguistics: Encyclopedia Britannica article, language is the medium of self-expression; Aesthetics (1928). Art, Croce holds, is hence, Croce says, any use of language is vision or intuition; a work of art is an identical with poetry. Croce’s closest image produced by the artist and repro- follower in the English-speaking world duced by the audience. The physical arte- was COLLINGWOOD.(J.O.U.) fact is produced by the artist to perpetuate and aid reproduction of the image, which Cudworth, Ralph (1617–88) Ralph is the true work of art. But we cannot sep- Cudworth was the most distinguished of arate the artist’s intuition from its expres- the CAMBRIDGE PLATONISTS. He published sion: a poetic thought is nothing outside his chief work, The True Intellectual its metre, rhythm and words, and intuition System of the Universe in 1678; his and expression are one; technique is Treatise Concerning Eternal and involved in mixing paints, writing down Immutable Morality appeared posthu- notes, or cutting stone, but the poem, the mously in 1731. Cudworth took as his sonata and the novel are complete before task the welding together of the new the mechanical work of writing them science of his day and a broadly Platonic down is undertaken. Artistic imagination tradition of metaphysics and theology. must be distinguished from mere fancy: it The universe, to him, is not a mechanism, is productive imagination expressing fashioned and set in motion by God and some feeling or emotion, though we must thereafter self-regulating: nor is it the 82 theatre of God’s constant miraculous oneself actively from any influence, intervention. Rather, God works by way external or internal, which might of a semi-autonomous ‘Plastic Nature’, one’s individual freedom. For example, reminiscent of the Platonic ‘World-Soul’. the cynic’s attitude to prosperity was not Cudworth vigorously combated ATOM- untroubled indifference but uncompro- ISTIC and MATERIALISTIC metaphysics, mising hostility. Money is the metropolis stressing in particular the active, sponta- of all evil, the whip of desire. The solution neous and creative powers of the mind. lies not in moderation or temperance, but Right and wrong, to Cudworth, cannot in the eradication of money and all the be established by the arbitrary fiat of ruler lower desires. Property may involve ties, or deity. Both the Calvinist and so the Cynic has no property at all, and Hobbesian concern with will and power repudiates family and community, and all as ultimates are criticized in terms of conventional values of birth, class, rank, ‘eternal and immutable’ morality. honour or reputation. A life lived accord- Happiness and freedom are seen as ing to nature is restricted to the bare min- release from self-concern, religion con- imum necessary for existence. The sisting crucially in the choice and pursuit driving force is the search for inviolabil- of a way of life. Of philosophers influ- ity. The more one owns, the more one enced by Cudworth the most significant wants; the further one is involved, the is , whose theory of knowl- wider one’s needs; the greater one’s edge, though not his moral philosophy, needs, the more vulnerable one is. But if might almost be called a restatement of all needs apart from the absolutely basic Cudworth’s. (R.W.H.) are the result of convention, one can become free by unshackling oneself from Cynicism A philosophical movement them. This is apparent from the conduct or way of life inaugurated in the second of animals who are not bound by conven- half of the fourth century BC by DIOGENES tion, and from the ideal of the gods who of Sinope, from whose nickname, Ku¯on, have no needs at all. the Dog, it derives its name. It continued But the Cynic’s did not in phases of varying popularity and purity involve leading the life of a hermit. The until the end of the Greco-Roman world Cynic lived in the full glare of civiliza- in the sixth century AD. It comprised a tion, for two reasons. First, the cynical succession of individuals emulating the way of life demanded continual practice life and practices of Diogenes, and was against its enemies – convention, pleasure never an organized School with official and luxury – in order to keep both body dogmas; but a traditional core of precept and mind fighting trim. (To form and test and behaviour can be extracted. one’s , or lack of emotion, for The end of life is happiness, which is example, it was necessary to face insults.) achieved by living a life of virtue and Second, Cynicism was a militant evangel- self-sufficiency in accordance with ism: as the Scout of humanity, the Cynic nature. This principle is common to had to explore human conditions; as its Cynicism and STOICISM, but they differ in Doctor, to cure human minds. the interpretation of it. To the Cynic, hap- Conventional education and the learning piness depends on being self-sufficient, of the philosophical schools were both which is a matter of mental attitude. The reviled. Cynicism as a purely practical road to self-sufficiency was to dissociate ethic could be taught only by the example 83 of the Cynic’s life, (hence the deliberate charlatans imposing on the populace under public defiance of conventional decen- the Cynic beggar uniform of cloak, knap- cies), and by precepts distilled from per- sack and stick. They were particularly dis- sonal experience. But Cynics were gusting to writers like and , characterized principally by a fearless, who nevertheless admired Cynic ideals. shameless , and a mor- Perhaps the greatest philosophical impor- dant wit and repartee which gave birth to tance of Cynicism lay in its influence on numerous apophthegms and to a new Stoicism, strong at the beginning in ZENO of philosophical genre, the satirical diatribe. Citium and Ariston, and later revived in the This was misused by the less reputable first century AD by Musonius and , members of the sect, but in the hands of in one of whose the noblest the true Cynic, it was a surgeon’s knife, expression of its ideals is found. (I.G.K.) impartially wielded to remove the cancer of illusory conventions, pretensions and Cyrenaics A school of HEDONISTIC sham values from human minds. philosophers, founded by ARISTIPPUS of Cynicism was the most drastic of the Cyrene, the friend of SOCRATES, or by his philosophies of security which were a fea- grandson of the same name. The school ture of the Hellenistic Age (see STOICISM, flourished at the end of the fourth and EPICUREANISM). Arising at a time when the beginning of the third century BC, when old values of the Greek city-state, already Theodorus, Hegesias and Anniceris led weakened, were tottering under the impact branching sects; thereafter the school disap- of Alexander, it offered individuals, what- peared before the advance of EPICUREANISM. ever their status, the prospect of freedom ETHICS was regarded as the only useful from fear of misfortune, by schooling them branch of philosophy; the end was the to care for nothing except what could never enjoyment of the particular pleasure of the be taken from them. The embodiment of moment, which was the sole good to be this self-sufficiency was Diogenes himself. desired for its own sake. This view is Subsequent Cynics tended to stress one based partly on the observation that the aspect or another of his doctrines. His pupil prime natural instinct in all living beings , who gave away his for- is pursuit of pleasure and avoidance of tune to become a mendicant healer of men’s pain, partly on an epistemology which souls, was well loved as a kind of con- denied knowledge of external objects and sultant to the poor. In the third century BC, restricted it to the field of sensations. when Cynicism flourished, Bion of Pleasure and pain are and as such Borysthenes and developed positive sensations, mere absence of pain Cynic literary satire; Cercidas of is neither. Neither the past nor the future Megalopolis, prominent in politics, applied provokes immediate movement; philoso- his beliefs to a doctrine of social reform; phers will neither regret the past nor toil Teles was a third-rate mendicant preacher for the future; and since only immediate of a type later to become common. After sensations constitute knowledge, they will lying dormant in the second and first cen- never countenance vain opinion, envy, or turies BC, Cynicism blazed in the Roman . Present gratification, accord- Empire. Apart from prominent adherents ingly, is the only goal, and no actions can like Demetrius, Dio, , Oenomaus be good except in so far as they produce of Gadara, Peregrinus and this end. But the Cyrenaics also main- Sallustius, we hear of a swarm of riff-raff tained that happiness lies not in slavery to 84 Cyrenaics pleasure, but in mastery of it. Pleasures rational means, or external stimulus with differed in degree, and a present pleasure rational control. Theodorus attempted to might be followed by a more violent pain, free himself from external dependence by and hence the consequences of an act redefining the end as a state of mind – joy, could not be ignored. Faced with choice, brought about by wisdom. Hegesias the philosopher’s weapon is rational prac- stressed that pleasure and pain depend to tical intelligence which can be taught and a large extent on our attitude to external trained; the art of life lay in the intelligent circumstances; but he admitted that manipulation of circumstances and pru- happiness was not realizable and that the dent adaptation to them for the sake of philosopher could only alleviate the present gratification. Thus the Cyrenaic preponderance of pain. Anniceris soft- answer to the problems of a troubled age ened the position in another direction, by was not the renunciation of the CYNICS, but making some allowance for the pleasures acceptance of the vicissitudes of fortune of friendship and patriotism, thus raising and an attempt to control them. The mas- the problem of altruistic feelings previ- ter of a horse or ship, they said, is not one ously denied by the egoistic who declines its use, but one who knows of the school. Cyrenaism is mainly how to guide it in the right direction. interesting as a curtain-raiser to the more But the school was troubled by the dif- elaborate and successful philosophy of ficulty of reconciling sensuous ends with EPICURUS. (I.G.K.) D

Damascius See NEOPLATONISM. called ‘natural selection’, would be rein- forced by competition for sexual partners. Danto, Arthur C. (1924– ) American Although Darwin himself refrained from philosopher and art critic based in New drawing philosophical conclusions from York. Danto is renowned for his claim his account of evolution, it was evident that that art ‘came to an end’ with modernism, his doctrine endangered many traditional because there was no longer any ‘special notions about the distinction between way a work of art had to be’. His works humans and other ANIMALS. In addition it include The Transfiguration of the undermined certain arguments for THEISM Commonplace (1981), The Philosophical by suggesting that the apparent orderliness Disenfranchisement of Art (1986) and of nature came about not through the inge- After the End of Art (1997). nuity of a divine creator but by blind Darwin, Charles (1809–82) Charles chance; from now on it was possible to Darwin was one of the first naturalists to conceive of selection without a selector, establish the theory of ‘descent with mod- design without a designer and indeed ification’, which implied (contrary to creation without a creator. {J.R.} much theology) that the characteristics of species of plants and animals have not Davidson, Donald (1917–2003) been fixed from the beginning of life on The American philosopher Davidson earth. Indeed it suggested that they could was born in Springfield, . vary slightly from one generation to the Although he never wrote a full-length next, until – given sufficiently long periods book, Davidson was amongst the most of time – whole new species could emerge, influential of analytic philosophers. In the while old ones became extinct. In The series of articles collected in Essays on Origin of Species by Means of Natural Action and Events (1980) and Inquiries Selection (1859) he noted that stocks of into Truth and Interpretation (1984) he cultivated plants and domesticated ani- developed a philosophical system involv- mals have been systematically improved ing a number of interlocking themes from by selective breeding, and suggested that the PHILOSOPHY OF MIND and the philoso- similar mechanisms were at work within phy of language. nature. His argument was that organisms In the philosophy of mind, Davidson with advantageous inherited characteris- aims to reconcile the physical basis of tics would have an improved chance of mental life with the fact that explanations surviving and having offspring, and that in terms of mental events do not involve these descendants would pass on these the kind of general laws that govern phys- advantages in their turn; over the genera- ical phenomena. His solution, known as tions, therefore, the advantaged sector of ‘anomalous monism’, states that although the would grow and displace its each is identical with a rivals in the competition for scarce physical event, we adopt a different resources. In the Descent of Man (1871) perspective, with different principles of Darwin observed that this effect, which he organization, in considering events as 86 de Beauvoir, Simone mental, from the perspective of the phys- history of ideas is largely due to its use by ical sciences. VOLTAIRE and others as a weapon against The link between mind and language, Catholic orthodoxy. Its main importance according to Davidson, is that we can in the history of philosophy is that it pro- only know what people think if we know voked Bishop BUTLER to write his what their sentences mean. To know the Analogy of Religion Natural and meaning of a sentence is a matter of Revealed. Butler tries to show that the knowing its truth conditions, but the iden- doctrines of revealed religion and the tification of truth conditions hinges on course of nature are sufficiently alike that what thoughts can intelligibly be attrib- they probably both have the same author. uted to a speaker. Davidson draws general In particular there are no intellectual philosophical conclusions from these difficulties in accepting a theology of constraints on interpretation; in particu- revelation which do not arise equally for lar, he concludes that there is no possibil- the believer in a purely natural and ity of radical divergence in human rational theology. But the interest of conceptual systems. [D.P.] Butler’s arguments concerning issues like immortality is happily independent de Beauvoir, Simone See BEAUVOIR, of their connection with deism. What SIMONE DE. Butler’s arguments point to is the fact See DERRIDA, POST- that at its most vulnerable points desim is MODERNISM, STRUCTURALISM. no stronger than revealed religion. While the deist aims his polemics at the Trinity Deduction ‘Deduction’ is one of the and the Incarnation, he is himself technical terms of LOGIC, denoting undermined by sceptical attack on the arguments such that if their premises are very existence of God. Moreover deism is true the conclusion must also, as a matter entirely a religion of the intellect. Whether of logic, be true. A deductive argument is God exists is for the deist a question of the thus distinguished from INDUCTIVE argu- same order as whether atoms exist. Deism, ment where, however convincing it may therefore, even if true, would have little of be, the premises could conceivably be true the type of interest which most religious and the conclusion false. In this sense the doctrines possess. The classic deistic state- so-called ‘deductions’ of Sherlock Holmes ments are ’s Christianity Not should be counted as inductions. In the Mysterious (1696), the author of which usage of logicians the arguments of math- acknowledged a debt to LOCKE, and ematics are the most notable examples of Matthew Tindal’s Christianity as Old as the extended deductive arguments. (J.O.U.) Creation, or the Gospel a Republication of Deism Deism is the belief that there is the Religion of Nature (1730). See also a good and wise Supreme Being who cre- RELIGION, THEISM. (A.MACI) ated the world but no longer intervenes in it. The God of the deists is an eighteenth Deleuze, Gilles (1925–95) French century deity in every respect, to be philosopher who started his career as a known only by the methods of rational gifted but conventional historian of argument and more particularly by those philosophy, with studies of HUME, KANT, arguments which lead to a First Great BERGSON and SPINOZA. With Nietzsche Cause and an Intelligent and Benevolent and Philosophy (1962) and especially Designer. The importance of deism in the Difference and Repetition (1962) and Logic Deontology 87 of Sense (1969) he emerged as a major and to have blinded himself to escape philosopher of desire and difference. After from the distractions of sense. It seems 1968, he collaborated with the psychoana- that he was in fact the son of wealthy par- lyst Félix Guattari (Anti-Oedipus, 1972; A ents, and that as a young man he travelled Thousand Plateaus, 1980; What is much, including a tour of Egypt and the Philosophy?, 1991). His position is funda- nearer East, thus reducing himself to mentally anti-Hegelian: against the con- poverty. On returning home he became cepts of totality, origin and hierarchy, he renowned for his teachings on atomic develops a philosophy of difference and theory, , sense-perception, biol- multiplicity which is etymologically anar- ogy, music and many other subjects; some chic. His work contains a powerful critique of his work, such as his attempt to explain of the reductionisms which dominate con- colour in terms of the atomic theory, temporary French culture: against the seems to have been based on experiment. Oedipal reductions of PSYCHOANALYSIS, He also developed an ethical system with its interpretation of desire in terms of which is essentially that adopted later by Law and lack, he celebrates desire as posi- EPICURUS. The goal of life is happiness, tive, productive, excessive and proliferating; which consists largely in tranquil freedom against the economistic reductions of from fear and anxiety. The pleasures of MARXISM, he gives a picture of society in sense are less important than mental well- terms of flows and cuts, semiotic machines being because they are fleeting and fre- rather than structures, lines of flight and quently lead to pain; though nothing is of bodies without organs; against STRUCTURAL- value except well-being, wisdom is of IST reconstructions of language, he stresses importance since it allows us to know the multiplicity of semiotic levels, the strug- what pleasures are worth pursuing and gle of minor against major dialects, the how they can be attained. The consider- importance of pragmatic strategies and col- able surviving fragments show a mind of lective arrangements of utterance. This cen- great power and subtlety. (J.O.U.) tral opposition is best embodied in the Dennett, Daniel (1942– ) American metaphors of the hierarchized tree and the philosopher of doggedly atheistic and proliferating rhizome. The material of materialistic views, and enthusiast for Deleuze’s analyses often comes from litera- the philosophical relevance of DARWIN’s ture or art, and he wrote extensively on notion of natural selection. His campaign Proust, Lewis Carroll, Kafka, Francis began with Content and Consciousness Bacon and the cinema. [J.-J.L.] (1969) and continued with Darwin’s Dangerous Idea (1995) and Freedom Democritus Democritus lived in the Evolves (2003). fifth century BC and was a native of Abdera, Greece, which was probably also Deontology ‘Deontology’ (from the the birthplace of LEUCIPPUS, with whom Greek deon, meaning approximately he is associated as a founder of the ‘obligatory’) denotes the view that duty ATOMIC theory. It is probable that is fundamental to all moral thought. Leucippus first propounded the theory Deontologists (e.g. PRICHARD and ROSS) are and Democritus elaborated it. We have usually contrasted with UTILITARIANS, who much information about his life, of which regard the obligatoriness of actions as a great deal is improbable – he is said for derivative from the goodness of the results instance to have been educated by magi that the action will achieve. (J.O.U) 88 Derrida, Jacques

Derrida, Jacques (1930– ) Jacques term is constituted by what it suppresses, Derrida was born in Algeria and educated which will inevitably return to haunt at the Ecole Normale Supérieure in Paris, it. Thus the privileged term never where he also taught for many years. His achieves perfect identity or conceptual thought – often discussed under the rubric purity; it is always parasitic on or contam- deconstruction, a term derived from inated by the ‘marginalized’ term. In HEIDEGGER – first had a revolutionary (1967) Derrida impact on literary criticism and ‘philoso- develops his understanding of the trace phy of literature’; only subsequently or arché-writing by deconstructing the was Derrida recognized as a remarkably dream of plenitude, proximity and perfect original voice in philosophy and the his- presence that dominates Western meta- tory of philosophy. physics. Important strands of his notion His early work on HUSSERL, Voice and of trace arise from Freudian PSYCHO- Phenomenon (1967), introduces most of ANALYSIS, LEVINAS’S ‘trace of the Other’, his ideas concerning ‘deconstruction’. Heidegger’s history of being, ROUSSEAU’s , These ideas centre on theories of signifi- SAUSSURE’s and LÉVI-STRAUSS’ condemna- cation, indication, ideality and sense or tions of (but ultimate appeals to) writing, meaning generally; on the transcendental/ and NIETZSCHE’s of differential empirical parallelism in metaphysics and force. epistemology since KANT; on theories of Derrida’s deconstructionist readings of time and the ‘spacing’ of time; on the a number of important philosophers were as analysed by quick to establish themselves as classics. Heidegger; on theories of intersubjectiv- See especially his work on PLATO (‘Plato’s ity, alterity and Lebensphilosophie or ‘phi- Pharmacy’, in Dissemination, 1972); on losophy of life’; and on the privileging of Kant (‘Parergon’, in Truth in Painting, the voice and living speech in traditional 1978; ‘Mochlos – or The Conflict of the philosophy, with the concomitant sup- Faculties’, 1980); on HEGEL (‘The Pit and pression of writing. The deconstructive the Pyramid’, in Margins of Philosophy, strategy starts from the idea that the 1972; Glas, 1974); on FREUD (‘Freud and metaphysical, epistemological, ethical and the Scene of Writing’, in Writing and logical systems of the past were con- Difference, 1967; The Post Card, 1980); on structed on the basis of conceptual oppo- Nietzsche (Spurs, 1978; Otobiographies, sitions such as transcendental/empirical, 1984); on Heidegger (‘The Ends of Man’ internal/external, original/derivative, good/ and ‘Ousia and Grammè’, in Margins; evil, universal/particular. One of the ‘The Retrait of Metaphor’, ‘Geschlecht I’, terms in each binary set is privileged, the ‘Geschlecht II’, in Psyché, 1987; Of Spirit: other suppressed or excluded. By analysing Heidegger and the Question, 1987); and the denigrated or marginalized terms and on MARX (Specters of Marx, 1993). the nature of their exclusion, deconstruc- Interspersed with his readings of philoso- tion seeks to demonstrate that the prefer- phers are essays and books on literary ence for one term over its opposite is figures (e.g. Mallarmé, Joyce, Artaud, ultimately unjustifiable: the privileged Bataille, Blanchot, Barthes, Celan, Jabès, term has meaning only in so far as it is Ponge), on political topics such as philo- contrasted with its ostensibly excluded sophical and , opposite. In other words, the privileged apartheid, feminism, the Holocaust and Descartes, René 89 nuclear disarmament, as well as works on published three short Discourses on phys- law, education, art and . ical and mathematical subjects, prefaced While it is impossible to summarize by the celebrated Discourse on Method. his work, one can nevertheless discern Besides being in other respects revolution- how the notion of the trace – which, ary, this was the first great philosophical Derrida insists, was always an affirmative work to be written in French, and created idea, never a negative one – was trans- a style which became a model for the formed in later work on the future, on the expression of abstract thought in that lan- promise of memory and on an affirmation guage. In 1640 he suffered a grievous that precedes all questioning. [D.F.K.] blow from death, at the age of 5, of his illegitimate daughter Francine, for whom Descartes, René (1596–1650) he cared deeply. Descartes was born at La Haye, a small In 1641 he published his town in Touraine, France, and educated at on the First Philosophy, together with six the Jesuit college of La Flèche. He retained sets of Objections from various distin- a lively admiration for his teachers, but guished persons (including HOBBES and was dissatisfied with the course of instruc- GASSENDI) to whom Descartes had sub- tion, finding that for the most part it con- mitted the work, and his Replies to the sisted of the transmission of the received Objections; altogether these form one of opinions of the ancients, and that mathe- the most important texts of Descartes’ matics alone gave any certain knowledge. philosophy. He followed this in 1644 with In 1618 he departed for Holland to serve as the Principles of Philosophy, which con- a soldier under Maurice of Nassau. The tains besides other things his views on following year he was in Germany where cosmology, cautiously set forth. This he had dreams or visions which apparently work was dedicated to Princess Elizabeth revealed to him some fundamental part of of , a woman of intelligence and his philosophy – most probably, the unity sensibility with whom Descartes was in of mathematics and science. He did not at correspondence. once set out to write works of philosophy In 1649 Descartes yielded, after much or science, but travelled widely. In 1628 he hesitation, to the requests of Queen wrote the Rules for the Direction of the Christina of Sweden that he should join Understanding, an unfinished work, not the distinguished circle she had assem- published in his lifetime, which sets out for bled in Stockholm, and should instruct the first time the rules of his ‘method’, her in philosophy; in this year he also which was to be a method of both science published The Passions of the Soul. and philosophy. However, as a result of the Swedish In the same year he went again to climate and the severe régime demanded Holland, where with brief interruptions he by the Queen, he caught pneumonia, and remained until 1649. In 1634 he had com- died in 1650. pleted and was about to publish a treatise Descartes’ character has been the called Le Monde, when he heard of subject of much discussion and analysis: the condemnation of Galileo by the his exaggerated secrecy, which led him Inquisition for teaching, as did the treatise, increasingly to disguise both his interests the Copernican system, and he withdrew it and his whereabouts, together with his from publication. In 1637, however, he ambiguous relations to the Church, have 90 Descartes, René given rise to many hypotheses, of which of such a nature as to admit of mathematical perhaps the most fanciful is that he was treatment. Second, he thought that mathe- a Rosicrucian. However, there is no real matics gave a of certain knowl- doubt that his Catholicism was sincere; he edge and the methods of acquiring it; believed that his philosophy was in accor- hence he set himself to discover in what dance with the faith and constituted the this certainty consisted, and to test all only way of reconciling it with the con- beliefs by the criterion of such certainty, by temporary advances in natural knowl- methods as clear and effective as those of edge. His principal aim was to avoid any mathematics. prejudiced and hasty judgement of his The criterion of certainty which he views that would result in their being was to apply to all received beliefs was misguidedly suppressed. His attitude expressed by Descartes in the rule – one to his philosophy was self-confident, of the celebrated rules of his ‘method’ – proud, almost visionary, and he did not that we should accept only those beliefs underestimate his vocation as a solitary that appear to us ‘clearly and distinctly’ to and privileged discoverer of the truth. be true. By ‘clarity and distinctness’ he However, he also enjoyed social life and meant that kind of intrinsic self-evidence had a number of distinguished and devoted which he found to characterize the sim- friends, with whom he conducted an plest propositions of mathematics and ample correspondence, which is happily LOGIC – propositions which anyone could preserved and is of the greatest interest. see to be true by the ‘natural light’ of 1 The Quest for Certainty. Descartes reason. Such propositions Descartes also was not only a metaphysician, or a philoso- characterized as indubitable, in the sense pher in the modern sense; like many other of being not just very hard to doubt, but ‘philosophers’ of the seventeenth century, intrinsically incapable of being doubted; he was also a natural scientist, with and it is as a search for the indubitable interests in such subjects as physics and that Descartes’ attempt to find certain physiology. Above all, he was a mathe- knowledge takes its most characteristic matician; the use of the term ‘Cartesian form. He set himself to doubt anything co-ordinates’ in analytical geometry com- that admitted of doubt, and to see whether memorates his invention of such a system anything was left over that was immune to (even though in its present form this this process. His application of this pro- branch of mathematics owes more to cedure of ‘methodical doubt’ is explained the work, unpublished for many years, principally in the Discourse on Method of Descartes’ contemporary Fermat). and (in a strikingly dramatic form) in the Descartes’ concern with mathematics, and Meditations. his own contributions to its powers, above He found that he could doubt many all as an instrument of science, profoundly things generally considered very certain: influenced his philosophical system. In the for instance, the existence of physical first place, he believed that the essence of objects around him. He reasoned that, a natural science was the discovery of although he felt very certain at a particu- relationships which could be mathemati- lar moment that he was seeing and feeling cally expressed; that all natural science various physical objects, he had on many must be capable of being unified under occasions felt just as certain of such mathematics; and that the world, insofar as things when later it had turned out that he it can be scientifically explained, must be had been dreaming, and all the things he Descartes, René 91 had supposed to be around him had been is recognized in the cogito; all the illusions. How then could he be certain experiences of which he is in this way that the things apparently around him at immediately aware are, Descartes reflects, this moment were not also illusions? He in some sense his; and he must exist to could even doubt that he himself had a have them. body: his body was apparently one physi- But what is the manner of this exis- cal object among others, and it might be tence? Descartes has seen that he can doubt that this, too, was an illusion. What then that he has a body, but not that he exists so could be immune to doubt? At least one long as he is thinking; hence, he concludes, thing – that he was doubting; for if he the ‘I’ that he has proved to exist is some- doubted this, it would still certainly be thing whose essence is to think. Thus he true that he was doubting. From this it fol- has proved his existence as a ‘res cogi- lowed that he could not doubt that he was tans’ or ‘thinking being’; or, as he also thinking, for doubting was only a kind of puts it with dubious justification, as a thinking. Hence he had found at least one substance whose essential attribute is that indubitable proposition: ‘I am thinking’. of thought. From this, however, there followed At this point Descartes turns naturally another, ‘I exist’, for it was self-evident to the content of his thoughts. He finds that nothing could think without existing. that he has, among other ideas, the idea of Thus Descartes could be certain of his a Perfect Being or God, and reflection on own existence because he was thinking – this idea leads him to the conclusion that a truth expressed in the famous Cartesian there must be something outside himself formula ‘cogito, ergo sum’, ‘I am think- corresponding to this idea – that God ing, therefore I exist’. must exist in reality, not merely in our The expression ‘I am thinking’ in this thoughts. Two lines of reflection lead him formula is not, however, to be taken only to this conclusion, both of them derived in the narrow sense of ‘I am doubting’. from scholastic or patristic sources. One Although, principally in the Discourse, is substantially the same as ANSELM’s Descartes does approach the cogito, (as ONTOLOGICAL proof of the existence of the formula is often called) by way of the God. The other relies on an application to impossibility of doubting that one is the realm of ideas of the principle that the doubting, it is quite clear that more is less cannot give rise to the greater. An established in the cogito than the one idea of a perfect thing, Descartes argues, proposition ‘I am doubting’. Under the could not be brought into being by an term cogitationes (thoughts) Descartes imperfect agency. But he himself is includes a much wider range of what imperfect, as is shown by his state of might be called ‘private experiences’, all doubt, which is inferior to knowledge. of which he regards as indubitable and Hence there must really be a Perfect immediately evident to consciousness. Being, who is the origin of this idea. This For instance, although Descartes can argument is derived from AUGUSTINE;as doubt that there are objects around him indeed is the principle behind the cogito, and that he has a body, he cannot doubt, that to doubt one’s own existence is self- he holds, that at least he is having experi- defeating or impossible. ences as if such objects were there. The Since he has established that a Perfect certain existence of such cogitationes, Being exists, Descartes has a warrant to regarded merely as subjective experiences, reintroduce at least some of the beliefs 92 Descartes, René which he had earlier eliminated as can affect even deductive reasonings – doubtful. For, he reasons, a Perfect Being thus we make mistakes in mathematics. would not allow him to be deceived to But if this is so, it may be objected, can such an extent that he would naturally and we ever be sure that we have taken systematically believe in such things as enough care, that our imperfect nature external objects if they really did not may not have led us into error? In partic- exist. Hence Descartes feels justified in ular, may not Descartes be mistaken accepting, though with reserve, some of about even the foundations of his philo- the most basic beliefs of common sense. sophical system? Here Descartes merely In particular, the proof of the existence of asserts that God would not allow us to God introduces an idea of permanence misuse our will to that extent; but this is hitherto lacking. The proof of Descartes’ hardly satisfactory, since the existence of own existence in the cogito was, strictly God is itself one of the things proved in speaking, only a proof that he existed so the system by reasonings to which these long as he was thinking; even though doubts apply. Here again, the argument Descartes seems to have tried, illegiti- seems circular. Accusations of circularity mately, to transcend this limitation were frequently made against Descartes’ already by speaking of himself as a system in his lifetime, and have been con- thinking substance, that is, an enduring stantly discussed since. thing. The idea of God as a conserving 2 Mind and Body. Among the physi- principle may help to overcome this cal objects which he now believes with limitation. Again, Descartes sometimes some firmness to exist, Descartes finds says that it is only the existence of one – what would normally be called his God that validates memory, and so own body – which is in a peculiar relation deduction: a process which, unlike the to the mind, thinking substance, or, as he instantaneous steps of intuition, presup- also calls it, soul, whose existence has poses the reliability of memory. Since, been proved in the cogito. For one thing, however, Descartes has already relied on his will can move this body immediately, deduction in his somewhat complex unlike any other; for another, things that proofs of the existence of God, if not in happen to this body affect the mind in the cogito itself (a much disputed point), peculiar ways; for instance, when this there is a strong suspicion of a circular body is struck, pain is experienced, and argument here. when some sorts of desire are experi- Descartes is in further difficulties at enced, we know (as Descartes puts it, this point. He must admit that we are ‘Nature teaches us’) that the body has sometimes deceived – this was the start- some need. These latter facts, in particu- ing point of his whole inquiry. How is this lar, mean that the soul is united to the fact to be reconciled with the existence, body in a peculiarly intimate way. ‘My now proved, of a Perfect Being who soul is not in my body like a pilot in a would not deceive us? Descartes’ answer ship’ said Descartes, echoing Thomas is that the origin of our being deceived is AQUINAS; if it were, it would be able only our misuse of our will, of that freedom to move the body, not also to feel which also allows men to do moral evil ‘through’ it. in spite of God. This misuse of the will Ultimately, Descartes holds, the pecu- consists in an overhasty assent to proposi- liar nature of this union cannot be tions that are not really self-evident, and it explained. In this connection, he wrote to Descartes, René 93 the Princess Elizabeth, there are three merely machines, having in the proper basic and unanalysable notions – the sense no souls. However, Descartes is not body, the soul and the union between always consistent on this issue, which them. Nevertheless, elsewhere Descartes raises important problems about his con- attempts to explain at least some features cept of consciousness. The problem of of the union. In particular, he holds the union of soul and body is central against much ancient and traditional opin- to Descartes’ metaphysics. In his view, ion that the soul is not the principle of life which is the classical expression of dual- of the body. The body is just a machine ism, there are in the realm of created with its own internal economy and beings only two fundamentally different sources of energy, and ‘it is not that the sorts of substances or existing things: body dies because the soul leaves it, but ‘thinking’ and ‘extended’ substances, that the soul leaves it because the body souls and matter. This dualistic view was has died’. While the body is alive, how- the heart of Descartes’ attempt to recon- ever, a soul is joined to it in such a way cile the Catholic faith and the advances of that some of the movements of the body seventeenth-century science. Although are produced by the soul, and some expe- there was some causal interaction riences of the soul are produced by between souls and bodies, he thought that changes in the body. In the Passions of the he had sufficiently isolated souls from the Soul Descartes suggests that there is in realm of extension, which alone was sub- the body a physical place of this interac- ject to the mechanical laws which science tion, in the pineal gland at the base of the was developing. Natural science, he brain. This gland, he supposed, could be believed, could ultimately complete a moved directly by the soul, and thus agi- deductive theory of all mechanical tate the ‘animal spirits’ which, like many changes in extended nature, and so of all other seventeenth-century theorists, he physical events, since every physical believed to flow and to transmit move- event must be only a change of motion in ment to all parts of the body; in the oppo- extension: these would include all move- site direction, changes in the animal ments of human bodies which were not spirits induced by stimuli to the body the product of FREE-WILL, but free-will could move the gland and thus affect and the soul itself would remain the soul. essentially outside the reach of the scien- This naïve causal account of the tific laws. relations of soul and body was thought Apart from the difficulties already unsatisfactory even by many Cartesians. mentioned concerning the relations of The OCCASIONALISM of MALEBRANCHE, soul and body, one notable problem about and, in one of its many applications, the Descartes’ dualism is the question of the ‘pre-established harmony’ of LEIBNIZ number of each type of substance. It is were other seventeenth-century attempts clear that on Descartes’ view there can be to solve the problem. Descartes held that an infinite number of thinking substances the problem arose only in the case of or souls. The case is different, however, human beings. In the case of animals, he with extended substance: Descartes seems to have thought that all their move- seems to have held, in effect, that there ments were produced by purely mechani- could be only one extended substance, cal causes in a system of stimulus and which constituted all of mechanical response, and that they were accordingly nature. This substance could be more or 94 Descartes, René less dense, but not discontinuous: etc. About these qualities (often called Descartes holds that the notion of in the seventeenth century, ‘secondary’ absolutely empty space is unintelligible, qualities, as opposed to ‘primary’ ones), and that a vacuum cannot exist. Descartes holds that we can have little Influenced by a purely geometrical con- certainty. The ideas of them are confused cept of extension, he in fact equates and unclear, and while he thinks that the extended matter and space and is faced in goodness of God makes it probable that consequence with many difficulties, par- there are in the physical objects real dif- ticularly in his theory of motion. These ferences corresponding to the differences views were effectively attacked by of these various sensations, he finds Leibniz, as was Descartes’ related belief unintelligible the notion that these vari- that the quantity of motion in the universe ous qualities as given to sensation actually remains always constant. exist in the objects. Thus Descartes, 3 Natural Science. The only essential although he does not commit himself property of matter, on the Cartesian firmly on the point, leans towards the view, is extension. The idea of extension view found in LOCKE and others, that is, like the idea of God and the funda- primary qualities exist in objects, but mental ideas of mathematics, innate; by secondary qualities, as we perceive them, ‘innate’ ideas Descartes means A PRIORI do not. He shares with Locke the repre- notions which the mind can find in itself sentative theory of perception that goes alone and which it does not derive from with such a view. He differs from Locke, experience. Moreover, we can form however, both in the exact list he gives of clear and distinct ideas of other qualities primary qualities, and in holding that, which can belong to physical objects, although we have ideas of sensation, none namely size, shape, motion, position, of our knowledge of physical objects duration and number: all these are really comes from sensation. Sensation ‘modes’ of extension. Since we can con- can give us only unclear and confused ceive these qualities clearly and distinctly, ideas, and we understand physical reality we know a priori that it is possible that only by an act of the intellect, through the there should be in reality physical objects ideas of extension and its modes, which possessing them. However, we in fact can be made clear and distinct. have more than the mere innate idea of Descartes’ conception of a complete these qualities as possible attributes of natural science, consonant with his other physical objects; we also have what views, is of an entirely deductive system Descartes calls ‘adventitious ideas’ – that derived from self-evident a priori prem- is, ideas formed in our minds without our ises. These premises were ultimately of a willing them, and apparently caused by philosophical or metaphysical character. some outside source – of objects around Metaphysics and science are for him fun- us actually possessing these qualities. damentally one, and in his Principles he Since God is no deceiver, we have good indeed attempts to derive the first princi- reason to think that such objects actually ples of his science from reflection on the exist. nature of God. Every physical event, The objects around us appear to have including changes in the human body, other qualities besides these, as we also was governed by the same physical laws – have sensations of such things as colours, thus medicine, ultimately, must be part of sounds, odours, tastes, degrees of hardness the one physical science. All the sciences Descartes, René 95 were one with physics, and physics one Locke, BERKELEY and HUME shared a with philosophy, a state of affairs which common ‘system of the human under- Descartes pictured in his description of standing’ which ‘may still be called the the Tree of Knowledge, of which the roots Cartesian system’. The same influence, in were metaphysics, the trunk physics, and various forms, has continued to the pres- the branches the other sciences. This ent day. science Descartes expected to be of not What influenced all these philosophers merely theoretical interest. In common was the most revolutionary element in with his older contemporary, Francis Descartes’ thought, his placing at the cen- BACON, he frequently emphasizes the tre of philosophy the EPISTEMOLOGICAL practical benefits to be expected from the question ‘how do I know...?’ Descartes scientific study of nature; in particular he was effectively the first to try to abandon hoped that the study of physiology might the impersonal ‘God’s eye view’ of the enable man to discover the causes of world common to earlier philosophers, senescence and thus to prolong life. and to ask, not just what the world is like, Despite the entirely a priori character but how one could know what the world is of the science which he imagined, like. Descartes also transmitted to his suc- Descartes admitted, from the beginning, cessors the view that there could be only and increasingly after discouraging one valid method of answering these ques- experience, that experiments were neces- tions, the method of starting from the sary to the discovery of physical truths, immediate data of consciousness, which and he himself engaged in many experi- alone were indubitable, and attempting to ments, for example in physiology and ‘work out’ from them to an external world. optics. The need for these experiments Descartes himself attempted to do this by and their function are not entirely clear, appealing to the existence and nature of granted the nature of his system and its a God. His arguments here represent some priori claims, and his interpreters have of the most traditional elements in his found many problems in his various and thought; when these were called in ques- not entirely consistent accounts of this tion, not just in detail but in principle, matter. other philosophers were left with the task 4 Historical Influence. The influence of constructing an external world from the of Descartes on the history of philosophy immediate data of consciousness without has probably been greater than that of any such transcendental aids. other thinker, with the exception of Thus the philosophy of Descartes, ARISTOTLE. It extended far beyond the which is itself a transcendental religious Cartesians, such as Malebranche who metaphysics as well as a philosophy of the adopted many of his views, or even the New Science, contained the seeds of the other RATIONALISTS, who agreed with empiricism and that much of his general account of the nature came later. It is perhaps only in very recent of philosophy and science. In particular, years that philosophers have determinedly the British EMPIRICISTS, who rejected called in question the fundamental almost all his conclusions, were so Cartesian principle which underlies these profoundly affected by his approach systems, that there are immediate data of that the eighteenth-century Scots philoso- consciousness, more certain than anything pher REID stated not so much a paradox as else, from which philosophy must start in the truth in writing that Malebranche, its search for knowledge. (B.A.O.W.) 96 Determinism

Determinism Determinism is, roughly, he misleading to describe them as the thesis that any event whatsoever is an determinists. The principle of indetermi- instance of some law of nature. It is usu- nacy in physics can be thought to provide ally stated in the form: ‘every event has a a solution to the problem of the freedom cause’, or ‘nature is uniform’; a famous of the will only at the cost of confused and very graphic formulation by Pierre thinking, for there is no way of basing Laplace (1749–1827) is that given com- human responsibility on the impossibility plete knowledge of the state of the uni- of simultaneously determining the verse at some time it is in principle position and momentum of elementary possible to predict all the subsequent his- particles. (J.O.U.) tory of the universe. The thesis cannot be proved or disproved; we cannot prove it Dewey, John (1859–1952) American since to do so would require a determinis- philosopher who was guided by the idea tic explanation of the totality of events; that philosophy is a thoroughly human we cannot disprove it since any failure to undertaking which must be judged in find a deterministic explanation of an terms of its social or cultural impact. event can always be regarded as a tempo- Dewey was an uncompromising naturalist rary lacuna in scientific knowledge. The with a vigorous distrust of anything that famous problem of the justification of smacked of the esoteric. Philosophizing is INDUCTION can be stated in the form: sci- a mode of human behaviour arising in cer- ence presupposes the principle of deter- tain contexts rather than others; and it minism, and if this principle is unprovable should be judged in terms of its capacity to then science rests on unprovable presup- meet the challenge of the very conditions positions. HUME was responsible for the which give rise to it. One can say that classic statement of this problem, to Dewey replaced the problem of truth with which philosophers have never found an the problem of value: instead of asking agreed solution. It appears, however, that ‘what conclusion is true?’ he tended to ask the deterministic hypothesis has been ‘what conclusion, considering the condi- abandoned in some fundamental physical tions of the problem which gives rise to our inquiries in which statistical laws are thinking at all, is the one we ought to come sought regarding events for which, taken out with?’ singly, no deterministic explanation is Dewey was strongly influenced by sought. For this and other reasons it is C. S. PEIRCE’s contention that all thought is often suggested that the principle of a movement from a doubtful to a settled determinism should not be regarded as a situation of belief. Thinking (or intellec- true or false statement but as a method- tion) is a form of activity engaged in by a ological principle which may or may not human biological organism whenever be used in a scientific investigation (see habitual of action are disrupted. QUANTUM MECHANICS). Its function is described by Dewey in five Frequently, however, determinism is stages. (1) Given the breakdown of habit, understood to involve the thesis that the the organism nonetheless presses on to will is not free, that choice is illusory and further action; when overt action is that how we act is determined. There are thwarted, it resorts to ‘suggestions’. philosophers who accept the principle of (2) ‘Intellectualization’ takes place as the determinism but regard it as compatible problem is formulated as one to be solved. with FREEDOM OF THE WILL, but it would (3) The next step is the imaginative Dewey, John 97 construction of ‘hypotheses’ which might constitutes the social context. The second serve as guides in the actual search for an is to understand the kinds of problem- answer. (4) ‘Reasoning’ consists in deduc- situation which give rise to our efforts to ing from a hypothesis the actual differ- distinguish good conduct from bad. ences it would make in the course of Dewey stated the main outlines of his experience. (5) Experiment itself, or ‘test- moral theory in a book significantly enti- ing’, is the action (overt or imaginative) of tled Human Nature and Conduct (1922). checking the differences of fact entailed Human nature is analysed in terms of by the hypothesis. three key concepts: impulse, habit and In his earlier writings Dewey, follow- intelligence. The dynamic character of the ing William JAMES, described his position human organism is expressed in the con- as a view of the meaning of truth. He cept of impulse; habits in turn are rela- tended to say that what we mean by ‘true’ tively stable patterns of activity resulting is contained in a description of the crite- from the constant interplay of impulse ria to be satisfied by any ‘proper’ end from within and social pressures from result of the process just described. Such without; and intelligence is the form of a description would provide the full activity whereby an organism whose import of Dewey’s notorious remark that habits are frustrated or upset seeks to ‘the true is that which works’. reinstate action. Thus, degree of intelli- Nonetheless, under vigorous attack (espe- gence will be judged in terms of the cially from Bertrand RUSSELL), Dewey’s degree of permanence with which action approach changed significantly. Russell is reinstated relative to the problem by argued that one must carefully distinguish which action was thwarted in the first the meaning of truth from the criteria we place. apply in establishing its presence. Thus, This conclusion is now used as a clue in order to establish that ‘Caesar crossed to the moral philosopher’s search for the Rubicon’ is true, I must no doubt human goodness. Dewey proposes the engage in research to establish that, when following definition: ‘Good consists in adopted as a hypothesis, the proposition the meaning that is experienced to belong ‘works’. But what I mean in calling it true to an activity when conflict and entangle- is that it ‘corresponds’ with what actually ment of various incompatible impulses took place many years ago. Dewey’s con- and habits terminate in a unified orderly cern was with the conditions under which release in action.’ In short, we ask the the hypotheses we adopt are warrantedly question ‘what is good?’ only relative assertible. It was those conditions which to a general type of problem-situation. must guide our judgements, not esoteric Societies, like individuals, are dynamic notions about truth by correspondence. and active. Like individuals they develop Russell’s response was that, difficult as it habits which break down under pressures is, the notion of truth by correspondence and strains. Thus the role of intelligence cannot be avoided, and that Dewey, while at the social level is comparable to the ostentatiously ushering it out of the front role of intelligence at the level of individ- door, surreptitiously lets it back through ual action. Societies must seek to estab- the windows. lish patterns of activity stable enough to For Dewey the first task of ETHICS is to resist shock; and every course of action understand the nature of the biological must be judged according to its degree of organisms whose conjoint behaviour success in removing the conditions of 98 Dialectic breakdown. Dewey had no respect for the realisation of distinctively religious those who approach problems ‘from the values inherent in natural experience... top down’. It seemed to him that political The opposition between philosophy had for too long sought the as I conceive them and is not to justification of courses of action in elabo- be bridged. Just because the release of rate metaphysical doctrines. Social sci- these values is so important, their identi- ence should tackle concrete problems by fication with the creeds and cults of reli- running through the five stages of intelli- gions must be dissolved.’ (J.W.S.) gent activity. It should run the risk of bold hypothesis and tackle the task of checking Dialectic The word ‘dialectic’ comes every hypothesis against the evidence. from the Greek verb meaning ‘to con- Dewey’s is an verse’, and originally meant ‘the art of integral part of his general social philoso- conversation, discussion or debate’. phy. Education should be based upon the ARISTOTLE, in saying dialectic was premise that all genuine thought grows invented by ZENO of Elea, was presumably out of real problem-situations. If educa- referring to Zeno’s paradoxes, which tion is to proceed ‘from the bottom up’ it refuted certain hypotheses by drawing will adjust itself to real problems felt by unacceptable consequences from them. the child, and will educate it by training it But it was first applied generally by to invent hypotheses, think out their con- SOCRATES, who, as presented in the earlier sequences, and test them in actual prac- dialogues of Plato, constantly practised tice. The emphasis is on what the child two techniques, both hypothetical in feels as a real problem in contrast to what form: refuting his opponents’ statement the teacher preconceives as gospel. by getting them to accept as an ultimate Dewey attacked METAPHYSICS on two consequence of it a statement contradict- rather different grounds. The first is that ing it (elenchus), and leading them on to a metaphysical thinking really makes no generalization by getting them to accept difference at all to humanity’s intelligent its truth in a series of instances (epagoge, control of nature. The second is that meta- translated ‘induction’). physical thinking makes a very great deal PLATO himself regarded dialectic as the of difference – for the worse. It is said to supreme philosophical method, ‘the block inquiry, to make philosophy dog- coping-stone of the sciences’, and it was matic and stagnant, and to close our to be the final stage in the formal educa- minds to possibilities inherent in natural tion of his philosopher-kings. But his ref- science. Dewey attacked RELIGION on both erences to dialectic, though always these grounds, and they may very well be laudatory, are often vague, and his con- compatible. But Dewey was not an icono- ception of it may have changed over time. clast, and he coupled his attacks on reli- Sometimes it was treated as the method of gion with a positive claim that his way refuting hypotheses, and in his later work alone would lead to a release of the reli- it included the method of ‘division’ of a gious energies of mankind. ‘If I have said genus into species, one of which was then anything about religions and religion that divided in its turn, and so on as long as seems harsh,’ he wrote, ‘I have said those repetition was possible. Almost any form things because of a firm belief that the of non-specialized abstract reasoning claim on the part of religions to possess a could be described as dialectic, but it monopoly of ideals...stands in the way of seems always to have involved the search Dialectical Materialism 99 for unchanging – above all, the copies of the French IDEOLOGISTS. They idea of the Good. were sheep in wolves’ clothing: they pre- Dialectic was put on a sound footing tended to be ‘revolutionary philosophers’ for the first time in Aristotle’s Topics, a but ‘their bleating merely imitates in a manual for finding arguments for or philosophic form the conceptions of the against given ‘theses’ or positions, such German middle class’. Marx and Engels as the claim that ‘every pleasure is good’. declared that real revolutionaries must Such theses were probably debated in replace this ‘idealist outlook’ with ‘mate- Plato’s ACADEMY, and Aristotle sought to rialism’; they should ‘set out from real provide general methods for dealing with active human beings’ instead of pretend- them. In the process he discovered many ing to ‘descend from to earth’. basic principles of formal LOGIC, which The manuscript, entitled The German was developed in the Analytics into a the- Ideology, was left, as Marx put it, ‘to the ory of ‘demonstration’, in contrast with gnawing criticism of mice’: Part One was ‘dialectic’, which was restricted to rea- eventually published in 1926; the rest soning from mere opinions. Amongst in 1932. STOIC logicians, however, and in MEDIEVAL In the 1870s, the German reformist PHILOSOPHY, formal logic itself came to socialist Eugen Dühring (1833–71) be called ‘dialectic’. brought out several books purporting to One descendant of the debates in the derive a policy of class cooperation within Academy was the medieval , the nation-state from a materialistic phi- in which the contestants continued, losophy of nature and history. Dühring mainly by syllogistic reasoning, to main- denounced Marx for ‘performing dialecti- tain both theses and ‘antitheses’ (their cal miracles for his faithful followers’ and opposites). It was by means of such attacked ‘dialectics’ as a whole, by which that candidates in medieval he meant the supposedly Hegelian claim universities were examined for degrees. that ‘contradiction is objectively present HEGEL gave a new turn to dialectic, which not in thought...but in things and he regarded as a process at work not only processes themselves and can be met with in reasoning, but also on history, and in in so to speak corporeal form’. the universe as a whole. The Hegelian Engels responded to this attack in dialectic (sometimes described as a move- Anti-Dühring (1878), arguing that the ment from thesis to antithesis, and then to idea that reality is ‘contradiction-free’ is a synthesis of the two) influenced MARX valid only ‘so long as we consider things and was taken over by ENGELS to become as at rest and lifeless, each one by itself, part of the philosophy of DIALECTICAL alongside and after each other’. Drawing MATERIALISM. (R.HALL) on a wide acquaintance with the natural sciences, Engels argued that motion and Dialectical Materialism According to life could never be understood from this some authorities, Dialectical Materialism ‘mechanistic’ and ‘metaphysical’ point of is the ‘philosophical basis’ of Marxism. view, and that dialectical contradictions Its origins can be traced back to 1845, when really do exist in the objective natural MARX and ENGELS wrote a bulky manuscript world. He gave a lucid restatement of this intended to reveal that the ‘Young position in and the Hegelians’ (especially FEUERBACH, Bauer End of Classical and Stirner) were merely second-rate (1886), where he argued that in reacting 100 Dialectical Materialism against HEGEL’S idealism, Feuerbach had death. This codified dialectics into three simply reverted to pre-Hegelian, mechan- ‘laws’ which were said to have been ical materialism: he had continued to ‘abstracted’ from the ‘history of nature regard philosophy as ‘an impassable bar- and human society’. These were ‘1) the rier, an unassailable holy thing’; hence, law of the transformation of quantity into ‘as a philosopher, he stopped half way: quality and vice-versa; 2) the law of the the lower half of him was materialist, the interpenetration of opposites; and 3) the upper half idealist’. It was Marx alone law of the negation of the negation’. With (Engels said self-effacingly) who had the help of this formula, dialectical mate- seen the way forward: whilst opting for rialism was taken up as part of the propa- materialism back in the 1840s, he had ganda of the Third International, retained Hegel’s ‘dialectical method’. In achieving its most forceful statement in this way ‘the revolutionary side of Hegel’s Stalin’s chapter on ‘Dialectical and philosophy was taken up again but freed Historical Materialism’ in the History of from the idealist trammels which, in the CPSU(B) (1938). This made a sharp Hegel’s hands, had prevented its consis- and influential distinction between tent execution’. Unlike the Hegelians, ‘dialectical materialism’, which was the Marx had put matter first; but unlike the Marxist philosophy of nature, and ‘histor- ‘mechanical materialists’ he did not think ical materialism’, which was ‘the applica- of matter in terms of ‘things, as given, as tion of dialectical materialism to society fixed, as stable’ but in terms of ‘dialecti- and history’. In this form, and as elabo- cal processes’, driven by ‘real contradic- rated by Mao, dialectical materialism tions’. This provided Marx with a became the best-known philosophical philosophical outlook on nature as a doctrine the world has ever seen – though whole, and also on society as a part of perhaps not the most intelligent. nature. Dialectical materialism has offered a Engels’ vivid account of the place of tempting target for philosophical critics Marxism in the history of philosophy had of Marxism (such as POPPER) who have a wide appeal in the international social- questioned, in particular, whether ‘dialec- ist movement. It corresponded to some of tical contradictions’ (as distinct from the ideas already being propagated by the clashes of forces) can coherently be German worker-philosopher Joseph attributed to inanimate natural processes, Dietzgen (1828–88); and in 1892 the particularly if these are interpreted mate- Russian revolutionary Georg Plekhanov rialistically. However, its credentials as (1856–1918), perhaps following the authentic ‘philosophical basis’ of Dietzgen, invented the name under which Marxism are themselves very question- it was to become famous: ‘dialectical able, and it is doubtful whether Marx’s materialism’. In 1909, LENIN asserted own theoretical achievements presuppose boldly, and quite falsely, that ‘Marx and dialectical materialism in any way. Engels scores of times termed their philo- Throughout the twentieth century, many sophical views dialectical materialism’. of the most vital Marxist philosophers The textual basis for ‘dialectical mate- (LUKÁCS, the members of the FRANKFURT rialism’ was extended in 1925 with the SCHOOL, GRAMSCI and SARTRE, for publication of some fragments and drafts instance) were more or less explicitly hos- of a work on The Dialectics of Nature tile to dialectical materialism. For them, which Engels had left unfinished at his the live philosophical issues in Marxist Dilthey,Wilhelm 101 theory were ALIENATION, IDEOLOGY and significant influence on the development art; the nature of freedom, practice and of HERMENEUTICS and PHENOMENOLOGY, labour; and the changing relations literary criticism and the methodology of between society and nature, none of the social sciences. Viewing his overall which has any place on the philosophical philosophical task as a Critique of agenda of orthodox dialectical material- Historical Reason, Dilthey sought an ism. Their interpretation of Marxist phi- epistemological grounding for the human losophy often implies, moreover, that the sciences (Geisteswissenschaften, which very idea that knowledge stands in need include the humanities as well as the of a ‘philosophical basis’ is ‘idealistic’; social sciences). which suggests that ‘dialectical material- Dilthey’s delimitation of the natural ism’ may itself be a form of ‘German and human sciences is set forth in his Ideology’. [J.R.] landmark work, Introduction to the Human Sciences (1883), and subse- Diderot, Denis (1713–84) A cutler’s quently elaborated in the ‘Ideas son, born at Langres, France, Diderot Concerning a Descriptive and Analytic received his schooling at the Jesuit College Psychology’ (1894). The natural and the of Louis-le-Grand in Paris. He was a natu- human sciences are both empirical, but ral choice as an editor of the Encyclopédie the former deal with the outer experience (see ENCYCLOPEDISTS), and became sole of nature, while the latter are based on editor following d’Alembert’s withdrawal inner, ‘lived’ experience which provides a as co-editor in 1757. From 1747 till the direct awareness of the human historical appearance of the seventeenth and final world. The distinction is ultimately epis- volume in 1765, he wrote numerous arti- temological, and the difference between cles on philosophy, religion, political the- their tasks is characterized as that ory and literature, taking particular interest between explanation and understanding. in the sections on trade and applied sci- The natural sciences seek causal explana- ence, and editing the articles of the other tions of nature – connecting the discrete contributors. This achievement alone representations of outer experience would have established his reputation. through hypothetical generalizations and The philosophy of Diderot is found abstract laws. The human sciences aim at in Philosophical Thoughts (1746); Letter an understanding (Verstehen) that articu- on the Blind (1749); Thoughts on the lates the fundamental structures of life Interpretation of Nature (1754); and in given in lived experience. Finding lived works of fiction such as D’Alembert’s experience to be inherently connected and Dream (1769). Following LOCKE, Diderot meaningful, Dilthey opposed traditional was a convinced empiricist, accepted sci- atomistic and associationist psychologies entific ‘facts’ and rejected all metaphysical and developed a descriptive psychology systems, especially Christian revelation, that HUSSERL recognized as anticipating and the Church’s claim to dominate phenomenological psychology. the mind. (F.A.T.) Although Dilthey first thought that Dilthey, Wilhelm (1833–1911) The descriptive psychology could provide a German philosopher and historian neutral foundation for the other human is best known for his sciences, in his later hermeneutical writ- writings on the theories of history and ings he rejected the idea of a foundational the human sciences, though he also had a discipline or method. In the Formation of 102 Diogenes of the Historical World in the Human freedom (e.g. KANT) and Sciences (1910), he claims that all the (e. g. HEGEL). [R.A.M.] human sciences are interpretive and See PRE- mutually dependent. Hermeneutically SOCRATICS. conceived, understanding is a process of interpreting the ‘objectifications of life’, Diogenes of Sinope Known as ‘the the external expressions or manifestations Cynic’, Diogenes lived in Greece in the of human activity and spirit. The under- fourth century BC. A prominent citizen of standing of others is attained through Sinope, he was exiled about the middle of these common objectifications and not, as the century, allegedly for defacing its cur- is widely thought, through empathy. rency; thereafter he lived at Athens and Moreover, to fully understand myself I Corinth, becoming the prototype of CYNI- must observe the expressions of my life in CISM. It is likely that he was influenced by the same way that I observe the expres- ANTISTHENES, though Antisthenes was sions of others. probably dead before Diogenes reached Whereas the natural sciences aim at Athens. There is thus a tenuous thread ever more comprehensive generaliza- leading back to SOCRATES, and there is tions, the human sciences place an equal some point in the remark attributed to value on the understanding of individual- PLATO, that Diogenes was a Socrates ity and universality. Dilthey regards indi- gone mad. viduals as points of intersection of the Virtue, which alone produced happi- general social and cultural systems in ness, was achieved through self- which they participate. Any psychological sufficiency, which was attained by freedom contribution to the understanding of from all external restriction (family or human life and its expressions must be public) and internal disturbance (desires, integrated into this more public frame- emotions or fears). By rejecting property, work. Although universal laws of history external goods, and conventional values, are rejected, the more systematic human one could reduce one’s needs and vulner- sciences (e.g. economics, sociology) can ability to the barest natural minimum, establish uniformities limited to specific retaining mastery of the one realm which systems. could never be taken away – one’s own In his , Dilthey soul. The aim was to live in accordance defined life as the nexus of all that is real. with nature; everything else was worth- He focused on value, meaning and pur- less convention, against which virtue pose as three of the principal categories of must wage uncompromising warfare. In life, but maintained that there is an inde- his life and teaching Diogenes sought to terminate number of categories available deface the currency of convention, as he for reflection on life in general. Such and his father had defaced the debased reflection receives its fullest expression in currency at Sinope. This ethic required a Weltanschauung (world-view), an over- continual practice, both physical and all perspective on life encompassing mental: Diogenes would, for example, the way we perceive the world, evaluate embrace a bronze statue in winter to train and respond to it. Dilthey distinguished his body in hardship and combat physical three recurrent types of world-view in desire, and he would court insults to test Western philosophy, religion and art: his mastery of his emotions. Endurance naturalism (e.g. HUME), the idealism of of hardship was in any case a necessary Dualism 103 concomitant of the stark poverty of the arguments, what leads some philosophers Cynic way of life, illustrated by Diogenes’ to dualism is the urge to tidy up and own existence as a stateless beggar in simplify our picture of the world, an urge Athens, sleeping wherever he could. He which would drive them to MONISM if despised theoretical education, convention, they were not prevented by respect for authority and decency: hence his nick- some radical and irreducible difference name, the Dog, from which, in Greek, which their dualism expresses. The came the word ‘Cynicism’. He is unreliably PYTHAGOREANS afford an early example of credited with some written works, notably this blockage of the unifying tendency, in Republic and some tragedies. (I.G.K.) their case by a whole series of opposites, which they reduced in turn to two basic Diogenes Laertius At the beginning principles, the Limit and the Unlimited. of the third century AD, Diogenes Laertius The term, which was coined in about compiled a baggy collection of Lives of 1700 to cover such theological views as the Philosophers which, despite its flam- MANICHEISM, has the same ambiguities boyant unreliablity, was for hundreds of as monism, and can likewise be applied years an unrivalled source of information to at least three distinguishable and about philosophy. He had a logically independent ontological views. pronounced taste for gossip and folly, and The most outstanding and influential the cumulative effect of his tales is comic example of dualism, giving precise for- rather than edifying. Take CHRISYPPUS, mulation to what is probably the com- for example, who died of a fit of laughter monsense view, and going back at least brought on by one of his own feeble to ANAXAGORAS, is DESCARTES’ division jokes; or Epimenides, who ‘became of the world into ‘extended substance’ famous throughout Greece’ after taking a (matter) and ‘thinking substances’ nap which lasted fifty seven years; or (minds); this kind of dualism might be HERACLITUS, who tried to cure himself of called attributive, as claiming that there dropsy by plastering himself with cow- are two kinds of attributes and thus that dung, only to be eaten alive by dogs who all substances are of just two ultimate mistook him for a succulent meat roll. kinds. This distinguishes it from sub- Diogenes’ disrespectful frivolity has been stantial dualism, the view that there are deplored by all serious philosophers and precisely two substances, which does not by earnest practitioners of the HISTORY OF by itself have the same psychological PHILOSOPHY; but it has endeared him to attractiveness: for once it is accepted that multi-faceted ironists like NIETZSCHE and there is more than one substance, it KIERKEGAARD. {J.R.} seems arbitrary not to admit several, unless the two are of fundamentally dif- Dogmatism The opposite of SCEPTICISM. ferent kinds. For the same reason, a third Dualism ‘Dualism’ is the name for any possibility, a partial dualism, claiming system of thought which divides every- that regardless of the number of ultimate thing in some way into two categories or kinds of substance some one kind has elements, or else derives everything from just two substances belonging to it, is two principles, or else refuses to admit unattractive. It was in fact rejected by more or fewer than two substances or two Descartes, who allowed only one sub- kinds of substance. Although of course stance in the material realm, but in the dualistic systems have to be justified by mental realm a plurality of them. 104 Duhem, Pierre

The term ‘dualism’ can also be ideal of inferring laws by induction from applied rather more loosely to philosoph- experiment. However when Duhem came ical systems which have as their core to teach he found it impossible to sustain some important opposition, as in PLATO this approach and was driven to adopt the between the world perceived by the POSITIVIST and conventionalist stance which senses and the world of Forms known by characterizes his mature thought. This the mind, or in KANT the distinction implied that no metaphysical conclusions between the phenomenal and noumenal can be derived from physics; but, as an world. See also MIND, PHILOSOPHY OF orthodox Catholic, Duhem maintained a MIND, SUBSTANCE. (R.HALL) philosophically REALIST view of theology. He gives his name to the ‘Duhem–Quine Duhem, Pierre (1861–1916) French argument’ according to which no scientific philosopher of science. Duhem was one hypothesis can ever be conclusively of the outstanding French theoretical refuted, since one can always adjust other physicists of his generation on account of hypotheses to protect it. [J.H.P.] his austere and rigorous analysis of ther- modynamics. He also established himself Dummett, Michael (1925– ) English as a leading historian of science in a philosopher of mathematics, based in series of monumental investigations of Oxford. He regards the construction of a the mechanics, astronomy and physics of systematic theory of meaning as the main medieval and precursors of task of philosophy, if not the sole legiti- ‘the ’. But it is chiefly mate one, and takes his inspiration from because of his book The Aim and FREGE. However, he rejects Frege’s central Structure of Physical Theory (1906) that belief that mathematical and logical ration- he is still discussed in the PHILOSOPHY OF ality presupposes a ‘platonic’ REALISM; see SCIENCE. As a young student he was at ANALYTIC PHILOSOPHY. Dummett’s works first attracted by the idea of science dis- include Frege: Philosophy of Language, covering real mechanisms hidden behind 1973; second edition 1981, and The phenomena, but this ambition was Interpretation of Frege’s Philosophy, 1981, severely battered by his later teachers and as well as the article on Frege in this he began instead to pursue the Newtonian Encyclopedia. [J.R.] E

Edwards, Jonathan (1703–58) Each of his three major works was Jonathan Edwards was born in South designed to reinterpret a fundamental Windsor, , and is now recog- Calvinist axiom in the light of Newton nized as one of America’s most brilliant and Locke. The axiom of determinism is and original philosophers. He stood mid- defended in the classic treatise on Freedom way between the Calvinist theology of the of the Will (1754), while the axiom of seventeenth century and the Lockean depravity is defended in the brilliant revi- EMPIRICISM of the eighteenth century. In his sionary work on the Nature of True Virtue own time the significance of his major writ- (1765), whose argument rests on a ings was missed on both sides. For close to Lockean psychological analysis, without two centuries his reputation was confined any appeal to theological matters such as to theology and distorted by a failure to the story of the Fall of Man. The central appreciate his central philosophical intent. Calvinist axiom of God’s The traditional view of Edwards was and inscrutability is taken up in the trea- that in early life he showed great promise tise on Religious Affections (1746), with as a philosopher steeped in the writings its forward-looking defence of the emo- and the spirit of NEWTON and LOCKE; but tive basis of . Most that when he became a minister he sought eighteenth-century thinkers made the to revive the fundamental axioms of mistake of proclaiming an ‘argument from , and must therefore be consid- design’ as the touchstone of empiricism in ered an ‘anachronism’ who smothered his religion; Edwards however saw clearly latent philosophical promise with - that the only consistent way to pursue reli- fire sermons and esoteric treatises which gious empiricism is to endorse mysticism. sought to justify them. A proper under- His defence of the thesis that mystical standing of Edwards will recognize that experiences are always essentially emo- his mature writings are careful and bril- tive is an astonishing foreshadowing of liant attempts to defend and reinterpret William JAMES’ monumental Varieties of the fundamental axioms of Calvinism in Religious Experience two centuries later. terms of that a profound grasp of the (J.W.S.) spirit of Newton and Locke. However, his subtle revision of Calvinism made him Elea was a Greek colony in unpopular among the defenders of the southern Italy, and the home of orthodoxy he was trying to save; while his and his follower ZENO, who held that real- use of the new philosophy to defend reli- ity must be single and unchanging, and by gious orthodoxy made him anathema to implication that the plural sense-world run-of-the-mill proponents of is illusory. Also counted as an Eleatic, and ‘Enlightenment’. But his writings because he accepted these views, was show a deeper understanding of the new Melissus of (flourished c.440 BC) philosophical than do the com- who amended Parmenides by arguing monly adulated works of later that Being was infinite, not finite and such as Franklin and Paine. incorporeal. He also produced an explicit 106 Emerson, Ralph Waldo argument against sensation: we perceive a bird and a dumb fish in the sea’) gave plurality, yet also perceive that things rise to extravagant biographical inven- change, which on Eleatic premises is log- tions. To meet PARMENIDES’ dilemma he ically impossible; therefore perception is claimed in his physical poem ‘On Nature’ false, and if there are many they must be that apparent coming-to-be and perishing of the same kind as the Eleatic One. This were caused by the mixture and separa- conclusion may have aided LEUCIPPUS in tion of eternally existing ‘roots’ or ele- his conception of ATOMISM. , ments – fire, water, earth and air (whose too, was often regarded in antiquity as an corporeality he verified by observation). Eleatic, because of the superficial resem- Attraction and repulsion of the roots were blance of his one God to Parmenides’ one caused by specific motive agents, Love Being; but in fact Parmenides’ logical and Strife, which also possessed size and process of inference is radically different bulk. An equivalent to Parmenides’ from Xenophanes’ reversal of Homeric ‘sphere’ of Beings was reproduced when . Parmenides and the Love permeated the roots and mixed them other Eleatics had a profound effect on together; then Strife gradually entered the the development of PRE-SOCRATIC thought. sphere and caused plurality to assert The material MONISM of the Milesians and itself. Thus the senses, if properly used, the structural monism of HERACLITUS were were not necessarily deceptive. Sensation replaced by systems that envisaged a plu- was caused by physical effluences from rality of essentially immutable elements, objects entering pores in the sense-organs and which now had to face the question of and meeting with corresponding roots the validity of sensation. (G.S.K.) there; thus in vision, fire activates fire in the eye. Empedocles avoided the apparent Emerson, Ralph Waldo (1803–82) coming-to-be of traditional cosmogonies American romantic thinker, who was by making the entry of Strife into the inspired by German idealism to seek spiri- sphere merely one stage out of four in a tuality not in the supernatural but in what is never-ending cosmic cycle: domination of ‘common’, ‘low’ and ‘casual’. His works Love, entry and gradual increase of Strife, include Nature (1836) and Essays (1841–4) domination of Strife, entry of Love. Our whose vision of a ‘new degree of culture’ world belongs to the second of these. that would ‘revolutionise the entire system Corresponding with the transitional stages of human pursuits’ enthralled the young were two evolutionary stages: when Love is NIETZSCHE. See also AMERICAN PHILOSOPHY. in the ascendant, first disunited limbs, then Emotivism is the doctrine, monsters; when Strife increases, first ‘whole-natured forms’, then our world. In a associated chiefly with LOGICAL POSITIVISM, that value judgements in general, and second poem, ‘Purifications’, Empedocles ethical judgements in particular, express described a personal cycle of innocence, emotions rather than representing facts; pollution, fall, purification and deification. Pollution is caused by bloodshed and strife, see also EMPIRICISM, ETHICS. and leads to successive incarnations of the Empedocles Greek philosopher, physi- type also envisaged by PYTHAGOREANS and cian and democrat from Acragas in Sicily, Orphics. See also PRE-SOCRATICS. (G.S.K.) who flourished c.450 BC. His mystical claims (e.g. that he was a god, having Empiricism In ordinary use, the term previously been ‘a boy, a girl, a bush and ‘empiricism’ (from the Greek empeiria, Empiricism 107 meaning ‘experience’) implies the employ- term, is simply a word to which no mean- ment of methods based on practical ing can be assigned). The second dispute experience as opposed to abstract theory. between rationalists and empiricists con- But in philosophy the word is used to refer cerns a priori propositions or statements. It to the theory that all knowledge is derived is generally agreed that all necessary truths from experience. It was developed mainly are a priori, since we can learn from expe- by a succession of British philosophers, of rience only what has been and is likely to whom the most important are LOCKE, be the case, not what must be so. BERKELEY, HUME and John Stuart MILL. (In Empiricists, who believe that we have no America William JAMES developed a version means of acquiring knowledge except he called ‘’.) Although through observation of what actually hap- such movements as in pens, contend that necessary truths are true France have been inspired by empiricist by definition, or ANALYTIC. Rationalists, on ideas, empiricism has never taken hold on the other hand, hold that some a priori state- the Continent, whereas in Britain it has ments are synthetic; that is, that they tell us been the dominant tradition in philosophy something about the nature of the world. since the seventeenth century. Moreover, The assertion ‘every event must have a Continental empiricists such as CONDILLAC cause’, for example, has been said to be a have always been directly or indirectly self-evident principle of this kind: a priori influenced by British philosophy. The gen- because it states a necessary connection, eral principles of empiricism are opposed and synthetic because it is not simply true primarily to those of RATIONALISM, and it by definition (as ‘every effect has a cause’ was as a reaction against the systems of is). It is characteristic of empiricism to DESCARTES, SPINOZA and LEIBNIZ that mod- deny that reason can assure us of the truth ern empiricism originated. There are two of a genuinely synthetic statement and central questions at issue between ratio- therefore that any proposition can be both a nalists and empiricists. The first concerns priori and synthetic. A PRIORI concepts (or ‘innate ideas’ as they As a result of their disagreement over were misleadingly called in the seven- these matters of principle, rationalists and teenth century), or ideas supposedly not empiricists have very different attitudes derived from sense-experience but inde- towards natural science and towards meta- pendently produced by reason or intellect. physics. Rationalists have been inclined, Rationalists allow that some concepts are broadly speaking, to think of beliefs based empirical (e.g. that we derive our idea of on experience as infected with error. For redness from our experience of seeing red them, an understanding of the world is not objects), but they maintain that our knowl- to be gained through sense-perception, edge of the world also involves a priori con- which is confused, but through metaphys- cepts like those of cause and substance. It is ical speculation. But precisely because fundamental to empiricism to deny the metaphysics claims to give knowledge of a existence of such ideas. Empiricists there- reality transcending experience, meta- fore argue either that allegedly a priori physical inquiry depends upon our having concepts can be broken down into a combi- a priori concepts. The empiricist tradition nation of simpler concepts derived from has therefore been antagonistic to meta- experience, or sometimes, and more radi- physics, and has set a high value on sci- cally, that they are not genuine concepts at ence as a means of acquiring knowledge: all (e.g. that ‘substance’, as a metaphysical Hume described NEWTON as ‘the greatest 108 Empiricism and rarest genius that ever arose for the nature based on observation. If, however, ornament and instruction of the species’. arithmetic is only established by experi- The solutions that empiricists offer to ence, it might possibly be falsified by particular philosophical problems are experience, difficult though it may be to essentially applications of these general imagine what such an experience could principles. Hume’s account of causation is be. Few empiricists have been prepared to a classical example. He is well aware that swallow this paradox. They have usually the relation of cause and effect presents taken the other alternative, asserting that crucial difficulties for empiricism and mathematics is analytic, not synthetic. that he has to show that the idea of a cause According to this view, mathematical originates in experience. He maintains, propositions are true by definition. like most later empiricists, that the causal ‘7ϩ5 ϭ 12’ is a necessary truth, but only connection between two events is, in fact, because we define ‘7’, ‘ϩ’, ‘5’, ‘ϭ’ and their regular succession, which is a matter ‘12’ in such a way as to make it so. of observation. He admits that the idea of Mathematics therefore does not, as ratio- a cause involves the idea of necessity, but nalists have thought, give us any informa- this too he traces to its origin in experi- tion about the nature of the world. Though ence. The repeated observation of B fol- there are still considerable technical dis- lowing A produces in us the habit of agreements about the nature of mathemat- thinking of B when we perceive A. It is ics, empiricists all agree on the essential the experience of this habit which is the point that its truths are necessary only source of our idea of necessity. ‘Necessity’, because they are in this way uninformative. Hume writes, ‘is something that exists in Empiricism is primarily a theory of the mind, not in objects’. He claims there- knowledge, but has also been influential fore to have refuted the rationalist account in the field of ETHICS. Moral concepts (like of causation as a necessary connection ‘rightness’, ‘obligation’ and ‘duty’) must, between objects, and to have shown that if they are genuine concepts and if empiri- the idea of causation is a complex one that cism is correct, be derivable from experi- can be analysed into simpler elements ence like any others. But according to (e.g. the idea of regular sequence) each of rationalists this derivation is impossible. which is derived from experience. We may be able to see that someone is Another typical application of empiri- behaving ungratefully, but we cannot sim- cist principles is to the theory of mathe- ilarly see that their ingratitude is wrong. matics. Mathematics has always been a Our idea of wrongdoing, it is said, is not stronghold of rationalism, since mathe- based on experience, and we know that matical propositions are, on the face of it, ingratitude is wrong only because reason a priori and synthetic: they seem to be intuitively grasps the a priori connection about objects, but truths which must be so between these two ideas. The basic princi- and which we can know in advance of any ples of morality are self-evident, and do experience of them. This challenge has not need to be justified by argument or been met by empiricists in two ways: by observation, even if they could be. The denying either that mathematics is a priori empiricist reply to this intuitionist theory or that it is synthetic. The first course is was that, in Hume’s words, ‘morality is taken by J. S. Mill, who treats mathemat- more properly felt than judged of’. We ics as a generalization from experience. do not, admittedly, observe the wrongness ‘7ϩ5 ϭ 12’ is, according to him, a law of of an action, but we feel it, and it is this Encyclopedists 109 feeling that we put into words when we felt themselves to be committed to an say that the action is wrong. This point of atomistic psychology, which explained all view – often called moral sense theory – mental activity in terms of the association was characteristically combined with the of ideas. Modern empiricists, on the other theory that our only duty is to produce as hand, recognise that their philosophy is much happiness as possible. Although compatible with any psychological theory UTILITARIANISM is not an essential part of based on observation, and leave psychol- empiricist ethics, the combination is ogy to the psychologists. understandable: since empiricists do not The establishment of empiricism purely believe that moral principles are self- as a thesis about the logical structure of evident, it is natural for them to hold that knowledge has been an important stimu- morality is justified by its tendency to lus to the development of mathematical bring about human happiness, which logic. It has also led to the conception of makes an appeal to each person’s instinc- philosophy as the ANALYSIS of concepts tive feelings of sympathy. However con- and propositions, and therefore to an temporary empiricists have come to realize increased hostility to speculative philoso- that it is unsatisfactory to treat moral phy and metaphysics. This hostility found judgements as statements about feelings, its most extreme expression in the LOGICAL and to regard ethics as a branch of the POSITIVISM of the VIENNA CIRCLE. The pos- science of human nature, in the manner itivists held that apart from the formal or of Hume. They have therefore tended to analytic statements of mathematics and argue that moral principles do not assert a logic, no statements were significant priori truths, because they assert nothing except those which could be verified by at all, their function being solely the prac- observation. Metaphysical and theologi- tical one of influencing behaviour. It has cal assertions were consequently rejected, been suggested that moral judgements are not as unproved, but as ‘nonsensical’ or really commands (e.g. that ‘stealing is ‘meaningless’. (E.B.) wrong’ means ‘do not steal’) or that they are expressions of feelings, rather than Encyclopedists The first intention of statements about them. This ‘emotive the Paris printer and publisher Le Breton theory of ethics’ rests on a naïve view of was to translate the English Cyclopaedia language, and has been widely criticized. of Ephraim Chambers (1727), but when If modern empiricism is compared DIDEROT and d’Alembert became co-editors with that of the eighteenth and nineteenth the scope was enlarged until it became the centuries, the most significant advance is Encyclopédie ou Dictionnaire Raisonné the increasingly clear separation of logi- des Sciences, des Arts et des Métiers cal from psychological issues. The earlier (1751–65). This great work in seventeen empiricists were primarily interested in folio volumes was a monument to the problems about the analysis of concepts erudition of the French intellectuals or and the logical status of propositions, philosophes, intended to provide informa- rather than psychological problems about tion on every branch of knowledge, with the origin of ideas. Nevertheless, they were special attention to the application of often confused about the questions they science to industry, trade and the arts. were debating and wrote as if their inten- Chief among the contributors was tion was to give a natural history of the Diderot, who, besides having the general mind. Hume and J. S. Mill, for example, direction of the work, wrote an immense 110 Encyclopedists number of articles – on religion, ancient ‘Taste’, which was finished by VOLTAIRE, history, political theory (his article who otherwise contributed little – his arti- ‘’ is the most outspo- cles, apart from one on ‘History’, are more ken pronouncement in the whole work), important for their style than their con- philosophy, beer and the applied arts. tent. Voltaire’s friend Marmontel, an D’Alembert contributed a celebrated indifferent novelist and playwright, con- ‘Preliminary Discourse’ which he traced tributed articles on literature. the historical growth of knowledge. He Although the editors claimed that the was chiefly concerned with geometry, Encyclopédie had attracted the most emi- mathematics and the sciences, but also nent contributors, two outstanding person- wrote an article on ‘Geneva’ in 1757 alities found its atmosphere too bellicose: which provoked the ire of the local clergy Buffon, author of the great Natural and also the wrath of ROUSSEAU, who History in forty-four volumes, who may resented d’Alembert’s criticism of his have contributed one article on ‘Nature’; native city for lacking a theatre, and and Duclos, a court historian, who wrote riposted with an indignant ‘Letter to only on ‘Declamation’ and ‘Etiquette’. The d’Alembert’. Disgusted with the outcry King’s physician, Quesnay, contributed over this article, as well as for reasons of two outstanding articles, ‘Farmers’ and and ambition, d’Alembert with- ‘Seeds’. Turgot, who later became famous drew his , leaving Diderot to as Intendant and Minister, wrote on ‘Fairs carry on alone. Luckily Diderot’s devoted and Markets’, condemning barriers to friend, the Chevalier de Jaucourt, who had free enterprise; and on ‘Foundations’, studied medicine in Geneva, Leyden and showing the disadvantage of unchange- Cambridge, then became the general fac- able bequests. The Baron d’Holbach wrote totum of the work, and wrote articles on on mineralogy and chemistry, and there the widest variety of topics – philosophy are grounds for attributing to him the (he had previously published a study of entry on ‘Representatives’ which main- LEIBNIZ), politics and literature, war, des- tains that a state cannot prosper unless the potism, government and etc. king invites the cooperation of all ele- Some critics claim that he was as impor- ments of the population. For the rest, his tant and as devoted to the enterprise as general philosophy is contained in his Diderot himself. notorious System of Nature (1770) where Rousseau contributed articles on music, he insisted that kings must defend the and a contribution on ‘’ liberty of their subjects. Holbach was foreshadowed some of the themes of his an atheist and as such was attacked by Social Contract. Later, Rousseau came to Voltaire. regard the Encyclopédie as the work of The great majority of the articles are the devil, quarrelling not only with factual and objective, written by special- d’Alembert but with Diderot as well. The ists without an axe to grind. Other articles, fifth volume opened with a notable trib- however, were more barbed. Whereas ute to , author of The Spirit opinions on politics were moderate, contri- of the Laws (1748), whose influence on butions connected with philosophy (deeply the Encyclopédie was pervasive. But permeated with LOCKE’s EMPIRICISM) and Montesquieu kept aloof, refusing to write religion were double-edged, despite pro- on ‘Despotism’ and ‘’, though fessions of orthodoxy. For instance, under he submitted an incomplete article on ‘cowl’, the absence from monasteries of Epicurus 111

‘sound philosophy’ is deplored, and under treats materialism and IDEALISM, dialec- ‘Encyclopedia’ there is a bland statement tical and mechanistic MATERIALISM and that the contribution of the Sorbonne the materialist reorientation of Hegelian to knowledge will be theology, sacred DIALECTICS; and The Dialectics of Nature, history, and the history of . which contains the fullest statement One needs to read between the lines and of Engels’ laws of development, but is follow the cross-references to detect the incomplete and was not published in his underlying scepticism about religion. lifetime. Engels was also co-author with Because of this attitude the Encyclopédie Marx of the Manifesto of the Communist was suspect from the beginning, and in Party.(J.O.U.) the course of its chequered career it came Epictetus (c.55–c.135 AD) STOIC encountered opposition from Jesuits, philosopher of Hierapolis, Phrygia. A Jansenists, the Sorbonne, the Pope, the freed slave of Nero’s secretary, and pupil of Parliament, the devout party at Court, and the stoic Musonius, Epictetus set up a private enemies. A suppression in 1752, school in Nicopolis when Domitian ban- thanks to Jesuit intrigue, was repeated in ished the philosophers from Rome in 89. 1759, owing largely to an outcry against His stoicism underlines freedom, provi- the materialism of On the Mind, a work by dence, practicality and humanity, enjoining Helvétius, who was a friend of the project us to value nothing except the inviolability but not a contributor. But in neither case of our moral purpose, which alone is com- was the ban on the Encyclopédie enforced pletely in our power and unassailable by for long, and the work went on. In 1757 a external ills: we cannot be injured by oth- lawyer called Moreau published a pam- ers, but only by ourselves. The governing, phlet in which the encyclopedists were indeed divine, principle is the moral will, called Cacouacs, a pejorative term which and our sole active duty is to exercise it caused them intense annoyance, and in rightly, and by recognizing the rule of 1760 Pallissot pilloried the philosophes, divine providence in the universe, to accept chiefly Diderot and Rousseau, in a comedy God’s will. Impatient of theory, he concen- of that name. Throughout these vicissi- trated on a practical ethic illustrated by tudes, Diderot stood firm. Thanks to his everyday examples: SOCRATES and DIO- efforts the seventeenth and final volume GENES were his heroes. His message was of text appeared in 1765, and the indis- not, like that of many stoics, addressed to pensable eleven volumes of plates were an intellectual, social or governing élite, but complete by 1772. Diderot’s avowed aim – to the community at large. The humanity ‘to change accepted habits of thought’ – and nobility of his teaching shine in his was in large measure realized. (F.A.T.) Manual and the four surviving books of lectures based on a pupil’s notes. His later Engels, Friedrich (1820–95) German influence on both pagan and Christian socialist, and friend, collaborator and thought was widespread. (I.G.K.) financial supporter of MARX during his res- idence in Britain. It is to Engels rather Epicurus (342–270 BC) An Athenian than Marx that we owe the exposition of citizen, Epicurus was brought up in Samos, the fundamental tenets of DIALECTICAL returned to Athens for a short period of MATERIALISM. His most important philo- study as a young man, and then spent some sophical works are Anti-Dühring (1878) years in Asia Minor. He finally returned to and Ludwig Feuerbach (1886), which Athens in about 306 BC and set up his 112 Epistemology school in the garden where he taught until greatest importance since without it we his death. cannot make the best choice of pleasures. Epicurus is best known for his In the letter to Menoecus Epicurus says: HEDONISM and ATOMISM; yet in neither ‘When we maintain that pleasure is an end, field was he original. The only contribu- we do not mean the pleasures of profligates tion he made to atomism – the suggestion and those that consist in sensuality ...but that atoms originally fell in a kind of rain freedom from pain in the body and trouble in parallel courses but that some of in the mind. For the end is not continuous them swerved by free choice and caused drinkings, nor the satisfaction of lusts,... collisions – is a regression rather than but sober reasoning, searching out the an improvement. And the essentials of his motives for all choice and avoidance.’ Pains ethics can be found in the ethical frag- of the mind are much more important than ments of DEMOCRITUS. But Epicurus was those of the body, which are either bearable more interested in practice than in theory: or produce death, which is no evil. Death ‘is he was a secular evangelist seeking to nothing to us, since so long as we exist preach the secret of true happiness. Thus death is not with us, but when death comes he propounded the atomic theory in order then we no longer exist’. Moreover, though to combat the fears – of gods and demons, virtue is not in itself a good, only those who or of death and the torments of the under- live virtuously can be happy, and anyway world – that make people unhappy. The the virtuous life is pleasant as such. mechanistic doctrines of atomism, which Epicurus was not an atheist – he denied the gods any control of nature and believed in gods who lived a life of infi- treated the soul as a concourse of atoms nite bliss which would be spoilt if they which was dissolved at death, were intended had to worry about human affairs – and to allay these terrors. And the doctrine of he practised a disinterested worship of the the voluntary atomic swerve was an anti- gods. His teaching is thus paradoxical. He dote to the dangers of a purely mechanistic is a theist who regards ordinary religion atomism: ‘it were better to follow the myths as evil; a hedonist who advocates a simple about the gods than to become a slave to the life of study; a supporter of virtue and the of the natural philosophers’. pursuit of truth who holds them to have no Epicurus’ moral views have been much value in themselves. He seems to have misunderstood and misrepresented. (The endeavoured to live the life he preached, modern notion of an Epicurean as given gathering a simple community of disci- up to voluptuous high living is based ples round him in his garden. We are told entirely on later slanders.) His theoretical that ‘he exceeded all others in the bulk of starting point is that pleasure alone is his works’, of which some seventy or good and always good. It consists in the eighty pages survive; and on his deathbed driving out of pain, and when pain is ended he spoke contemptuously of his severe pleasure can be varied but not increased. pains as weighing nothing against his joy Pleasure is either bodily, perfect health of mind. The philosophical poem by being its highest form, or mental, where it LUCRETIUS, De Rerum Natura, well brings consists in freedom from fear and anxiety. out both the doctrines and the practical But though all pleasure is good in itself attitude of Epicurus. (J.O.U.) some pleasure brings pain as an inevitable consequence; therefore not all pleasure Epistemology There is a wide-ranging, is desirable. Hence wisdom is of the loosely knit set of philosophical problems Epistemology 113 concerning such notions as those of two ways. We may be simply baffled, or knowing, perceiving, feeling sure, guess- we may get something positively wrong. ing, being mistaken, remembering, finding We can be stumped or we can make mis- out, proving, inferring, establishing, cor- takes in calculating, in counting, in rea- roborating, wondering, reflecting, imagin- soning, in visual estimates of speeds and ing, dreaming and so on. This part of distances, in recognizing people or places, philosophy is often called the Theory of in recollecting, as well as in more execu- Knowledge or Epistemology – the latter tive things like spelling, aiming and treat- word deriving from the Greek , ing the sick. What safeguards have we meaning knowledge or science. against mistakes? How, if at all, can we Some of the problems revolve around ever know anything? For in knowing, the notion of a science, in the sense in unlike believing, surmising and feeling which we take astronomy to be a science, confident, we cannot be wrong. but astrology not. A fairly typical problem When we consider conflicting opin- of this kind is the problem why in pure ions about what exists and happens in the MATHEMATICS there are conclusive proofs world around us, for example, about the of theorems, when no such demonstrable relative heights of two church-steeples can be found or even looked or about the migration dates of cuckoos, for in, for example, history or medicine. It we think we could decide between the would be absurd for a mathematician to true and the mistaken opinion by, in the rest content with mere plausible conjec- one case, simply measuring the heights of tures or even with highly probable hypothe- the two steeples, and in the other case by ses. Scientists of other sorts seem not to observing the arrivals and departures of be in a position to aspire higher than high cuckoos for a number of years in succes- probabilities. We incline to say that a body sion. But then we have to face the fact that of truths ranks as a real science only when there are mistakes of measurement and these are conclusively established; and even mishearings of the first cuckoo. How then we find ourselves forced to say that, could we decide between conflicting meas- judged by this rigorous standard, even urements or between conflicting reports physics and chemistry are not really sci- of birdwatchers? At this point we are ences; and this conclusion conflicts badly inclined to say that the ultimate decision, with our ordinary ideas. if only we could attain it, would be given Other problems in the Theory of by sense impressions unadulterated by any Knowledge centre not upon the notion of assumptions, guesses or expectations – by a science, but upon the notions of our per- pure hearings, seeings or tastings in which sonal investigatings, inferrings, perceiv- there is not yet any place for slips or mis- ings, rememberings, imaginings and so judgements. Here perhaps we have the on. How can I tell for certain whether the absolutely firm foundation on which stick half immersed in water is bent or we might build knowledge of the world not? How can I tell for certain whether around us. The difference between having I really recollect a past event or am merely knowledge of something in the world imagining it, and whether I am now awake around us and merely having a fallible or dreaming? Might I not be the victim of opinion about it would be that the former one continuous illusion? would be at all points supported by sense- Whatever sorts of things we may want impressions, where the latter, though sug- to find out, our attempt may fail in one of gested by them, would be at best only 114 Epistemology partly supported by them. Where I am or inferences that we draw from them are not may be mistaken, I have let my imagination so exempt. jump ahead of the required impressions. If we knew, somehow, from the start This sort of account of the difference some completely exceptionless causal between knowledge and fallible opinion laws, to the effect that whenever such and will not be applicable inside the fields of such a sequence of sense-impressions is purely abstract truths and falsehoods, like had, then such and such other sense- those of pure mathematics; nor yet inside impressions will always follow, then in some other fields, like those of ethics. any particular case we could, without risk Nor can my knowledge about my present of error, infer from the sense-impressions wishes, fears, imaginings and broodings of the present moment to their successors rest on the support of what I see with in the next few moments. But we do not my eyes or taste with my tongue. It is for start off with any such knowledge. If we our knowledge only of what exists and get bits of such knowledge, we get them happens in the world surrounding us, as late in the day, after a great deal of obser- well as in our own bodies, that sense- vation and experimentation. We discover impressions, it seems, furnish the granite the ways in which things always or some- foundations. times happen only by finding them hap- In every case in this field where we pening and collating our findings; and would normally claim to be not merely even then the laws and regularities that at guessing or believing something, but to any particular time we claim to have ascer- have discovered or made certain of it, the tained are always subject to subsequent fact which we claim to know goes beyond correction. Nature is never without her any particular momentary visual or audi- surprises. The unpredicted sometimes tory impression. If I assert that the cuckoo happens and the predicted sometimes has arrived, I am asserting more than that fails to happen. So it begins to look as if at a certain moment I heard a noise of a knowledge about the world around us, certain sort. How then can we go beyond going beyond our impressions of the our present impressions and still some- moment, cannot be got at all. For it would times claim to know? The natural answer have to be knowledge by inference; but to give is that we infer from for example we possess, to start with, no warrant to the sound that we have heard to the ulte- make any such inferences. If we make rior conclusion that the cuckoo has arrived. jumps beyond our present impressions, Our knowledge of the world around us, we can have, to start with, no warrants for together with our mere beliefs and conjec- making them; and even if they happen to tures about this world, are all conglomera- turn out right, this, by itself, cannot justify tions of interlocking conclusions inferred, us in making the same jump on the next sometimes legitimately, sometimes riskily similar occasion. One lucky guess may be and sometimes illegitimately from our succeeded by another lucky guess. But we impressions. Knowledge, unlike belief and have no reason to expect it, however much conjecture, would be the product solely of we, like gamblers, are irrational enough legitimate and riskless inferences. But to trust that our successes will continue. then what, if anything, can guarantee our So far we have been not expounding inferences themselves against being mis- but rather reconstructing a line of thought taken? Even if the impressions from which that was operative in especially LOCKE, we infer are exempt from slips, still the BERKELEY and HUME. We have contrasted Epistemology 115 our fallible and inferences ‘RATIONALISTS’. This programme leaves us with knowledge of what exists and hap- discontented. We object that even granting pens in the world around us, with the that in pure mathematics we can discover disappointing upshot that this knowl- uncontradictable truths, still these truths edge seems to be forever out of reach. are bound to be completely abstract Those very matters of everyday fact which truths. Pure geometry cannot tell us the we are inclined to adduce as obvious positions or dimensions of actual things instances of things known and not merely in the world, but only, for example, that guessed or opined – such as that the if there is something in the world possess- cuckoo has reached England, or that this ing certain dimensions, then it has certain church-steeple is taller than that one – other dimensions. Geography could get seem unable to live up to their promise. nowhere without geometry, but geometry The granite foundation of mistake-proof by itself cannot establish the position or sense-impressions seems unable to carry even the existence of a single hill or island. any mistake-proof superstructure. Perhaps Truths of reason win the prize of certainty all that I can know from perception is that only at the cost of being silent about what, I am at this moment seeing such and such if anything, actually exists or happens. colours, smelling such and such smells, Pure reason can arrive at uncontradictable and hearing such and such noises, and truths, but none of these truths of reason these seen colours and heard noises are can ever also be or yield truths of fact. untrustworthy clues, if they are clues at We cannot learn merely from the theo- all, to what exists or happens in the world rems of Euclidean geometry or from the around us – if there is such a world. formulae of algebra whether Ptolemaic or Considerations like these have led Copernican astronomy is true, or even many thinkers to reverse the whole direc- whether there exist any stars at all. tion of the inquiry. Knowledge, as opposed If these attainable certainties are, by to guesswork and opinion, is to be found themselves, too factually empty to yield where the sciences at their peak are to be knowledge of the actual world, and if found. What is known to some and is in sense-impressions, by themselves, are too principle knowable to all is any body of anarchic to yield reliable inferences to truths conclusively established by the rig- what exists and happens in the actual orous methods of true science. We can get world, there seems to remain just one beyond guesswork and fallible opinion to escape route from the depressing conclu- knowledge by operating as geometricians sion that we cannot possibly know a single and arithmeticians operate, namely by pure bit of what we most want to know, This thought, not vitiated by the deliverance of escape route was the one first suggested our senses. Where we can calculate and by KANT. Knowledge of what exists and demonstrate we can know. Where we can happens must have for its foundation not only observe and experiment we cannot just the formal and therefore uncontra- know. No set of sense-impressions can dictable truths of pure reason, nor just the yield knowledge. Only by exercises of uninterpreted and therefore mistake-proof pure thought can we ascertain truths. In impressions of the senses, but the truths the most exacting sense of the word ‘sci- of reason as the principles organizing ence’ there cannot be empirical sciences, the sense-impressions, and the sense- but only purely ratiocinative sciences. impressions as the concrete material to be Holders of this kind of view are called organized by the truths of reason. It is 116 Epistemology the application of the formal certainties of The possibility of mistakes always the abstract sciences to what we get by exists; but the possibility of detecting, sheer seeing, hearing, etc., that enables us correcting and forestalling mistakes also first to make anything at all out of our always exists. To be judicious is not indeed impressions, and then to sift out what really to be immunized against mistakes, but it does exist and happen from what we pre- is to know how to forestall and correct cariously and often mistakenly suppose to them. What exists and happens in the world exist and happen. We continue, of course, around us is, in principle, ascertainable to be the frequent dupes of illusions and to creatures who possess both Sentience precipitate assumptions. But we know in and Reason, that is to creatures who can principle how to check and correct them. examine judiciously. We know the methods of making certain; It is important to be on one’s guard and the principles of our procedures of against a tendency, deep-seated in all of making certain are the abstract truths of us, to think of people as if they were, like pure reason being put to work as our large stores, divided up into departments. canons of objectivity in our experimental We tend to speak as if a person consisted, investigation of the world around us. Pure somehow, of one internal employee or reason tells us no matters of fact. But it agent called his ‘Reason’, of another does provide, so to speak, the acid for our called his ‘Memory’, of a third called his acid tests. When we progress beyond the ‘Imagination’, of a fourth called, in the infantile stage of mere sentience to the plural, his ‘Senses’, or in the singular, his stage when we try to ascertain things, our ‘Sight’, his ‘Hearing’ and so on. Now we investigations begin to be controlled not can indeed properly distinguish these and just by a Utopian ideal of mistake-proof many other human capacities. My mem- knowledge, but by operative, though ini- ory may be deteriorating with advancing tially inarticulate procedures of testing. age, while my sight and hearing remain as We begin to look, feel and listen experi- good as before, and my ability to calcu- mentally, methodically and suspiciously. late or argue may even be improving. The Though we make plenty of mistakes, we lessons, stimulations and exercises which begin to take cautionary steps to prevent develop the powers of the young musician them and remedial steps to rectify them. are not at all like those which develop the We become alive to the contrast between powers of the young engineer or geome- ‘real’ and ‘apparent’ as we master the - trician – or, of course, of the young swim- fold techniques of deciding between them. mer or skater. The danger is that we may We now begin to use our eyes, fingers and pass from correctly distinguishing, say, ears with some degree of judiciousness, the violinist’s musical taste from his man- and our seeings and hearings are now exer- ual dexterity to personifying his Taste and cises not only of our senses but also of our his Manual Dexterity as separate, internal wits. For our still frequent perceptual mis- functionaries; and so puzzle ourselves by takes, for example for our misestimates, questions like: ‘Are his Taste and his misrecognitions and non-discriminations, Dexterity related as Master to Servant, we properly confess to having been, not as Partner to Partner, or even as Rival to deaf or blind, but silly. Perception calls not Rival?’ only for sentience but also for rationality, Questions akin to these have often though not, save in unusual circumstances, been raised in epistemology. People have for explicit ratiocinations. asked whether our knowledge is given to Epistemology 117 us by our Intellect or by our Senses, and speak, peer inside our own minds in order whether our mistakes are the faults of our to see whether the required idea or notion Senses or of our – as if these is there or not. Yet when we try so to peer distinguishable capacities were them- inside our own minds, we find the task selves separate and semi-personal investi- oddly baffling. What sort of an internal gators quarrelling with one another inside thing can I be looking for when I try to our minds, and giving to us, their employ- peer into my own mind for the abstract ers, conflicting reports about the world. idea of isosceles? Certainly most people, But it is we ordinary people who try to though not all, can see in their minds’ ascertain things, and while we can cer- eyes things like familiar faces, houses and tainly differ in eyesight, hearing, memory, coloured or colourless patterns. But the judiciousness, inventiveness, and in our taste of pineapple can naturally not be capacity to calculate, systematize, experi- visualized at all, nor, by most people, ment and so on, still these distinguishable even tasted ‘on the mind’s tongue’; and abilities are not themselves observers, what we visualize, if anything, when experimenters, calculators, theorists – or thinking of isosceles triangles, we visual- reporters. For the sake of picturesqueness ize far too nebulously to meet the very we may say that our Eyes notify us of precise requirements of ’s definition things; that our Ears or Memories have of an isosceles triangle. Yet very likely we given us false reports; that our Reason can, without hesitation or error, discrimi- has convinced us; that our Imagination nate the taste of pineapples from that of has invented things; and even that our oranges, bananas, raspberries etc., and we reproach us. But in serious, can decide, without hesitation or error, theoretical discussions we need to avoid whether a triangular figure of certain such tempting personifications. dimensions is or is not isosceles. We have There is another model to which we are learned and we now know the taste of tempted to shape our theories of knowl- pineapples and what isosceles means, edge, what may be called the ‘Container- without there existing anything ‘inside our model’. We are tempted to suppose that minds’ to be found by inward peering. because, what is true, a person who at one To learn is indeed to acquire some- date had not yet learned what pineapples thing or to come into possession of some- taste like, or what isosceles means, may at thing. But what is acquired is not a thing a later date have learned these things, but an ability, such as the ability to dis- therefore there must by the later date have criminate one taste from others, or the abil- come to exist inside him something that ity to classify geometrical figures, given can be called ‘the idea of the taste of a their dimensions. When the schoolmaster pineapple’ and ‘the abstract idea, notion wishes to find out whether a pupil has yet or concept of isosceles’; somewhat as a got the ideas of ‘square number’ and bird-cage, formerly empty, may now ‘square root’, he tests him on some arith- house a canary, or as a picture-gallery may metical problems. The pupil has the ideas now have hanging on the wall a newly if he can tackle the problems; he has not acquired picture. Using this Container- got the ideas if he cannot yet tackle them. model, we are inclined to assume that in This is what it is to have the ideas. order to find out whether we have yet It follows that the question ‘How do learned what pineapples taste like, or what we acquire our ideas?’ has as many differ- ‘isosceles’ means, we can and must, so to ent answers as there are different kinds of 118 Epistemology acquired mental abilities. We become rationalists that some of our ideas come familiar with the taste of pineapples by not from experience but from reason or tasting not only pineapples but also many thought. But what does this apparent tug- other kinds of fruit, by comparing these of-war amount to? What does ‘come from’ tastes and perhaps also, what is very dif- mean? What does ‘experience’ mean? The ficult, by trying to describe in words these technical phrase ‘sense-experience’ is different tastes. We get the ideas of ‘square used to denote the mere having of sense- number’ and ‘square root’ only when, impressions. In this use, philosophers having learned to count, add, subtract, sometimes speak of a particular momen- multiply and divide, we learn to multiply tary sense-experience. In contrast with numbers by themselves and to work out this technical idiom, we commonly use what number, if any, multiplied by itself ‘experience’ in another way, to cover con- produces a given number. Correspondingly tinuous or repeated practice in something different kinds of accounts would have to or accumulating familiarisation with it. be given of our acquisition of the ideas of Thus a chess-player may have had much ‘check-mate’, ‘vacuum’, ‘volt’, ‘equator’, or little experience of match-playing in ‘joke’, ‘weed’, ‘magneto’, ‘risk’, ‘virus’, chess; but he would not describe himself ‘dragon’, ‘impossibility’, ‘’, as having had, on a particular afternoon, ‘debt’ and so on. The doctrine that all our an experience of match-play. Experience, ideas come from sense-impressions, in this use, is what makes a person more though unhelpful, is true enough if it expert than he had been. He has learned means only that an infant born blind, deaf by having a certain amount of practice. and without the senses of smell, taste and He has tested and developed his abilities touch would never learn anything at all. It by exercising them. An experienced chair- is false if it means that we get the idea of man is a man who has been in the chair a ‘square root’, say, or ‘tomorrow’ in just lot of times and in a lot of more or less the same way as we get the idea of the difficult situations. ‘taste of pineapples’ – and even this latter That all knowledge, for example, all idea is got not just by having a certain expertness and all competence, comes taste-impression two or three times, but by from experience, in the second sense, that having this impression, noticing it, com- is, from training and practice, is an uncon- paring it with other tastes, and perhaps tentious truth – at least if safeguarded by trying to describe in words the differences the proviso that much of what we learn and similarities between these tastes. To comes from instruction by others. But this have learned something, however primi- is not at all the same thing as to say that tive, from one’s sense-impressions, is whatever is known is inferred from prem- always more than just to have had those ises provided, ultimately, by particular impressions. It is to have become able to sense-experiences, though this is a theory cope, in some degree, with some kinds of maintained, with reservations, by some task or problem, however elementary. empiricist philosophers. The truth that we Epistemologists are commonly divided are not born already knowing anything, into EMPIRICISTS, like LOCKE, BERKELEY that is that no ideas are innate, is some- and HUME, and RATIONALISTS, like PLATO, times erroneously identified with the DESCARTES, SPINOZA and LEIBNIZ. The proposition that whatever we ascertain, empiricists are said to maintain that all when we do come to ascertain things for our ideas come from experience; the ourselves, we get by inference from our Epistemology 119 sense-impressions. But it is obvious that or less experienced observers and experi- even if, what is questionable, we ascer- menters – or, for that matter, the other tain some facts by inference from our special kinds of training and practice sense-impressions, when we have learned which make us more or less experienced from training and practice to do this, still draughtsmen, speakers or dancers. The this account will not by itself cater for experience which is omitted from the the enormous differences between, for theories of the empiricists is the experi- example, ascertaining that the cuckoo has ence which is omitted from the theories of arrived, ascertaining that the king is the rationalists. Craving for something to checkmated, that the ship is now cross- avert the possibility of mistakes, the one ing the Equator, that there is a risk of finds its haven of safety in uncorrupted thunder tomorrow, that a certain sentence sense-impressions, the other in uncor- is ungrammatical or that a certain metal rupted ratiocination. But the successful object is a magneto. To ascertain things of investigator is he who has made sure, not these different kinds, we have to have he who has remained in safety. Where acquired special abilities from special mistakes are possible, the avoidance, detec- kinds of training and practice. The mere tion and correction of them is possible. combination of good eyesight with good Knowledge comes not by some immu- wits would not enable anyone to tell that nization against the chance of error, but the king is checkmated. He must also have by precautions against possible errors – studied and practised the game of chess. and we learn what precautions to take by Conversely, however, if an ultra- experience, that is training and patience. It rationalist were to argue that since we can- is the expert, not the innocent, who knows. not ascertain anything merely from having To take a concrete example. If we ask sense-impressions, therefore our only how anyone can tell for certain whether way of finding out what exists and hap- the king is checkmated, the right answer pens is to do what Euclid did, namely to would be that this can be ascertained by a deduce theorems from axioms, without spectator who has adequate eyesight and any recourse to observation or experiment, uses his eyes; has adequate wits and uses his position would also be untenable. If, them, that is, is not absentminded or dis- which is rare, he holds that we are born tracted, but is attending to the game; and knowing both these axioms and these lastly who has become, through training techniques of deducing consequences, he and practice in the game, expert enough is saying that we have masteries of things to consider possibilities and to eliminate without ever having mastered them, that them. But if, instead, we asked whether the is, that we know without having learned, checkmate is ascertained by the spectator’s and hence are experts, though totally Reason or by his Senses, and whether he inexperienced. But even if, as is more was saved from being mistaken by the common, he allows that knowledge of infallibility of his sense-impressions or by abstract truths and of the techniques of the uncontradictability of his formal prin- deriving consequences from them itself ciples, we should have debarred ourselves requires experience, in the sense of train- from getting a sensible answer, since these ing and practice, he still cannot show that questions, unless taken as merely pictur- this special kind of training and practice esque, are themselves not sensible ques- can replace the other special kinds of tions. The spectator was not saved from training and practice which make us more making mistakes; he took good care not 120 Erigena, John Scotus to make them. He was not notified by Erigena left Ireland to live and work at reports from his Intellect or by reports the court of Charles the Bald, King of the from his Senses that the king was check- West Franks. In common with other Irish mated; he found it out by visually study- monks of the time Erigena knew Greek, ing the chessboard with his wits about and much of his work consisted in trans- him. He knew what to look for, since he lating and commenting on Greek patristic had previously learned by training and writings. His chief philosophical work is, practice how to play chess and how to fol- however, Of the Division of Nature, a low games played by others. sustained speculative treatise on the Similarly, if asked whether the spectator evolution of the universe in the NEOPLA- has the abstract idea of ‘checkmate’, we TONIC style of Proclus. For its comprehen- need to construe the question as asking siveness and speculative power it has no whether he has learned and still remembers rival in Western thought from the time of what it is for a king to be checkmated, and BOETHIUS to that of ANSELM. whether, therefore, he can tell by suitably Erigena begins from the principle careful inspection, at any particular point that all that exists is a divine manifesta- in any particular game the king is or is not tion which is to be understood by a DIALEC- checkmated. To this question the answer is TICAL penetration of revelation. His obviously ‘yes’. But if we construe the dialectic consists in the application to question as asking whether the spectator Nature of the well-known neoplatonic has something special in his mind’s eye, method of division and analysis. So elab- like a clear or blurred picture of a check- orated, Nature is subject to four main mate, we should answer first that there divisions: nature which creates but is not could be no picture of what is common to created, nature which creates and is created, all checkmates; and second that it does not nature which does not create but is cre- matter what, if anything, he visualizes ated, and nature which neither creates nor when he hears or uses the word ‘check- is created. So all reality consists either of mate’. What matters is whether he has God (the uncreated) or of creatures which learned what it is to checkmate, to be go forth from and return to God. Being a checkmated and decide on inspection Christian, Erigena tried to avoid the - that the king is, or is not, checkmated. If he theistic implications of such a system by has learned and remembers these things, distinguishing the divine from the human then he has the idea of checkmate, whether as that which is not from that which is. he happens to visualize things or not. If he Erigena had no immediate followers and has not learned them or has forgotten them, his work exerted little historical influence. then he has not got the idea, whatever he There is however, considerable systematic may happen to see in his mind’s eye on affinity between his speculations and later hearing the word ‘checkmate’. If we for- mysticism. (J.G.D.) swear the personification of capacities and forswear the Container-model, we shall Ethics Out of the many sorts of inquiry not suffer much from dividedness of mind for which the term ‘ethics’ has at one time between Rationalism and Empiricism. or another been used, three groups of Their tug-of-war lacks a rope. (G.R.) questions may be selected as the most important to distinguish from one another: Erigena, John Scotus (c.810–c.877) (1) Moral questions: for example, ‘Ought Also known as Eringena (‘Irish born’), I to do that?’; ‘Is polygamy wrong?’; Ethics 121

‘Is Jones a good man?’. In this sense Works called ‘ethics’ usually contain ‘ethical’ and ‘moral’ mean much the questions and answers of all three kinds, same. (2) Questions of fact about people’s and the student of ethics must be prepared moral opinions: for example, ‘What did to find in them ambiguous remarks in Mohammed (or what does the British which it is not clear what sort of question Middle Class, or what do I myself) in fact the writer is trying to answer. It is, for think (or say) about the rightness or wrong- example, only too easy to confuse a moral ness of polygamy?’ (3) Questions about statement with a descriptive ethical one, the meanings of moral words (e.g. ‘ought’, especially when one is talking about one’s ‘right’, ‘good’, ‘duty’); or about the nature own moral views; but it is nevertheless of the concepts or the ‘things’ to which vital to distinguish the moral judgement these words ‘refer’: for example, ‘When ‘It would be wrong to do that’ from the Mohammed said that polygamy is not descriptive ethical statement ‘I, as a wrong, what was he saying?’ matter of psychological fact, think that it These three sorts of questions being would be wrong to do that’. The first task, quite distinct, the use of the word ‘ethics’ therefore, for anybody who takes up the to embrace attempts to answer all three is subject, is to learn to distinguish these confusing, and is avoided by the more three types of questions from one another; careful modern writers. No generally and for this purpose the following rules accepted terminology for making the nec- may be found helpful. A writer is making essary distinctions has yet emerged; but a moral statement if he is thereby com- in this article we shall distinguish between mitting himself to a moral view or stand- (1) morals, (2) descriptive ethics and point; if not (i.e. if he is merely writing in (3) ethics, corresponding to the three sorts a detached way about moral views which of questions listed above. The case for are or may be held by himself or other confining the word ‘ethics’ (used without people), it is either a descriptive ethical or qualification) to the third sort of question an ethical statement; and this is normally is that ethics has usually been held to be a indicated by the form of the statement, the part of philosophy, and the third group of moral words being ‘insulated’ by occur- questions, which are analytical or logical ring inside a ‘that’-clause or quotation- inquiries, or, as older writers might say, marks. Which of the two it is can be metaphysical ones, is much more akin decided in the following way: if the truth than the first two groups to other inquiries of the statement depends on what moral generally included in philosophy. Thus opinions are actually held by people, it is ethics (in the narrow sense) stands to a descriptive ethical statement; but if its morals in much the same relation as does truth depends only on what is meant by the PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE to science. certain words, or on what people would Students of ethics will nevertheless have be saying if they voiced certain moral to get used to a variety of terminologies: opinions, it is an ethical statement. Thus, they will find plain ‘ethics’ used for what for example, ethics in the narrow sense is we have just called ‘morals’ (‘normative concerned directly neither with whether ethics’ is another term used for this); and polygamy is wrong (a moral question) nor they will find, for what we have just called with whether anybody in fact thinks it is ‘ethics’, the more guarded terms ‘the wrong (a descriptive ethical question) – logic of ethics’, ‘metaethics’, ‘theoretical though ethics may have a bearing on these ethics’, ‘philosophical ethics’ and so on. two questions, as mathematics has on 122 Ethics physics; it is concerned with the question not prove the principle; otherwise the moral ‘Precisely what is one saying if one says reformer, who propounds for the first time that polygamy is wrong?’ a new moral principle, could be put out of 1 Relations Between these Inquiries. court all too easily. Still less does it fol- Throughout the history of the subject, low, from the fact that some limited set of the chief incentive to the undertaking of people hold some moral opinion, that that all three sorts of inquiry has been the opinion is right. hope of establishing conclusions of the (b) Descriptive ethics and ethics first kind (i.e. moral conclusions) by proper. The commonest way, however, in means of a philosophical inquiry. It is which it has been sought to bring descrip- from this motive that inquiries of the tive ethics to bear on moral questions is second and especially the third kinds not directly but indirectly. It has been have mostly been undertaken. Clearly thought that a descriptive ethical inquiry the study of the meaning of the moral might lead to conclusions about the mean- words is closely related to the study of ings of moral terms (conclusions, that is what makes arguments containing them to say, in ethics proper); and that in turn cogent or otherwise. One of the best these might be used to prove moral con- ways of obtaining a clear view of the clusions. Those who have argued in this subject is to consider the mutual rela- way have been attracted by a seductive tions between these three kinds of analogy between moral terms and other inquiry, and the bearing that they can predicates and adjectives. For example, have on one another. it might be held possible to prove in the (a) Descriptive ethics and morals. following way, to anyone who disputed it, Some writers have proceeded directly that post-boxes in England are red: we from descriptive ethical premises to should first establish by observation that moral (normative ethical) conclusions. everybody says that things are red when For example, the Greek HEDONIST Eudoxus they have a certain recognizable quality, argued that since everyone thought pleas- and that they are not red when they do not ure to be the good, it must be the good. have this quality; we should conclude from In a similar way some modern writers this, that ‘red’ means ‘having this qual- have held that the task of the moral ity’. This is the first step. We should then philosopher – the utmost he can do by ask our disputant to observe that post- way of establishing moral conclusions – boxes in England have this same quality; is to examine carefully the opinions that and since we have already established that are accepted by his society or by himself ‘having this quality’ is just what ‘red’ and reduce them to some sort of system. means, he can no longer deny that the This is to take received opinions as data, post-boxes are red. It might be thought and to regard as established a moral sys- possible to use the same argument in ethics tem that can be shown to be consistent to prove, for example, that certain kinds with them. This type of argumentation will of action are right. But unfortunately the not, however, appear convincing to any- analogy breaks down at both steps – at one who considers the fact that a person the step from descriptive ethics to ethics (e.g. in the ancient world) might have said proper, and at the step from ethics to ‘Everyone thinks that it is legitimate to morals. That conclusions about what keep slaves, but may it not be wrong?’ people mean by ‘right’, for example, can- Universal assent to a moral principle does not be proved by finding out what they Ethics 123 call right, is evident from the case of the wrong. Some other difference must moral reformer just mentioned. If he said remain between them (a moral differ- that slavery was not right, when slavery ence), which is neither a difference about was one of things universally agreed to be what the action is (for this they know in right, he would, if the proposed argument the fullest detail), nor about the meaning were valid, be like a man who said that of ‘wrong’ (for about this they are post-boxes were not red when everybody agreed). The plausible argument which agreed that they were red; we should be we have just rejected is a particular appli- able to accuse such a man of misusing the cation of a type of argument often used in word ‘red’ – for ‘red’ means the colour philosophy, and known as ‘the argument which post-boxes are, so how can he deny from the paradigm case’. Without dis- that they are red? But the moral reformer cussing here whether the argument is can deny that slavery is right while still cogent in other fields, we can see that it is using the word ‘right’ in the same sense as not in ethics. The assumption that this that in which his contemporaries, who argument has unrestricted force is linked think that slavery is right, are using it. with the assumption that to discover the This example shows that there is an impor- use of a word is always to discover to tant difference between moral words and what things it is correctly applied. This is words like ‘red’ – a difference which not true of words like ‘is’ and ‘not’; and it invalidates the superficially plausible seems not to be true of moral words argument from descriptive-ethical prem- either. This assumption (to take another ises to conclusions about the meanings of example) leaves us with no way of distin- moral words. guishing between the uses of the two sets (c) Ethics and morals. But the second of words ‘Shut the door’ and ‘You are step in the proposed argument is also going to shut the door’; for all the words invalid, for a very similar reason. We can- in both sets, in so far as they ‘apply’ to not, even if we can establish the meaning anything, apply to the same things. of the moral words, pass from this to con- 2 Naturalism. The arguments so far clusions of substance about moral ques- considered and rejected all exhibit a com- tions. This may be shown by the following mon feature. In them, moral conclusions example: suppose that there are two peo- are allegedly derived from premises which ple who know everything about a certain are not themselves moral judgements: in action (including its circumstances and the one case the premise was a statement consequences), and still dispute, as they of sociological fact about what people may, about whether it was wrong. Since think on a moral question; in the other it they are in dispute, they must be using was a statement of linguistic fact about the word ‘wrong’ with the same meaning; how (with what meaning) people use a for if this were not so, there would be no certain word, together with another prem- real dispute, only a verbal confusion. But ise giving the description of an action since they can continue to dispute, even whose wrongness is in dispute. This fea- though they are in agreement about the ture is common to a great many arguments meaning of the word, it follows that which have been used by ethical thinkers; knowledge of the meaning of the word and it has been frequently stated that any cannot by itself, or even in conjunction argument which derives moral conclu- with what they both know about the sions from non-moral premises must be action, determine whether the action is invalid. A famous statement to this effect 124 Ethics was made by HUME (see Treatise, book 3, right. To be a naturalist, a utilitarian of this part I). Hume based his rejection of such sort would have to hold, in addition, that arguments on the general logical principle the view was true in virtue of the meaning that a valid argument cannot proceed from of ‘right’ – that is to say, that ‘right’ meant premises to some ‘new affirmation’ not ‘producing the greatest balance of pleas- contained, at any rate implicitly, in the ure over pain’. If the naturalist refrains premises. The correctness of Hume’s view from trying to prove the theory in this way, (‘no ought from an is’) depends, there- ‘refutations of naturalism’ pass it by. fore, on the assumption that moral judge- It must also be noticed that, on this ments contain an element in their meaning definition of naturalism, to call a defini- (the essentially moral element) which is tion of a moral word ‘naturalistic’ does not equivalent, even implicitly, to any- not imply that the properties in terms of thing in the conjunction of the premises. which it is being defined are empirical, It is this assumption which is challenged that is, perceived by the five senses. As by those ethical theories known as G. E. MOORE, who coined the expression NATURALIST. The term ‘naturalist’ has ‘the naturalistic fallacy’, observed, the been used in a variety of ways, but will be same ‘fallacy’, as he thought it was, is used here as follows: an ethical theory is committed if the properties are ‘proper- naturalistic if, and only if, it holds that ties of supersensible reality’, given only moral judgements are equivalent in mean- that they are not moral properties. Thus a ing to statements of non-moral fact. philosopher who defines ‘right’ as mean- It must be noted that, on this defini- ing ‘in accordance with the will of God’ tion, a statement of moral opinion (that is is, in this sense, a naturalist, unless the to say a statement in the first of the three word ‘God’ itself is held to be implicitly a classes listed earlier) cannot be called nat- moral term. The most important argument uralistic; for naturalism is a view about by which Moore sought to ‘refute natural- the meanings of moral terms, and nobody ism’ may be restated as follows, using is committed to any form of it who merely the example just quoted: if ‘right’ meant uses moral terms without taking up a view the same as ‘in accordance with the will about their meaning, definition or analy- of God’, then, ‘whatever is in accordance sis. In general, no view can be naturalistic with the will of God is right’ would mean unless, in the statement of the view, the the same as ‘whatever is in accordance moral words occur inside quotation marks with the will of God is in accordance with or a ‘that’-clause or are mentioned (not the will of God’; but according to our used) in some other way, and remarks are actual use of the words it seems to mean made about their meaning or their equiv- more than this mere tautology. (Note that, alence to other expressions. That is to say, as before, there is nothing in this argument only statements in ethics proper, as con- which forces anybody to abandon the trasted with descriptive ethics and with moral view that whatever is in accordance morals, can be naturalistic. Thus the view with the will of God and only what is in that the right action (the action which accordance with it is right. It is only the ought to be done) in a given situation, is attempt to make this view true by defini- that which would produce the greatest tion which is naturalistic.) It has been balance of pleasure over pain, is not natu- held, though not by Moore, that what ralistic, since it does not seek to define is wrong with naturalistic definitions is ‘right’, but only to say what actions are that they leave out the commendatory Ethics 125 or prescriptive element in the meaning a person ‘good’ or an act ‘right’, we call of words such as ‘right’ and ‘good’ (see them good or right because they have cer- below). tain other characteristics – for example, an 3 . The work of Moore act is called wrong because it is an act of convinced certain philosophers that natu- promise-breaking, or good because it is ralistic definitions of moral terms had to the act of helping a blind man across a be ruled out. But Moore and his immedi- road. The intuitionists sometimes express ate followers showed a great reluctance this feature of moral adjectives by saying to abandon what had been the traditional that they are the ‘names’ of ‘consequen- view of the way in which words have tial’ or ‘supervenient’ properties. Even if meaning. It was taken for granted that the we reject the idea that all adjectives have way to explain the meaning of an adjec- meaning by being the names of properties, tive, for example, was to identify the prop- this remains an important discovery. It has erty which it ‘stands for’ or ‘is the name sometimes been thought that Hume’s ‘no of’; all adjectives have the same logical ought from an is’ was a denial that we can, function, that of ‘standing for’ a property, for example, call an act good because it is and the differences between them are not an act of a certain kind. This is a misun- differences in logical character, but sim- derstanding; what Hume was denying was ply differences between the properties for that it logically followed, from an act’s which they ‘stand’. When, therefore, it being of a certain kind, that it is good. The became accepted that moral adjectives did difference is crucial, but obscure. It has not stand for ‘natural’ (i.e. non-moral) been one of the main problems of recent properties, it was concluded that they ethics to give a satisfactory account of the must stand for peculiar moral properties, connection between, for example, good- thought to be discerned by ‘intuition’. ness and what were called ‘good-making There are two main forms of ethical characteristics’. The intuitionists reject the intuitionism. According to the first, we are naturalist explanation that this connection supposed to intuit the rightness, goodness, is due to an equivalence in meaning etc. of concrete individual acts, people, between moral words and words describ- etc.; general moral principles are arrived ing the characteristics of things in virtue at by a process of induction, that is, by of which we apply moral words to generalization from a large number of them. But they give no adequate positive these instances. According to the second, account of the connection, contenting what we intuit are the general principles themselves, for the most part, with saying themselves (e.g. ‘promise-breaking is that it is a ‘synthetic necessary’ connection wrong’); by applying these, we ascertain discerned by ‘intuition’. The explanatory the moral properties of individual acts and force of this account is impaired by the people. The second view has the of failure to say clearly what ‘intuition’ is emphasizing a very important fact about or what is meant by ‘synthetic necessary the logical character of moral words, connection’. namely that the moral adjectives, etc. But the chief argument brought against differ from most other adjectives in the of all sorts is the following way: we call a thing ‘red’, for following, which is to be compared with example, because of its redness and noth- that in the paragraph on Ethics and ing else; it could be similar in every other morals. Intuition is supposed to be a way way and yet not be red. But when we call of knowing, or determining definitively 126 Ethics and objectively, the truth or falsity of a ‘ought’ means) it is not naturalistic (see given moral judgement. But suppose that p. 124); but it is open to the objection that two people differ on a moral question, and it makes it impossible to say that another that both, as may well happen, claim to person’s moral judgement is wrong – intuit the correctness of their own views. indeed, it has the paradoxical conse- There is then no way left of settling the quence that two people who differ about a question, since each can accuse the other moral question must both be right. This of being defective in intuition, and there seems to be at variance with the common is nothing about the themselves use of the moral words; we have here an to settle which it is. It is often objected illustration of a way in which ethics (the further, that what ‘moral intuitions’ people study of the uses of the moral words) can have will depend on their various moral have a negative bearing on a moral ques- upbringings and other contingent causes. tion – it enables us to rule out a moral In fact, the intuitionists, who often claim view as involving logical paradox, but not to be ‘objectivists’, belie this claim by to prove one. It may also be objected to appealing to a faculty of intuition which relativism that it does not do what a moral is unavoidably subjective. This illustrates principle is expected to do, namely guide the extreme difficulty, to be referred to us in making our decisions on particular later, of stating any clear distinction moral questions. For if I am wondering between ‘objective’ and ‘subjective’ in this what to do, it is no use being told that I field. Intuitionism has waned since the ought to do what I think I ought to do; for early years of the twentieth century. the trouble is that I do not know what to Writers on ethics have tended, either to think. Relativism is mentioned, not for its revert to some form of naturalism, open or own value, but because confusion of other disguised, or to pass on to one of the kinds views with it has bedevilled nearly all dis- of view, to be described later, which recog- cussion of the views which we are about nize that ‘good’, ‘right’ etc. have, logically, to consider. These are by contrast all eth- a quite different role from that of other ical views (i.e. views about the meanings adjectives, and that it may be misleading to of the moral words). They do not commit call them ‘the names of properties’. the holder of them to the acceptance 4 Relativism and . Great or rejection of any substantive moral confusion has been caused in ethics by opinions. lumping together, under the title ‘subjec- The first is a form of naturalism, which tivism’, theories which are quite different is not now often avowedly held, but dates from one another. Before considering from a time when it was thought that a subjectivism proper, we must first distin- moral sentence must have meaning in the guish from it the moral view which is best same way as other indicative sentences, called RELATIVISM. A typical relativist namely by being used to state that a cer- holds that we ought to do that, and that tain object possesses a certain property only, which we think we ought to do; on (see earlier). It being implausible, this theory, the mere having of a certain for many reasons (some of which have moral opinion by a person or a society been given on p. 124), to hold that the makes that moral opinion correct for that properties in question are ‘objective’ person or society. Since this is a moral properties of objects, it was suggested doctrine and not an ethical one (i.e. since that they are ‘subjective’ properties – that it says what we ought to do, not what is, properties of being related in certain Ethics 127 ways to states of mind of the maker of the the case of imperatives (though it is not statement in question. Thus ‘he is a good suggested that moral judgements resem- man’ was held to mean ‘he, as a matter of ble these in all respects). An imperative psychological fact, arouses in me a certain expresses neither an objective statement mental state (e.g. a feeling of approval)’. nor a subjective statement, since it does This theory makes a moral judgement not express a statement at all; nor does it equivalent to a descriptive ethical state- express a ‘subjective command’; for it is ment (see introductory section on p. 120). hard to understand what this would be. If it is taken literally, it is open to the So, if it be asked whether the command objection that it makes moral disagree- ‘shut the door’ is about the door or about ment impossible. For if two people say, the mind of the speaker, the answer, inso- one that a man is a good man, and the far as the question is meaningful, must be other that he is not, they are, on this view, ‘about the door’. And in the same way the not disagreeing with each other; for one moral judgement ‘he is a good man’ may of them means that he (the speaker) is in be held to be, in the strongest possible a certain mental state, and the other sense, ‘about’ the man in question, and means that he (the second speaker) is not not about the mind of the speaker, even by in that state; and between these statements someone who holds that it is not (in the there is no contradiction. narrow sense) a statement of fact about Because of this objection, the view has the man. Thus criticisms of the theories to been generally abandoned in favour of be described in ‘outstanding problems’, others which hold that in a moral judge- on the ground that they turn moral judge- ment we are, not giving information about ments into remarks about the mind of the our mental state, but engaging in a use of speaker, are misdirected, and should be language different from the giving of reserved for subjectivism as described information. This development has been here. The same applies to the criticism that part of the recent realization by philoso- these theories ‘make what is right depend phers that it is a mistake to regard all kinds on what the speaker thinks is right’. of sentences as having the same logical Second, the division between those character and role. For at least two rea- views which hold that moral judgements sons it is best to confine the name ‘sub- are used to give some sort of information, jectivism’ to the view just considered, and and those which hold that they have a quite not to extend it to those described below. different function, is the most fundamental First of all, the terms ‘objective’ and ‘sub- in ethics, and should not be concealed by jective’ have a tolerably clear meaning, and using a term which straddles it. Views of draw a graspable distinction, when they are the first sort (e.g. all the ethical views so used to mark the difference between state- far considered) are called ‘descriptivist’; ments of ‘objective’ fact about objects, and views of other kinds, including those con- statements of ‘subjective’ fact about sidered in the rest of this explanation, are the speaker (though even here there might called ‘non-descriptivist’. be confusion; for in a sense it is an objec- 5 Emotivism. Though emotivism tive fact that the mind of the speaker is in was, historically, the first kind of non- a certain state). But the distinction gets lost descriptivism to be canvassed, it is a mis- when moral judgements are held not to be take to think of it as the only kind, or even statements of fact, in the narrow sense, as commanding general support among at all. This may be seen by comparing non-descriptivists at the present time 128 Ethics

(1960). It is common even now for non- judgement. This specifically moral ele- descriptivists of all kinds to be mislead- ment in the meaning is the function which ingly called ‘emotivists’, even though these judgements have of expressing their theories do not depend on any refer- attitudes and persuading or influencing ence to the emotions. Emotivism proper people to adopt them, towards the act embraces a variety of views, which may described. Stevenson’s views did not, of be held concurrently. According to the course, find favour with descriptivists; best known, moral judgements have it and even non-descriptivists who wrote as their function to ‘express’ or ‘evince’ after him, while recognizing the seminal the moral emotions (e.g. approval) of the importance of his work, have for the most speaker. According to another version, part rejected the implied irrationalism of their use is to arouse or evoke similar the view that the only specifically moral emotions in the person to whom they element in the meaning of moral terms is are addressed, and so stimulate him to their emotive force. This, it has been felt, actions of the kind approved. A. J. AYER makes moral judgements too like rhetoric when he wrote Language, Truth and Logic or propaganda, and does insufficient (1936), which contains the most famous justice to the possibility of reasoned argu- exposition of emotivism, attributed both ment about moral questions. If moral these functions to moral judgements; argument is possible, there must be some but he has since abandoned emotivism, logical relations between a moral judge- though remaining a non-descriptivist. ment and other moral judgements, even if C. L. STEVENSON put forward a kindred Hume was right to hold that a moral judge- view, with the difference that, instead of ment is not derivable from statements of the word ‘emotion’, he most commonly non-moral fact. Stevenson has some used the word ‘attitude’. An attitude was important things to say about moral argu- usually thought of by him as a disposition ments, but his account of them has been to be in certain mental states or to do cer- generally held to be inadequate. tain kinds of actions. Stevenson’s ‘atti- 6 Outstanding problems. Most of the tudes’ are much closer to the ‘moral main problems which occupy ethical principles’ of the older philosophers (espe- thinkers at the present time (1960) arise cially ARISTOTLE) than is usually noticed by from the complexity of the meaning of those who use the misleading ‘objectivist– moral terms, which combines two very subjectivist’ classification. Stevenson different elements. made the important qualification to his (a) The evaluative or prescriptive view that, besides their ‘emotive mean- meaning (these more non-committal ing’, moral judgements may also have a terms are now often preferred to ‘descriptive meaning’. In one of his sev- Stevenson’s ‘emotive meaning’). It is not eral ‘patterns of analysis’ the meaning of necessary, and probably false, to attribute a moral judegment is analysed into two to moral judgements, as such, any impul- components: (1) a non-moral assertion sive or causative force or power to make about, for example, an act (explicable nat- or induce us to do what they enjoin; but uralistically in terms of empirical proper- even descriptivists sometimes admit that ties of the act); and (2) a specifically moral moral judgements have the function of component (the emotive meaning) whose guiding conduct. It is indeed fairly evi- presence prevents a naturalistic account dent that in many typical cases we ask, for being given of the meaning of the whole example, ‘what ought I to do?’ because Ethics 129 we have to decide what to do, and think objection is to point out that in such cases that the answer to the ‘ought’ question has either the chooser is unable to resist the a bearing on our decision greater and temptation (as is indicated by the expres- more intimate than that possessed by sion ‘weakness of will’; cf. also St Paul, answers to questions of non-moral fact. Romans 7, 23); or else he thinks the thing To take another example, it is fairly evi- bad or wrong only in some weaker, con- dent that there is an intimate connection ventional sense, having the descriptive between thinking A better than B, and pre- meaning of ‘bad’ or ‘wrong’ but lacking ferring A to B, and between the latter and their prescriptive force. being disposed to choose A rather than B. (b) The descriptive meaning. The sec- This intimate connection is emphasized ond main feature of moral judgements in the old tag (whose substance goes back is that which distinguishes them from to SOCRATES): ‘whatever is sought, is imperatives: whenever we make a moral sought under the appearance of its being judgement about, for example, an act, we good’. It would follow from this that to must make it because of something about call a thing good is thereby to offer guid- the act, and it always makes sense to ask ance about choices; and the same might what this something is (though it may be said of the other moral terms. be hard to put a reply into words). This Descriptivists, however, refuse to admit (although it has been denied by some that this feature is part of the meaning of thinkers) follows from the ‘consequen- moral terms. tial’ character of moral ‘properties’ (see Their principal opponents, who may p. 125). To every particular moral judge- be called ‘prescriptivists’, hold that it is ment then, there corresponds a universal part of the meaning. Moral judgements, judgement to the effect that a certain fea- on this view, share with imperatives the ture of the thing judged is, so far as it characteristic that to utter one is to com- goes, a reason for making a certain moral mit oneself, directly or indirectly, to some judgement about it. For instance, if I say sort of precept or prescription about that a particular act is good because it is actual or conceivable decisions or the act of helping a blind man across a choices. In typical cases, disagreement road, I seem to be adhering thereby to the with a moral judgement is displayed by universal judgement that it is good to help failure to act on it – as when someone has blind people across roads (and not merely told me that the right thing to do is such this particular blind man across this par- and such, and I immediately do the oppo- ticular road). Those who accept this argu- site. Such a view does not, like the emo- ment may be called ‘universalists’; and tive theory, make moral argument their opponents, who do not, may be impossible; for according to some pre- called ‘particularists’. A universalist is scriptivists logical relations may hold not committed to the view that, if it is a between prescriptions as well as between good act to help a blind man across a road ordinary statements. on this occasion, it would be a good act Prescriptivists have to face, like on all occasions (e.g. it would not be Socrates, the difficulty that in cases of a good act if the blind man was known to so-called ‘weakness of will’ one may be hopelessly lost and his destination choose to do something which one thinks lay on this side of the road); he is com- bad or wrong. The most promising line mitted only to the view that it would be for prescriptivists to take in answer to this a good act in the absence of something 130 Evil to make a difference between the two worked out in some detail (though acts – something more than the mere obscurely) by KANT and his followers. numerical difference between the acts. In certain cases it may be a powerful argu- The universalist thesis is closely ment, if a man is contemplating some act, connected with the thesis that moral to ask what it is about the act which judgements, besides their function as pre- makes him call it right, and whether, if scriptions, have also a descriptive mean- some other act possessed the same fea- ing (see p. 125). On this view, in calling tures, but his own role in it were different, an act, for example, good, we are com- he would judge it in the same way. This mending it (the prescriptive element in type of argument occurs in two famous the meaning), but commending it because passages of the Old and of something about it. These two elements (2 Samuel 12, 7 and Matthew 18, 32). It are well summarized by the Oxford has been held that a judgement is not a English ’s first definition of moral judgement unless the speaker is ‘good’: ‘the most general adjective of prepared to ‘universalize his maxim’. But commendation, implying the existence in this raises the vexed question of the crite- a high, or at least satisfactory, degree of ria for calling judgements ‘moral judge- characteristic qualities which are either ments’ – a question which is beyond the admirable in themselves or useful for scope of this definition. This question, some purpose’. The word ‘characteristic’ and the whole problem of the relation is important; it draws attention to the fact between the prescriptive and the descrip- that the word which follows ‘good’ makes tive elements in the meaning of moral a difference to the qualities which a thing judgements, continues to tax ethical has to have in order to be called good (e.g. thinkers. (R.M.H.) a good strawberry does not have to have the same qualities as a good man). In the Evil The fact that many things go case of some words (e.g. ‘knife’), if we badly, often through no human fault, is know what they mean, we know some of obviously a problem for those who the conditions that have to be fulfilled believe in a benevolent, powerful and before we can call a thing of that kind wise God. As HUME put it in his Dialogues good. Some philosophers (e.g. PLATO and Concerning (published Aristotle) have held that the same is true posthumously in 1779): ‘Is he willing to of all words – that, for example, if we prevent evil, but not able? then he is could determine ‘the nature of man’ we impotent. Is he able but not willing? should therefore be able to say what then is he malevolent. Is he both able and makes a man a good man. But this type of willing? Whence then is evil?’ Earlier argument may be based on a false analogy thinkers – notably LEIBNIZ in his between words like ‘man’ and words like (1710) and Alexander Pope (1688–1744) ‘knife’. in his Essay on Man (1733) – had sought A more promising way of bringing the to show that evils were no more than universalist thesis to bear on moral argu- appearances, due to our adopting a partial ments (and thus to some extent satisfying and limited perspective on the world: those who insist that ethical studies once the universe was seen intelligently should be relevant to moral questions) is and as a whole it would become evident that exemplified by the ‘Golden Rule’ and that in reality this was ‘the best of all Existentialism 131 possible worlds’, and that ‘whatever is, is be classed as existentialist, whereas the right’. This optimistic line of thought Platonic essentialist tradition should he seems to have lost much of its appeal viewed as asserting the priority of essence following the disaster that befell Lisbon over existence. on 1 November 1755: the people of the 2 The task of the moral philosopher city were celebrating All Saint’s Day when is seen as continuous with that of the it was struck by an earthquake, followed novelist or dramatist. (SARTRE and MARCEL by a fire and tidal wave, which together achieved distinction as writers and drama- took some 60,000 human lives. Shortly tists as well as philosophers.) In this one afterwards, VOLTAIRE tried to make a may discern a continuity between existen- laughing stock of Leibniz’s optimism in tialist philosophizing and PHENOMENOLOG- his story Candide (1759). ROUSSEAU was ICAL criticism of KANT’s formalistic ethics. unamused and unpersuaded, and – like The existentialist bias in favour of the par- KANT and HEGEL after him – thought that ticular and the concrete conflicts with reason obliges us to keep our spirits up Kant’s attempt to lay bare the universal and to believe that, in the long run, every- principle of all moral action, though it har- thing will make sense and justice will be monises with his doctrine of the primacy done. During the twentieth century, the of practical over theoretical reason. broad old notion of evil as an attribute of 3 Existentialist thought is some- the natural world was increasingly con- times profoundly religious (as in founded with the specific idea of moral KIERKEGAARD), and sometimes overtly evil, in other words deliberate viciousness atheistic (as in Sartre). But in existential- or sin – a development that Hannah ist atheism there is discernible an almost ARENDT sought to counter in Eichmann in obsessionally religious note. Thus Albert Jerusalem: a Report on the Banality of Camus’ novel The Plague (1947) displays Evil (1963). See also BOETHIUS, THEISM, a preoccupation with the problem of an STOICISM. {J.R.} atheistic sanctity which is unmistakably religious in its undertones. Existentialism ‘Existentialism’ is a 4 Kierkegaard saw himself as offering name for a philosophical trend or ten- a corrective to the dialectical rationalism dency whose central figure is HEIDEGGER, of HEGEL, and its philosophical inter- and of which the following marks may be pretation of the Christian religion. One noted. might say that professional philosophers 1 Abstract theory is criticized for will always find in the writings of existen- obscuring the roughnesses and untidi- tialist thinkers, resources to correct nesses of actual life. This may take the restricted and confined . One shape, as in AUGUSTINE’s Confessions, of a might mention in this connection profound self-analysis, or as in PASCAL’s WITTGENSTEIN’s regard for Augustine’s Pensées, of an insistence that the mathe- Confessions and the stories of Tolstoy. The matical methods of the exact sciences enlargement of the academic imagination must be contested in the name of a flexi- by recollection of the actual poignancy of ble and less restricted concept of the var- human life and experience is often ied and different styles of commerce with achieved through insights to be found in the natural and human environment. the diffuse, and sometimes unbalanced, Étienne GILSON claims that AQUINAS should writings of the existentialists. 132 Existentialism

The influence of existentialism in ANSELM than to existentialist thinkers. contemporary theology is better sought Indeed members of his school have been in the work of , and of known to accuse those who pursue Rudolf Bultmann than of Karl Barth. The the method of existentialism in the- latter’s early work owes much to Plato as ology of continuing the disastrous well as to Kierkegaard and Dostoevsky; inheritance of Augustine’s self- and his later work is more in debt to absorption. (D.M.M.) F

Fallacy The term ‘fallacy’ is used in not been raining; therefore the roads will LOGIC to refer to an invalid argument or not be wet’. form of argument. Strictly, therefore, only 2 Petitio principii (‘begging the ques- arguments, not statements, can be said to tion’). This involves presupposing a be fallacious; an argument with true premise which cannot be known to be true premises and conclusion may be a fallacy, unless the conclusion is known to be true. while an argument with false premises Sometimes it is said that to take as a and conclusion may be exempt from premise a proposition which cannot be fallacy. If the premises of an argument true unless the conclusion is true involves are true and the conclusion false there ; but in that case, as must be a fallacy in it; in no other case some have not shirked saying, every valid can we determine whether an argument argument would be a case of begging the involves a fallacy simply by considering question. the truth or falsity of the statements it 3 Simple conversion. This means con- comprises. cluding from ‘all A is B’ to ‘all B is A’; on It should be noted that the term ‘fallacy’ the other hand it is of course valid to applies properly only to a deductive step conclude from ‘no A is B’ to ‘no B is A’. in an argument (see DEDUCTION); what 4 Undistributed middle. This fallacy would be a fallacy in a deduction might consists in arguing SYLLOGISTICALLY with well be perfectly sound in a merely prob- premises in which the term occurring in able argument. There is a fallacy known both premises (the ‘middle term’) is not as the fallacy of affirming the consequent used in either premise to refer to every- which is of the form ‘if p then q; but q; thing to which it can refer (to its whole therefore p’. An example would be ‘if it ‘extension’). Thus in the syllogism ‘all has been raining the roads will be wet; but liars are rogues and all thieves are rogues, the roads are wet; therefore it has been therefore some thieves are liars’, the mid- raining’. Here the conclusion does not dle term ‘rogues’ is undistributed in both follow, for there may in fact have been no premises; in neither is anything said about rain but only a burst main; but clearly wet the whole class of rogues. roads are a good ground for suspecting 5 Ignoratio elenchi. This is to produce that it has been raining. a proof which validly proves something, The ways in which arguments can be but not what it was required to prove. bad are numberless, and many of the 6 Equivocation. An argument in which fallacies named in traditional logic books a term is used in different senses at differ- are of little interest. But some of them are ent stages of the argument. worth knowing. 7 Post hoc ergo propter hoc. An argu- 1 Denying the antecedent. This fallacy ment from the fact that something has the form: ‘if p then q; but not p; there- happened after something else to the fore not q’; for example, ‘if it has been conclusion that it must have been caused raining the roads will be wet; but it has by it. Many superstitions are supported by 134 this argument; bad luck after walking turn to MATERIALISM and the theory of under a ladder or breaking a mirror or ALIENATION. [C.J.A.] spilling salt is held to be due to doing so. Feyerabend, Paul (1924–94) Viennese On the other hand, regular sequence is philosopher of science who worked mostly clearly a valid ground for an inductive in Britain and California. His inquiries argument to a causal relationship.(J.O.U.) brought him to the conclusion (similar to that of KUHN, but more melodramatic) Fatalism See FREEDOM OF THE WILL, that orthodox views of scientific progress DETERMINISM. are a myth, and that there is no such thing as ‘the scientific method’. His works Feminism See GENDER. include Against Method (1975) and Science in a Free Society (1978); his collected Feuerbach, Ludwig Andreas (1804–72) Philosophical Papers appeared in two Ludwig Feuerbach was born in Bavaria volumes in 1981. See also PHILOSOPHY OF and deeply influenced by HEGEL’S lectures SCIENCE, RELATIVISM. at the University of Berlin. He is best known for his Essence of Christianity Fichte, Johann Gottlieb (1762–1814) (1841) and his philosophical manifestos, Fichte was born into a poor peasant for example, Principles of the Philosophy family in Saxony, but with the aid of a of the Future (1843). Feuerbach’s philos- local landed proprietor he studied theo- ophy (or ‘anti-philosophy’ as he conceived logy, philology and philosophy at Jena it) was a HUMANISM and a naturalism: the and Leipzig. He met KANT in 1791 and touchstone was ‘man on the basis of became a close student and disciple. In nature’. His position is distinguished from 1794 he was made professor at Jena but crude empiricism by a phenomenological was dismissed in 1799 on a charge of approach derived from his Hegelian train- teaching atheism. An ardent patriot, he ing. Thus his critique of RELIGION is a rein- delivered his Addresses to the German terpretation of it as an unconscious Nation in Berlin in 1807–8 and was influ- projection of truths about humanity, espe- ential in the rebirth of after its cially its ‘species being’ (Gattungswesen): defeats at the hands of . He while individuals are limited, humanity as became professor at the new University of a whole actualizes its Gattungswesen in Berlin in 1810. its totality, which is expressed in religious Fichte held that there were two possible imagery as God’s plenitude. It is experi- methods in philosophy: dogmatism, which enced most immediately when individuals deduces the idea from the thing, and IDE- recognize each other in an I-Thou relation- ALISM which deduces the thing from the ship. This humanist reading of religion idea. Which method one follows depends influenced modern theology. Feuerbach’s on one’s mental make-up, but idealism is critique of philosophy follows the same preferable since we cannot explain con- course: speculation hypostatizes the sciousness satisfactorily in terms of being, abstractions generated in human thought, as dogmatism would do, but can construct as if they had a real existence apart from it. experience, though not the thing-in-itself, But truth exists there in inverted form: from consciousness as a datum. Thus hence Feuerbach advised readers of Hegel Fichte discarded the thing-in-itself and to ‘reverse subject and predicate’. His work instead of deriving the nature of the think- encouraged MARX and ENGELS in their ing self from the manifold of experience, Foucault, Michel 135 like Kant, he set out to deduce the mani- Foot, Philippa (1920–) In a series of fold from the activity of the ego. The clear- concentrated articles starting in the est statement of this not very easy doctrine 1950s, the English moral philosopher is perhaps his Introduction to the Theory of has attacked EMOTIVISM and Knowledge (1797). PRESCRIPTIVISM by arguing that moral Fichte’s ethical views were developed considerations are ‘necessarily related in in Theory of Morals (1798). Moral action some way to good and harm’, and that must spring from conscience rather than there is no separate ‘evaluative element’ obedience to authority. The basic ethical in the meaning of moral terms (see demand is that we should act according to ETHICS). Like NIETZSCHE, she sees no log- our conception of duty, in a way we would ical reason why people ought to care acknowledge as ours without reservation about morality; but she holds that ‘moral- through all time. Thus the moral life is a ity may be stronger rather than weaker if series of actions leading to the complete we look this fact in the face’. Her mono- spiritual freedom of the ego. Moral evil graph Natural Goodness appeared in arises from a lazy incapacity to think out 2001, and her principal papers are col- our actions to the full. Certain individuals lected in Virtues and Vices (1978) and have the power to act morally in a pre- Moral Dilemmas (2002). [J.R.] eminent way and their example is an inspi- ration to others; this is the basis of religion, Foucault, Michel (1926–84) French and a church is really no more than an philosopher and historian, born in Poitiers, association for stimulating and strengthen- who worked most of his life in Paris. ing moral conviction. Foucault’s work is a distinctive fusion of The State, according to Fichte, has the philosophical and historical investigations. task of ensuring that citizens limit their From the HEGELIAN tradition which domi- freedom by regard for the freedom of nated the post-war French intellectual others; but it cannot do this unless it also climate of his youth, it retains two major attempts to secure the same rights for all, traits: a concern to theorize relations which it can do only if it ensures property between general history and the history of and economic self-dependence for all. In thought, and a preoccupation with the the light of this view Fichte was led to human subject, or with how individuals are some socialistic doctrines about economic constituted as knowing, knowable and self- matters, including the transference of all knowing beings. It discards, from the same foreign trade to the state. But, contrary to tradition, the idea of history as a total received legend, he did not share the process with an intelligible overall mean- organic view of the state typical of many ing and direction. It also rejects the goal of German idealists. (J.O.U.) a definitive science (or sciences) of the human subject. Fodor, Jerry (1935– ) American Each of Foucault’s historical studies philosopher and cognitive scientist. Fodor deals with concepts which have been used believes that we think in a ‘language of in particular periods (usually, Europe thought’ that is realized in the computa- from the seventeenth century to the pres- tional structure of the brain. He is the ent; in his last books, Greek and Roman author of The Language of Thought Antiquity) and thematic fields (psychia- (1975), The Modularity of Mind (1983) try, medicine, linguistics, penal practice, and Psychosemantics (1987). sexual conduct) to articulate systems of 136 Frankfurt School thought about human beings. Foucault exercise it more critically and freely. His examines the intimate and sometimes work ends in a reassertion of the practical morally disconcerting relationships and moral value of philosophy, which, as between such and the social an effort to think the unthought, is always practices, techniques and power-relations a thought against one’s self and a readi- through which they are developed and ness to ‘refuse what we are’. [C.G.] applied. One of his recurring lessons is Frankfurt School An Institute for that the nature and limits of the thinkable, Social Research was founded as an both in theory and in practice, have autonomous section of the University of changed more often, more radically, and Frankfurt in 1923. Its first director, Carl more recently than we tend to suppose. Grünberg, saw it as a centre for historical Concepts such as those of normality or and sociological inquiry inspired by sexuality, through which we now think Marxist theory. Within a few years, how- our selves and our identity, are contin- ever, leading members of the Institute, gent and potentially dispensable histori- including HORKHEIMER, ADORNO, BEN- cal constructs. Foucault acknowledges JAMIN and MARCUSE were giving equal NIETZSCHE’s inspiration. His later work, emphasis to purely theoretical work, notably (1975), incorporating elements of PSYCHOANALY- contains a ‘genealogy of morals’ which SIS and EXISTENTIALISM into a new form of demonstrates, for example, that punish- Marxism known as ‘critical theory’. ment is a practice whose meaning can Critical theory was always centrally con- change fundamentally over time, and that cerned with problems of aesthetics, cul- familiar values may have forgotten, acci- ture and MODERNISM; it was Hegelian in dental and possibly ignoble antecedents. inspiration and strongly opposed to Soviet Like their historical content, the ethi- Marxism and DIALECTICAL MATERIALISM. cal implications of Foucault’s analyses are During the Nazi period the so-called complex and challenging. Power and free- ‘Frankfurt School’ dispersed and eventu- dom are not seen as incompatible. Power, ally regrouped in New York; it moved or our capacity to act on others, is not an back to Frankfurt in 1949, where HABER- intrinsic evil, but an ineluctable social MAS emerged as its leading figure. [J.R.] fact. Freedom is a practice which can never be made safe by institutional guar- Freedom of the Will A cluster of antees. Our task is to invent modes of problems arises from an incompatibility, living which avert the risk of domination, real or apparent, between sets of beliefs the one-sided rigidification of power- none of which we are ready to abandon. relations. Enlightenment, the modern On the one hand we believe we can some- commitment to the pursuit of rationality, times choose whether to act in a certain is a fortunate fact but also a source of way or not; that we are responsible for so intrinsic dangers. The search for truth, acting or refraining from action; and that especially perhaps for the truth about our- we cannot be held responsible for those selves, is not a sure path to freedom. In parts of our history which do not lie within showing the historically various forms our choice. On the other hand we believe taken by the concern for truth, Foucault’s that nature is uniform, that whatever intention is not to repudiate that concern happens results from and can be explained as vain or culpable, but rather to assemble by a set of causes and conditions, and in analytical resources enabling us to particular that our actions result from our Frege, Gottlob 137 inherited character as modified by envi- (descriptive) natural laws. It is not however ronment. But if everything that happens is clear that in these contexts compulsion is determined by its context then it would the antithesis of freedom; and though I do seem that our actions and choices are too. not digest my food under compulsion it In particular, if our actions arise from an would be odd to say that I do it of my own inherited character as modified by our . environment, it would seem that we are no It is, however, true that the determinist more responsible for them than we are for at least need not think of laws as prescrip- our inherited character and environment. tive. Those who think that human actions Moreover a mere denial of the princi- are in some way prescribed are called fatal- ple of DETERMINISM does not obviously ists or predestinationists. According to the eliminate the problem; for if our actions doctrines of fatalism and do not arise out of our character as modi- some powerful entity (Fate or God) has a fied by environment it is hard to find any plan according to which things happen in a other account of their genesis which will prearranged fashion; the laws of nature can, make us responsible for them; certainly but need not, be thought of as prescribed by we are hardly to be held responsible for Fate or God as a method of executing the what occurs purely fortuitously. plan. Thus the fatalist and the predestina- No solution to these problems has tionist accept, as the philosophical deter- been found which commands anything minist does not, that human action is approaching general consent. Those purposively determined or compelled; but philosophers who regard determinism as doctrines of creation and divine foreknowl- incompatible with freedom and therefore edge raise notorious problems about human deny or weaken the deterministic thesis responsibility for the theologian. (J.O.U.) are usually called LIBERTARIANS; they have had no conspicuous success in finding an Frege, Gottlob (1848–1929) German account of human action which makes philosopher and logician. Frege’s histori- responsible choice intelligible. Those cal importance is twofold, as the founder of philosophers who retain the doctrine of modern mathematical logic, and as a determinism and accept that we do not in philosopher of LOGIC and of MATHEMATICS. a full sense have freedom to choose are He invented the notion of a formal system known as determinists. Many philoso- with the intention of attaining the ideal of phers, however, are unwilling to accept mathe-matical rigour, and in Concept- either of these paradoxical positions and Script (Begriffsschrift, 1879) gave what try instead to show that the opposition was at once the first example of a formal between determinism and freedom is only system and the first formulation of the sen- apparent. Thus they frequently say that the tential and predicate calculi. He drew for true antithesis to acting freely is acting the first time the distinction between under compulsion: the laws of nature are axioms and rules of inference and intro- descriptive, not prescriptive, for example, duced the device which distinguishes mod- the laws of motion describe how things ern logic from its predecessors and makes move, but do not compel them to move it superior to them, the use of variables and so. Consequently they maintain that we (nested) quantifiers. do in fact often act freely (not under Frege then turned to the application of constraint) even though our actions can his formal system to arithmetic. In doing always in theory be subsumed under so, he discovered the possibility of 138 Frege, Gottlob formalizing arithmetic without introduc- without symbolism. This is a classic of ing any non-logical concepts or axioms, philosophical exposition, and contains at least if the notion of a class or set is an entirely effective annihilation of then admitted as a logical one. This possibility prevalent philosophical accounts of num- rested on the famous definition of a cardi- bers and arithmetic. It also contains some nal number, later rediscovered by RUSSELL, profound philosophical insights. In order as the class of all classes which can be to answer such a question as ‘what is the mapped one-to-one on to a given class, number 1?’, Frege says, we have to give together with the definition of the ances- an account of the sense of sentences in tral of a relation (i.e. the transformation which the symbol ‘1’ occurs. We must not of a recursive into an explicit definition) make the mistake of asking for the mean- which had already been given in ing of a word in isolation: only in the con- Begriffsschrift. The definition of cardinal text of a sentence does a word have number follows naturally from the discov- meaning. If we ask for the meaning of a ery that the fundamental numerical notion word in isolation, we shall be inclined to is that of ‘just as many as’. An unreflective answer by describing the mental images person, asked what it meant to say that which are called up in us by hearing the there were just as many things of one kind word. But these mental images are entirely as of another, might reply that it meant that irrelevant to the sense of the word. The if one counted up the first set and then same word may call up different images counted up the second, one would arrive at in the minds of different people; different the same number. But Frege observes that words may call up the same image in the it is possible to say that a set has just as mind of one individual. In any case the many members as another set without image cannot determine the sense of sen- being able to say how many each has; thus tences containing the word. Elsewhere, if a waiter checks that there is just one Frege distinguishes two features of the knife to the right of each plate, then he meaning of a word: the images and asso- knows that there are just as many knives as ciations which the word calls up (which plates on the table. He has mapped the set Frege calls the ‘colouring’ of the word), of plates one-to-one on to the set of knives and the sense properly so called. Colouring by means of the function ‘object to the is subjective, and can vary from person to immediate right of’. Moreover, counting person. The sense of the word is objective; itself is a particular case of setting up a it is that feature of the meaning which one-to-one mapping; for what I in effect alone is relevant to the determination of do when I count a set of objects and find the truth-value of a sentence containing that there are n of them is to define a func- the word. When we know how to deter- tion on the set whose values are the num- mine the truth-value of sentences contain- bers from 1 to n. Finally, to explain ‘just as ing the word, then we know all there is to many as’ in terms of one-to-one mapping know about the sense of the word; noth- gives a sense to saying of some infinite set ing further can be demanded. Among the that it has just as many members as another most important sentences in which a sin- set, whereas of course an infinite set can- gular term can occur are those expressing not in the ordinary sense be counted. judgements of identity: Frege points out In order to prepare the way for the sym- that stipulating the criterion of identity bolic work Frege wrote The Foundations of for Xs is a necessary part of determining Arithmetic (1884), expounding his theory the sense of the word ‘X’. It is evident Frege, Gottlob 139 that the first part of WITTGENSTEIN’s proper name, and possesses a definite Investigations is deeply indebted to these sense, then it is a proper name; and it has ideas of Frege. a definite sense if we have assigned a In a famous article published in 1892, sense to all the sentences in which it can Frege introduced a distinction which had occur. Whether an expression has a refer- not occurred in The Foundations of ence or not depends upon whether we Arithmetic: that between the sense and the should ordinarily say that there was some- reference of a word. The reference of a thing answering to that designation; for singular term is the object about which example, ‘the perfect number between 10 we are speaking when we use a sen- and 30’ has a reference in virtue of the tence containing it. But we must not think fact that, as we should ordinarily say, with J. S. MILL that the meaning even of there is a number which is perfect and a proper name consists just in its having between 10 and 30. The idea that there is the reference that it has; its sense is not a further philosophical question as to uniquely determined by its reference. whether there really exists an object for Thus, to use an example given by Frege which the expression stands arises from elsewhere, one explorer might discover a the fallacy of ‘asking after the reference mountain to the south and give it a name, of a term in isolation’. Frege calls an while another explorer gave a different ‘object’ anything which is the reference of name to the same mountain seen to the a singular term; for him it is as legitimate north, and it might be many years before to speak of numbers (and other ‘abstract it was realized that it was the same moun- entities’) as objects as of men or cities as tain they had seen; the two names would objects. Hence arithmetic is a collection then have different senses but the same of truths about objects just as much as reference. The sense of the whole sentence any other science, and it is the task of the is a thought (somewhat analogous to the mathematician to discover these truths, ‘proposition’ of Russell); the thought is which hold good independently of whether what is primarily said to be true or false, we discover them or not. and is something immaterial though Frege distinguishes two fundamen- objective. Hence the reference cannot be a tally different types of expression, which constituent of the thought; if I am talking he calls ‘saturated’ and ‘unsaturated’. about Everest, the mountain itself cannot Singular terms are saturated, as are com- be part of the thought I express. All the plete sentences. Unsaturated expressions same, I do succeed in talking about the are predicates like ‘...is tall’, relational mountain itself, and not some shadowy expressions like ‘...bores...’ and func- correlate of it; the reference is in general tional expressions like ‘the capital of...’, something non-linguistic, something ‘in in short expressions containing gaps the world’. which become saturated when the gaps Whether an expression is a proper are filled by saturated expressions. name or not is for Frege a question only Unsaturated expressions are not merely of its logical behaviour. Thus ‘red’ and ‘5’ sequences of words which could be writ- (used as nouns) can count as proper names ten down on their own, for it is required since ‘red is a primary colour’ and ‘5 is that we can indicate where the gaps occur a prime number’ are logically of exactly and which gaps must be filled with the the same form as ‘Krushchev is a clever same term and which may be filled by man’. If an expression functions like a distinct terms (variables are a device for 140 Frege, Gottlob indicating this). Thus an unsaturated If we want to understand the nature of expression is a feature in common to concepts and relations, we must consider several sentences rather than an isolable functions in mathematics. The number 4 is part of those sentences. An unsaturated a certain function of the number 2, namely expression has a reference as well as a its square, but it is not itself that function. saturated one; but its reference is an In fact we cannot as it were isolate the unsaturated kind of thing, something function, but only particular numbers which can no more be thought of as stand- which are that function of certain other ing on its own than can the expression numbers. Indeed, Frege is able to regard which denotes it, and which is therefore concepts and relations as special cases of totally unlike an object. The reference of functions, since he holds that a sentence a predicate Frege calls a ‘concept’ (‘prop- as a whole has a reference, namely its erty’ would be a happier term in English), truth-value; concepts and relations are that of relational and functional expres- thus functions whose value is always truth sions ‘relations’ and ‘functions’. The ref- or falsity. This doctrine cuts clean through erence of an unsaturated expression is to the old controversy between NOMINALISTS be distinguished from its sense just as and REALISTS. For Frege the colour red, for sharply as the reference of a proper name example, is a genuine object, the reference from its sense; concepts, relations and of the noun ‘red’; but it cannot be the ref- functions are just as much ‘in the world’ erence of the adjective ‘red’, and is not as are objects. If we say that Jupiter is alluded to in the sentence ‘tulips are red’. larger than Mars, the relation holds The doctrine leads in Frege’s formal between the references of the words system to a rigorous distinction of type ‘Jupiter’ and ‘Mars’ and not between their between predicates; classes are, however, senses, and hence must be a feature of the treated as objects (entities of lowest type). world (the ‘realm of reference’) as are the This is an illustration of the interdepend- planets themselves. It is nevertheless an ence between Frege’s entity of a quite different kind: if an expres- and his formal system. A formal system is sion stands for a concept or a relation, it to be constructed not merely with an eye cannot stand for an object, and indeed it to convenience, but ought to mirror the cannot even make sense to try to say about essential features of language (this was in a concept what it makes sense to say about essence Frege’s retort to PEANO’s objection an object, or conversely. We do talk about that his assertion sign was formally redun- concepts, however: if I say, ‘God exists’, dant). This does not mean that a formal I am not ascribing a property to a particu- system has to copy natural language: the lar object, but talking about a certain kind use of variables and quantifiers, for of thing – about a property or concept – instance, solves the problem of generality and saying about it something that it makes not by giving a coherent account of the sense to say only about a property, namely devices used to indicate generality in nat- that there is something which has it, that ural languages, but by inventing a totally there is something of that kind. Number- new device (the theory of quantification statements are to be understood in the seems a better claimant for the title ‘para- same way: ‘there are three trees in the digm of philosophy’ than Russell’s theory garden’ says something about the concept of ). Natural language may trees in the garden, and cannot be under- actually be incoherent and can be criticized stood as an assertion about an object. as such; thus Frege regards it as a defect of Functionalism 141 natural language that in it singular terms founded. Nor did he receive much credit may be formed which have a sense but no in his lifetime. The work he had done was reference. The modern quest for an ideal transmitted to other logicians through the language was initiated by Frege. writings of Peano, Russell and WHITEHEAD; In 1893 and 1903 Frege published two only Dedekind, Zermelo and Russell gave volumes of his masterpiece, The Basic him the credit that was his due. He was Laws of Arithmetic, which sets out his con- little known among philosophers, although struction of arithmetic out of logic in his three of great importance were profoundly logical symbolism. The theory contains influenced by him – HUSSERL, Russell and ‘naïve set theory’, that is, the assumption Wittgenstein, followed later by logicians that for every property there exists a class such as Church, CARNAP and QUINE. having as members precisely those objects Perhaps Frege’s greatest achievement in which have that property. Shortly before philosophy, in which he was followed the publication of volume II Russell wrote by Wittgenstein though not by Russell, to Frege explaining the contradiction was to reject the Cartesian tradition that he had found in naïve set theory. Frege EPISTEMOLOGY is the starting-point of hastily added an appendix stating how philosophy, and reinstate philosophical the contradiction could, as he thought, logic as the foundation of the subject. have been avoided by weakening one of (M.A.E.D.) his axioms. Lesniewski later proved that a further contradiction would arise, but it is Freud, Sigmund (1856–1939) See doubtful if Frege discovered this. In any PSYCHOANALYSIS. case many of the proofs would have bro- ken down under the revised axiom, and Functionalism ‘Functionalism’ is the Frege lost heart for rewriting and com- name for an approach to psychology – pleting the book. At the end of his life he pioneered by William JAMES and revived came to consider the whole theory of by moderate materialists towards the end classes, and the project of deriving arith- of the twentieth century – in which men- metic from logic, an error. Frege pro- tal states are accounted for not in terms of duced little work of interest after 1903; their physiological basis but by their role and probably did not follow the work that in a larger patterns of causes and effect. was being done in the subject he had See also PHILOSOPHY OF MIND. G

Gadamer, Hans-Georg (1900–2002) ‘fused’ with others gathered from the past. German philosopher, the main exponent ‘Understanding’, he says, ‘must be con- and developer of the idea that HERMENEU- ceived as part of the process of the com- TICS is the most fundamental of all ing into being of meaning, in which the philosophical disciplines. Much of his significance of all statements – those of work takes the form of lucid and art and those of everything else that has self-effacing essays on the figures he sees been transmitted – is formed and made as dominating the HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY: complete’. not only his friend and teacher HEIDEGGER, Gadamer’s conception of understanding but also PLATO, ARISTOTLE, HEGEL and as part of ‘the historicity of our existence’ HUSSERL. Collectively, these essays plead also led him to reject the ‘prejudice against for a recognition that philosophy consists prejudice’ which he regarded as another essentially in the interpretation of philo- commonplace of modernity. Recognition sophical tradition. With the publication of of authority, he argued, is really a condi- his (1960), it became tion of knowledge, rather than its enemy. clear that this historical approach to philos- Our prejudices ‘constitute our being’: they ophy was based on a general theory about are the ‘biases of our openness to the the universal ontological significance of world’ and ‘the initial directedness of ‘the phenomenon of understanding’. our whole ability to experience’. Some Following Heidegger, Gadamer rejected left-wing critics such as HABERMAS have the idea that understanding or interpreta- seen this as involving a universal endorse- tion is the activity of a ‘subject’ con- ment of supine since, they fronting an independent ‘object’. This argue, it implies that any demand for dichotomy of subject and object is itself, radical change must be irrational and a he argues, a hasty interpretation with misinterpretation of tradition. Gadamer limited validity, and so are all the other however sees these criticisms as mistak- dualisms characteristic of MODERNITY, enly presupposing an ‘unconditional especially that between art and science. antithesis between tradition and reason’, For, in spite of KANT’s ‘subjectivisation of and an ‘objectivist’ view of the past. aesthetics’, art makes no less a ‘claim to Tradition, for Gadamer, does not ‘persist truth’ than science. Once we have discov- by nature because of the of what ered how truth can happen in art, accord- once existed’; on the contrary, it is ‘an ing to Gadamer, we can begin to see how element of freedom’ which perpetually understanding in general – including sci- ‘needs to be affirmed, embraced, culti- entific understanding – works. We will vated’. Hence even in the most fundamen- realize that it consists not in the pure and tal revolutions, according to Gadamer, ‘far timeless relation between subjective rep- more of the old is preserved...than resentations on the one hand and objective anyone knows’. [J.R.] phenomena on the other, but in histori- cally situated ‘events’ where interpreta- Gassendi, Pierre (1592–1655) French tive ‘horizons’ are enlarged, and eventually scientist, whose influence on the course Gender 143 of philosophical and scientific specula- The idea of gender as transcending tion was important and profound. Both bodily sex differences is of course a mod- HOBBES and DESCARTES knew him well ern one. But it has its roots in traditional and derived from him, not so much spe- philosophy, with its aspirations to the cific doctrines or solutions of philosophic transcendence of body by mind and con- problems but rather certain habits of sciousness; or of animality by human thought. Gassendi set himself the task of nature; or of the passivities of nature by providing an explanation for the doctrines autonomous will. And the concept of of the current orthodoxy that would be gender also has links with the traditional based upon the scientific theories of the philosophical concept of the person. ancient ATOMISTS and the moral views of Gender transcends sex. But for those fem- EPICURUS. For example, he regarded men- inists who rest claims to sexual equality tal activities as fully explicable in terms on the supposed fundamental sameness of of physical distortions of the material of men and women, it is itself transcended the brain and elaborated a complex theory by personhood. As persons, what sex we of ‘traces’ to account for the intelligent are is not essential to us. The rational behaviour of men and animals. Typically, mind is neither sexed nor gendered. his solution of the problem of the interac- The idea of the sexless soul, which tion of imperishable soul and perishable reinforces the idea of gender as change- brain was a para-mechanical one. If brain able, goes back to PLATO’s discussion of and soul pursued the same goals, they the female guardians in book five of the would for that reason act together, a doc- Republic. The sexual equality of the trine similar to, but much simpler than guardians rests on their sameness of soul, LEIBNIZ’s pre-established harmony. which co-exists with bodily difference. Gassendi also exerted a marked influence Women should be given the same educa- on moral and political theory, for he tion as men, to fit them for the same social reintroduced to Europe the Epicurean roles. But in Emile (1762) ROUSSEAU doctrine that the highest moral good was claimed that Plato had really excluded to be sought in ‘tranquility of soul’, a femaleness from the Republic: the female notion which is a likely progenitor of guardians did not really have female Hobbes’ ‘peace’. We act for the preserva- gender. Modern feminists have often seen tion of our soul’s tranquility, which is not this repeated in women’s access to always the same as pleasure. (R.HAR.) institutions and structured around men. In reaction to the disappear- Gender ‘Gender’, as distinct from ‘sex’, ance of female gender into a supposedly is whatever there is to being male or gender-neutral , there was a trend in female that cannot be attributed to innate subsequent feminism towards an affirma- bodily differences. Sex, we are told, is tion of female difference. This was accom- biologically given; gender is socially con- panied by a move to bring gender closer to structed. But opinion differs as to where sex sex, repudiating the philosophical assump- stops and gender starts. For many feminists, tions implicit in the picture of gender as gender is malleable without limit; but others ‘free-floating’, especially DESCARTES’ question this conception of free-floating model of the mind–body distinction. gender, and also challenge aspects of Some feminists also argue that social the Western philosophical tradition on arrangements should reflect the different which it rests. relations of the sexes to the biological 144 Gender facts of reproduction. Such versions of or it survives only as a complement to the feminism echo Rousseau’s insistence that essentially human. Alternatively, we can male and female are different ways of try to affirm femaleness by bringing gen- being human, and that female reproductive der closer to sex; but this may only per- capacities are central to the difference. petuate and rationalize existing sexual They believe in ‘taking biology seriously’, stereotypes, by naturalizing them. highlighting the connections between A possible way out of this impasse is femaleness and nurturance, and then argu- to see gender as neither a causal product ing that the philosophical dichotomy nor a response to pre-existing difference, between mind and body deludes us into but an expression of power, with no exis- advocating the fundamental sameness of tence independent of the dominance of men and women. men over women. According to this view, Although such feminists are at pains what is fundamental is the political fact to distance themselves from biological that maleness is the standard with refer- determinism, they continue to construe ence to which both sameness and differ- the relations between gender and sex in ence are judged: sameness means being causal terms. The problem, however, is to the same as men; difference is being dif- see what there is to ‘sex’ that can provide ferent from men. Hence a feminist affir- the cause or ground of the approved forms mation of what differentiates women from of social arrangement. How do we know men is fraught with problems. For women where the biological facts end and the to affirm difference is to confirm their social construction of nurturance as female powerlessness. begins? A merging of cultural and biolog- Some feminist philosophers have ical facts of reproduction is of course argued that the philosophical tradition has exactly what we should expect, if we do helped form this identification between repudiate the sharp dichotomies inherited maleness and the human norm: that philo- from the philosophical tradition. But to the sophical ideals of reason, autonomy and extent that they do merge, the idea of sex personhood have privileged maleness as as grounding gender becomes confused. transcending and excluding the feminine; An alternative approach has been to and that female gender has been con- see gender as the human response to the structed by those exclusions. But if the fact of sex differences, rather than their philosophical tradition has contributed to causal product – as our enactment of sex our present quandaries about sex and gen- differences, our response to their signifi- der, it also offers resources for rethinking cance. This view seeks to expose as illu- sexual difference; and from this perspec- sory the KANTIAN ideal of a personhood tive many of the old philosophical debates that transcends sex difference, in favour take on new dimensions. of seeing gender as integral to person- For example, much of the contempo- hood. But this view also has difficulty in rary dissatisfaction with our ways of identifying the natural facts to which gen- thinking of sex and gender focuses, as we der is supposedly the truthful response. have seen, on Descartes’ view of the mind. We seem to have here a conceptual But on a Spinozistic view of the mind– impasse. We can think of gender as float- body distinction, sex differences would ing free of sex. But then femaleness either reach right into the mind. The mind, for disappears into a human norm, which coin- SPINOZA, is the ‘idea of the body’. As ideas cides with socially constructed maleness; of differently sexed bodies, minds would Goodman, Nelson 145 have to be sexually differentiated. But does early years of Mussolini’s fascist that commit us to a distinction between government. male and female minds? Why should the Geulincz, Arnold (1624–1669) idea of a male body be male, any more See than the idea of a large body is large? But OCCASIONALISM. the claim is not ludicrous. The idea of a Gilson, Etienne Henri (1884–1978) large body reflects the ‘powers and pleas- French philosopher and pioneer of the ures’, in Spinoza’s phrase, of such a body. modern understanding of MEDIEVAL And to the extent that the powers and PHILOSOPHY. He started by trying to under- pleasures of bodies are sexually differen- stand better the philosophical antecedents tiated, it will be appropriate to speak of of the Cartesian philosophy; they began male and female minds. A female mind to absorb his attention and he came to will be one whose nature, and whose joys, accept the position of Thomas AQUINAS on reflect those of a female body. essential points. His most important Moreover, there is for Spinoza a conti- historical work, The Spirit of Medieval nuity between the individual body and the Philosophy, was first published in French socialized body. The powers of bodies are in 1932. He has also written independent enriched by good forms of social organi- philosophical works in the Thomistic zation, which foster the collective pursuit tradition, including God and Philosophy of reason. They are also diminished by (1941). (J.O.U.) bad forms of social organization, and by exclusion from good ones. If we take seri- Glanvill, Joseph (1636–1680) See ously the implications of Spinoza’s theory CAMBRIDGE PLATONISTS. of the mind, female minds will be formed Gödel, Kurt (1906–78) Austrian by socially imposed limitations on the mathematical logician who moved to the powers and pleasures of female bodies. United States in 1940. He is best know On this way of looking at sex differ- for a theorem published in 1931 which ence, there is no sexless soul, waiting to demonstrated that no formal system of be extricated from socially imposed sex arithmetic could be complete in the sense roles. But nor is there any authentic male of supplying a proof of every truth express- or female identity, existing independently ible within it. This put an end to attempts of social power. With gender there are no (by HILBERT or RUSSELL for example) to brute facts, other than those produced reduce mathematics to a self-contained through the shifting play of the powers axiomatic system. and pleasures of socialized, embodied, sexed human beings. [G.L] Goodman, Nelson (1906–98) American philosopher of language who Gentile,Giovanni (1875–1944) Italian held that philosophy aims at giving IDEALIST, and author of The precise structural descriptions of the as Pure Act (1916). Gentile argued that all world by formulating definitions which phenomena, however disparate they exhibit things as patterns of various ele- might seem, were aspects of the activity mentary components of experience. In his of a single spirit. Applying this theory first book, The Structure of Appearance to culture, education and the state, he (1951), he offered such definitions for a became the leading philosopher of number of individual items in phenome- fascism and minister of education in the nal experience (such as colour spots), 146 Gramsci, Antonio using, as primitive building blocks, Gramsci’s philosophical aim was to directly presented qualitative characteris- reconstruct Marxism as a political philos- tics, such as specific shades of colour and ophy, a philosophy of praxis, and thus places in the visual field. Goodman was a to move away from the HISTORICAL vigorous proponent of , refus- MATERIALIST conception of Marxism as a ing to postulate such abstract ‘Platonic’ scientific theory of economy and society. entities as classes, and although he made To this end he attempted to incorporate extensive use of modern logical tech- into Marxist thought, in radically altered niques, he did not hesitate to reject por- form, the brand of and his- tions of logic, mathematics and scientific toricism he learned from the writings of theory that do not satisfy his nominalistic the Italian philosopher Benedetto CROCE. requirements. Like QUINE, he was highly For Gramsci ‘philosophy’ is a social activ- critical of the widely employed distinc- ity; it is the universe of cultural norms tion between synthetic and ANALYTIC and values, the world-view, shared by all statements. as common sense. All philosophy, then, A problem that occupied much of is historically concrete, belonging to a Goodman’s thought was the analysis of people, a time and place, even if ‘philoso- contrary-to-fact conditionals, such as ‘if phers’ – those who produce specifi- this match had been scratched it would cally philosophical writings – are unaware have ignited’. He canvassed various dif- of it as such. In conceiving of philosophy ficulties facing attempts at explicating in this way Gramsci was attempting to precisely the sense of the connective refute the standard Marxist conception of ‘if–then’ in such statements, showing that the economy as the base or infrastructure this problem is intimately related to that of which determines society’s political and formulating the difference between state- cultural superstructure. For Gramsci, ments expressing laws of nature (e.g. politics, as the transformation of common ‘water expands on freezing’) and those sense, and the introduction of new philo- expressing merely accidental universality sophical perspectives, represented an (e.g. ‘all the coins in my pocket to-day are independent element in historical change; made of silver’). In Fact, Fiction and and as such it was essential to the possi- Forecast (1955), he advanced some sugges- bility of revolutionary change in the West. tions for resolving these questions, and for Central to Gramsci’s conception of clarifying the nature of inductive inference. historical change and political education Later works include Languages of Art was his concept of ‘hegemony’. This (1968) and Ways of Worldmaking (1978). refers either to the consensual basis of an See also AESTHETICS, RELATIVISM. (E.N.) existing political system, achieved when a imposes its world-view as Gramsci, Antonio (1891–1937) Italian common sense; or to the attainment of a Marxist, born in . His activities new common sense by a dominated class. in opposing Fascism led to his arrest in For Gramsci, ideological struggles are, November 1926. He spent the final ten properly speaking, struggles for hege- years of his life in Fascist prisons and clin- mony, struggles for the hearts and minds ics, and his major theoretical work, the of the people. In identifying philosophy, Prison Notebooks (published 1948–51), history and politics Gramsci transformed was written during his incarceration. the Marxian problematic of IDEOLOGY Grotius, Hugo 147 into the question of the ‘fate’ of ‘the polit- than that of the individual and beyond this ical’ in MODERNITY. [J.M.B.] again lay extremes of totalitarian author- ity and nationalistic state-worship. Green’s Green, Thomas Hill (1836–82) The solid English liberalism rejected all such English philosopher T. H. Green studied conclusions. He maintained the impor- and taught at Oxford, and helped to spread tance of individual responsibility, though, the influence of KANT and HEGEL against unlike LOCKE or J. S. MILL, he did not the prevalent trends of empiricism and allow individual rights to serve as a utilitarianism in England. The only book bulwark against social authority; indeed of his which appeared in his lifetime was they depended for their existence on an edition of HUME, and his influence was social recognition. See also POLITICAL exercised mainly through lectures at PHILOSOPHY. (J.D.M.) Oxford which were published posthu- mously. He maintained that the world was Grotius, Hugo (1583–1645) Dutch a network of relations, and that mind was thinker, whose ideas exerted an influence required not only to apprehend but also to out of proportion to their philosophical constitute and sustain these relations. Any acuteness. Their context was political term we may seek to isolate will turn out upheaval and assassination, lawlessness at to be itself a network of relations too; and sea and the Thirty Years War. His belief in any attempt to find in feeling or sensation and rational ways of settling the ultimate data of experience must fail. disputes was based on a profound respect Here Green comes very close to Hegel. for truth, inherited from the humanistic The distinction between appearance and tradition of . Grotius believed reality is not a distinction between a men- that piety, based on what was common to tal world and a world independent of different interpretations of the Christian mind, but one between the limited, human religion, together with reticence about mind and the universal, absolute mind doctrinal disagreements, was a sufficient which sustains the universe. basis for reconciliation between Catholics In ETHICS too Green goes a long way and Protestants. with Hegel. Desires are not, as in an His rational outlook was partly the animal, isolated forces. In each desire the product of his early training by the great human self seeks its own satisfaction as a scholar Scaliger, one of the first to stress whole. Only thus can one hold oneself grammatical cogency rather than doctri- responsible and free. Here, however, nal convenience in interpreting the Bible. Green began to diverge from Hegel. The Grotius mastered Latin and Greek by the good is personal to the individual whose age of 12 and became a Doctor of Law at good it is, even though, being naturally Leyden at 16. As advocate for the Dutch social, we can achieve full satisfaction he became involved only if we confer good on others. Green in a controversy arising from the seizure firmly rejected any notion of a corporate of a Portuguese galleon in the Straits of self. The divergence dominates his politi- Malacca, which led him to investigate the cal theory. He noted how ROUSSEAU’s general grounds of the lawfulness of war. conception of a common good led him to His On the Law of Booty, written in 1604 that of a general will. But beyond this lay but not published till 1868, was the result; Hegel’s view of the State as a unity higher it led to an abiding interest in International 148 Grotius, Hugo

Law and formed the basis of his later of nature, God.’ It was not obligatory masterpiece On the Law of War and Peace because God commanded it; rather God (1625). Grotius upheld the general princi- commanded it because it was obligatory. ple that the ocean is free to all nations. ‘Just as even God cannot cause two times Grotius’ main contribution to philoso- two not to make four, so he cannot cause phy was his unequivocal defence of what is intrinsically evil not to be evil.’ In NATURAL LAW (upholding the security of other words Grotius assimilated moral property, good faith and fair dealing) as a knowledge to mathematical knowledge. rationally discernible set of principles Grotius held, furthermore (with binding on citizens, rulers and God alike. ARISTOTLE and the STOICS) that we are The validity of such a law was a common- social by nature, and hence have a natural place of Christian thought, but the disunity interest in the maintenance of social of after the Reformation, order. The rules of natural law are there- together with secular challenges to the fore self-evident to us as social animals authority of the church, had made its endowed with reason, ‘for human nature validity difficult to defend on religious itself – which would lead us into the grounds. Furthermore the Realpolitik mutual relations of society even if we had pursued by the rulers of the new nation- no lack of anything – is the mother of the states, as popularized by MACHIAVELLI, law of nature’. Grotius maintained that all made the content of the old law of nature other laws were subordinate to natural look somewhat artificial. Grotius there- law. The civil law, for instance, depended fore sketched a foundation for natural for its validity ultimately on the natural law which would make it independent of obligation of good faith in keeping religion. covenants. Grotius’ treatment of the Law Natural law, claimed Grotius, is ‘a dic- of Nations was particularly interesting and tate of right reason, which points out that important; for he transformed what had an act, according as it is or is not in con- been a system of private law establish- formity with rational nature, has in it a ing relations between subject and subject quality moral baseness or moral necessity; belonging to different nations into sys- and that, in consequence, such an act is tem of public law establishing relations either forbidden or enjoined by the author between state and state. (R.S.P.) H

Habermas,Jürgen (1929– ) Habermas others and uncovering unconscious com- is the most influential second-generation pulsions, arise from communicative action, representative of CRITICAL THEORY, a tradi- and cannot be reduced to ‘empirical- tion of Marxist social philosophy which analytic’ enquiry, which arises from originated in Germany in the 1930s, instrumental action and aims at the pre- amongst members of what has come to be diction and control of objective processes. known as the FRANKFURT SCHOOL. Like Subsequently, Habermas worked on a earlier members of the School, including ‘universal ’, an account of the Theodor ADORNO and Herbert MARCUSE, normative commitments which are con- Habermas is concerned with the predomi- stitutive of linguistic communication. He nance of ‘instrumental reason’ in modern wished to show, in particular, that when industrial societies. Instrumental reason we attempt to reach agreement through deals with the relation between means and discussion, we cannot help but assume ends, but leaves the determination of ends that the conditions under which an uncon- outside its scope. For many modern strained consensus could be reached have philosophers, this is the only kind of reason. already been realized. Thus an ‘ideal Such views, Habermas argued in his early speech situation’, characterized by equal- work, encourage the ‘scientization’ of ity and reciprocity, is an immanent goal politics: political questions are reduced of communication, and makes possible to problems of technical control, and a critique of inequalities of social power – the ‘public sphere’ of debate and discus- a critique not based simply on personal sion concerning social goals is eroded. value-commitments. This account of Habermas also believes that earlier Critical communication was a central component Theory failed to clarify the broader con- of Habermas’ comprehensive refor- ception of reason to which it implicitly mulation of social theory in Theory of appealed. Communicative Action (1981). Here Habermas’ solution to this difficulty Habermas argued that the pathologies of was to shift the philosophical emphasis contemporary society could be diagnozed from the subject–object relation to the in terms of the invasion of the ‘life-world’ process of intersubjective communica- (the domain of social existence which is tion. Thus, in his main contribution to communicatively organized) by quasi- EPISTEMOLOGY, Knowledge and Human autonomous ‘systems’ of bureaucracy and Interests (1968), he argued that the exis- the economy. Opposition to this invasion tence of society depends on two forms of was no longer located only in the working action, labour (instrumental action) and class, but rather amongst all those social social interaction (communicative action). movements which attempt to expand soli- These form the basis of distinct human daristic forms of social life, and to bring interests, which in turn guide the formation the dynamics of money and power under of categorically different kinds of knowl- democratic control. He launched a vigor- edge. Hermeneutic and critical modes of ous assault on in The inquiry, directed towards understanding Philosophical Discourse of Modernity 150 Hackenschmidt, George

(1985); see also GADAMER, PHILOSOPHY OF Hamilton, Sir William (1788–1856) SCIENCE.[P.D.]Scottish philosopher, who spent some time at the Bar and became Professor of Hackenschmidt, George (1878–1968) history and then philosophy in . Wrestler, bodybuilder and philosopher, In philosophy his starting point was the also known as the Russian Lion. Hacken- common-sense position of REID and the schmidt was born in Estonia and came to Scottish school; his lectures, later pub- prominence in 1896 when he picked up a lished as Lectures on Logic and Lectures milkman’s horse and walked around with it on Metaphysics were of great weight in the on his shoulders. In 1898 he became world development of the Scottish philosophical champion in Greco-Roman wrestling, tradition. and remained undefeated in more the Hamilton’s main work was the 3,000 matches until 1911, training with a Philosophy of the Unconditioned (1829), in five-hundred weight sack of cement on his which he proceeds, by means of a critical back. His physique was much pho- examination of the views of KANT, tographed and widely admired in many SCHELLING and COMTE, to a theory of remarkable poses, but he was also noted knowledge whose main thesis is that to for his sweet reticence and feminine gen- think is to condition. This means that when tleness. While detained as a prisoner of we think of anything we inevitably deter- war by German forces during the First mine it by its relation to something else by World War he began to develop a system of which it is conditioned. Hence every part is philosophy based on the values of spiritu- a whole of parts, and every whole a part of ality, vegetarianism and self-control, some greater whole; the idea of the which he later elaborated as a trainer and absolute whole or part is an absurdity. teacher first in France and then in Britain, Similarly we cannot think of an uncondi- including the House of Lords. His eight tioned beginning and can only understand a books in English include Man and Cosmic beginning as conditioned by another phe- Antagonism to Mind and Spirit (1935), and nomenon; the conditioning phenomenon is Consciousness and Character: True thus the cause; indeed the concept of cause Definitions of Entity, Individuality, Per- is treated by Hamilton merely as a special sonality, Non-entity (1937). ‘I have never case of the general principle of condition- bothered as to whether I was a Champion ing. Hamilton took it that this implied that or not’, he wrote; ‘the only title I have it was impossible to attain absolute truth ever desired to be known by is my name – through philosophy, and that we must be George Hackenschmidt.’ {C.R.R} satisfied with enlightened ignorance. But Hacking, Ian (1936– ) Canadian philoso- though we cannot know the unconditioned, pher of science, whose belief in the rele- we cannot but have some faith concerning vance of history, especially the history of it: the unconditioned is God who, as uncon- scientific techniques, shows the influence ditioned, is completely incomprehensible. of both FOUCAULT and KUHN. He is the Hamilton is remembered as the author of The of Probability subject of J. S. MILL’s An Examination of (1975), Representing and Intervening Sir William Hamilton’s Philosophy and as (1983), The Taming of Chance (1990) and the inventor of a variant of the LOGIC of the Historical Ontology (2002), as well as the syllogism in which the predicate as well as article on Philosophy of Science in this the subject is quantified (i.e. in which we Encyclopedia. have not simply the propositions, ‘all S is Hartmann, Nicolai 151

P’ and ‘some S is P’, but rather ‘all S is all for his Philosophy of the Unconscious P’, ‘all S is some P’, ‘some S is all P’ and (1869), the most widely read of all ‘some S is some P’). (J.O.U.) German philosophical books of its time. Hartmann claimed to produce a synthesis Hampshire, Stuart (1914–2004) of HEGEL and SCHOPENHAUER; taking from English philosopher based at Oxford. Hegel the notion of the rational Idea and His Thought and Action (1959) was an from Schopenhauer that of the Will, he important exploration of the way in which combined these in a new ultimate – the people’s knowledge of their own actions Unconscious. The rational Idea ought differs from the objective empirical knowl- properly to guide blind Will, but the pes- edge which then preoccupied ANALYTIC simistic Hartmann regarded them as at PHILOSOPHY. variance in sinful humanity. His reputa- Hare, Richard Mervyn (1919–2002) tion has much declined. (J.O.U.) English moral philosopher who taught at Oxford. His main position is set out in The Hartmann, Nicolai (1882–1950) Language of Morals (1952), Freedom and German philosopher, and one of the few Reason (1963) and a number of papers twentieth-century practitioners of specula- which have been published in collected tive metaphysics in the grand old style. He form. This position is commonly called considered that European philosophy since PRESCRIPTIVISM. Hare holds that the pri- DESCARTES had made a fundamental mis- mary task of the moral philosopher is to take in starting with the subject, the thinker. clarify the nature of moral terms and judge- Knowledge, he said, was the apprehension ments, and that such clarification can have of an independent reality, an apprehension considerable influence on practical ques- as immediate as our apprehension of the tions. Moral judgements, he holds, differ self, according to Descartes. Properly from descriptions of the world, not in sub- understood, all philosophical problems are ject matter, but by being imperatives whose ontological: they are attempts to under- primary function is to guide choice. But stand the kind of being presented to us. moral judgements are not mere commands, Metaphysical problems such as that of for they are essentially universalizable. FREE WILL and of the relation of life to the Also notable are Hare’s critical reformula- mechanical are, according to Hartmann, tion of MOORE’s arguments against natural- essentially insoluble. According to ism, or descriptivism, and his attempt to Hartmann’s ETHICS (which is indebted to show that there can be a logic of impera- HUSSERL and the PHENOMENOLOGISTS), tives as well as of indicatives. Hare sum- there are two kinds of value: that of the marizes his views in the entry on Ethics in things and situations with which agents this Encyclopedia. (J.O.U.) deal, and that of agents and their actions. Specifically moral value is to be found in Hart, Herbert L. A. (1907–92) Lawyer the disposition of the agent, and it is in this who taught at Oxford and, in The Concept connection that Hartmann gives his of Law (1961), developed a liberal theory of famous analysis of the virtues. Agents and law drawing on the resources of ANALYTIC their actions can have value only if they are PHILOSOPHY. Hart also wrote the article on free; they must therefore be to some extent in this Encyclopedia. exempt from determination by natural law Hartmann, Karl-Robert-Eduard von and even by values. In accordance with his (1842–1906) Hartmann is known chiefly general position on the insolubility of 152 Hazlitt,William metaphysical problems, Hartmann admits most influential philosophers of all time; that he cannot understand how such free- indeed, the entire history of philosophy dom is possible, but he is sure that it is pre- since his death could be represented as a supposed in morality. (J.O.U.) series of revolts against him and his follow- ers. Even his opponents have absorbed Hazlitt,William (1778–1830) English much of his thought, and in order to radical and essayist who was encouraged gain some historical perspective on into philosophy by COLERIDGE. He pub- KIERKEGAARD and MARX, on Marxism and lished a brilliant essay on the self, the EXISTENTIALISM, on PRAGMATISM and ANA- future and (An Essay LYTIC PHILOSOPHY, Hegel’s influence must on the Principles of Human Action, 1805) be taken into account. before turning to forms of literary activity Hegel himself published only four that were commercially more rewarding. books: Phenomenology of Spirit (1807); Hedonism The term ‘hedonism’ (from (1812–16); Encyclopedia the Greek hedone, meaning ‘pleasure’) had (1817; thoroughly rewritten edition 1827; been applied to three quite different views. revised edition 1830) and Philosophy of First, ethical hedonism, the moral view Right (1821). His philosophy may be divided into three phases, the first ante- nothing is good except pleasure. EPICURUS dating the Phenomenology, the second and BENTHAM are famous examples of moralists who have held this view. represented by that book and the third by Second, psychological hedonism, which his later works, beginning with the Logic. is the theory that we can desire nothing In the first phase we encounter a non- but pleasure. (Though this view has often professorial Hegel, who could hardly be been confused with ethical hedonism it is more different from his popular image. strictly incompatible with it, for if we can His earliest writings – drafts and essays desire nothing else it is as pointless to from his twenties – were first published recommend desires for pleasure as it is to in 1907 under the misleading title Hegel’s recommend falling when one is released Early Theological Writings. In some of in mid-air.) This theory, frequently held them, notably ‘The Positivity of the by earlier British empiricists, was heavily Christian Religion’, his style is brilliant, eloquent and picturesque, his criticism of attacked by BUTLER; but it nonetheless appears as a support for ethical hedonism the Christian churches, both Catholic and Protestant, and even of himself, is in J. S. MILL’s Utilitarianism. Third, the view that the notion of ‘good’ ‘is to be frequently vitriolic, and his opposition to defined in terms of ‘pleasure’. Thus all and uncom- promising. He does not oppose all reli- LOCKE in his Essay says that we call good whatever ‘is apt to cause or increase gion but finds Christianity incompatible pleasure, or diminish pain in us.’This view with reason and human dignity. In the also has been confused with ethical hedo- oldest fragments, he considers the possi- nism in spite of the fact that ‘pleasure bility of a wholly rational religion which alone is good’ can have no moral content would help us attain a harmonious per- if it is a mere definition. (J.O.U.) sonality and a high level of morality. By 1800, Hegel felt that the sort of criticism Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich in which he had earlier engaged was all (1770–1831) Hegel was born in too easy, obvious and pointless. It would Stuttgart, Germany, and was one of the be a more challenging task to show how Hegel, G.W. F. 153

Christianity and other beliefs held by the Despite the scorn which Hegel’s crit- eminent thinkers in the past had been ics have lavished on his allegedly arrogant more than ‘bare nonsense’. Perhaps one claims for his own system, the view of could even ‘deduce this now-repudiated the HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY on which dogmatics out of what we now consider these claims are based has been almost the needs of human nature and thus show universally accepted; and when his claims its naturalness and its necessity’. This are understood in terms of this view they programme, sketched in 1800 in a preface prove to be much less presumptuous. to a never-written work, marks the transi- Hegel does not pit his own philosophy tion to Hegel’s second phase and to his against rival philosophies, past and pres- Phenomenology of Spirit. ent, by way of saying: ‘they are wrong Hegel’s use of the term ‘necessity’ in and I am right’. Rather he repudiates the the last quotation foreshadows one of the common conception of philosophical central confusions of his subsequent phi- disagreement – what one might call the losophy. He uses it as a of ‘natu- battlefield view of the history of philoso- ral’ and an antonym of ‘arbitrary’ and phy. The history of philosophy must be ‘utterly capricious’, and he fails to distin- understood, he insists, in terms of devel- guish between giving reasons for a devel- opment. It was Hegel more than anybody opment and demonstrating its ‘necessity’. else who established the history of philos- In this sense he finds reason in history, but ophy as a subject of central importance, he does not claim – as many interpreters and almost all texts on the subject show, suppose – that historical events or particu- albeit in varying degrees, his influence. lar entities can be ‘deduced’ in any ordi- Hegel, then, does not look at his sys- nary sense. In the important preface to the tem as in any sense peculiarly his own. Phenomenology he declares that he aims to But he thinks he can draw on the cumula- elevate philosophy to the status of a sci- tive efforts of his predecessors, showing ence, but the book – and much of his later how the excesses of one are in time pointed philosophy, too – is best understood in the out by successors who, in turn, may well perspective supplied by his early writings. go to the opposite extreme. All along, there What he wants is still a substitute for tradi- is a continual refinement, an increased tional Christianity – a world-view that articulateness, and, as it were, a progres- eliminates whatever is incompatible with sive revelation of the truth. reason and human dignity while preserv- This raises the question what Hegel ing whatever was sound in Christianity and expected from the future. Did he admit in the thought of of that his own system was not final? Hegel the past. His prose, though still occasion- never supposed that history would stop ally picturesque, has on the whole become with him. In his lectures on the philoso- involved and heavy, and his criticism no phy of history he referred to the United longer takes the form of sarcastic denunci- States as ‘the land of the future’, while ation or outright ridicule: rather it consists insisting that it must be left out of account in relegating all past positions, including at present, since it is the task of philoso- various forms of Christianity, to the role of phy to comprehend ‘that which is’ and not more or less remarkable, though plainly to speculate about what is yet to come. unsatisfactory, anticipations of the philo- The same course of lectures culminates sophical system that Hegel distils out of in the pronouncement: ‘to this point con- the cauldron of history. sciousness has come’. If he had foreseen 154 Hegel, G.W. F. the insights of future philosophers, he inspiration and edification, sentiment and would have embodied them in his own intuition, but careful and rigorous con- system. Since he could not foresee them, ceptual thinking – not the enthusiasm of a he did not talk about them. For all that, he coterie but the discipline of a science. might have stressed, at least occasionally, Even if one sympathizes with these pro- that his own system was not final, instead grammatic declarations and with Hegel’s of stressing, as he often did, that it was, if sharp and perceptive criticism of romanti- only at the time of speaking, the last cism, one may yet conclude that his own word. This is surely a fault, but there are brand of rigour was misconceived from at least two extenuating circumstances. the start. The great central idea of the The first is that few great philosophers Phenomenology is that different outlooks have not been guilty on the same score: correspond to different stages in the from PLATO to WITTGENSTEIN (see preface development of the spirit, and are not, to Tractatus), it is encountered in classic taken as a whole, true or false, but rather upon classic. Second, there was a pecu- more or less mature. The book is the story liarly apocalyptic atmosphere in German of the education of the spirit, and this philosophy in Hegel’s day. We can trace it framework allows for many penetrating back at least to KANT’s announcement, in observations. But it is marred by two per- the preface to the Critique of Pure Reason vasive faults: first, the above-mentioned (1781), that he hoped philosophy would confusion about necessity affects Hegel’s attain the truth by the end of the century. attempts to show how one stage necessar- FICHTE tried to keep Kant’s promise in ily issues in the next; second, he assumes 1794; SCHELLING, at first enthusiastic not only that some outlooks and positions about Fichte, soon struck out on his own, are best understood in terms of a develop- publishing his System of Transcendental mental sequence, but – and this assump- Idealism in 1800. Hegel felt he was com- tion is surely untenable – that all outlooks pleting what Kant, Fichte and Schelling and positions can be reasonably arranged had begun. In addition, there was a wide- in a single development, or even on a spread feeling that an era was coming to scale of rising maturity. an end, and Hegel, like the elderly Goethe, A further flaw in the Phenomenology felt that the civilization he had known was is that it is never clear whose ‘spirit’ drawing to a close, that he was looking Hegel is discussing. Often it is clearly the back upon European history and in some human spirit, and Hegel seems to be writ- sense summing it up. To cite the Preface ing about the education of humanity. But to the Philosophy of Right: ‘when philos- at other times, ‘spirit’ seems just as ophy paints its grey on grey, a form of life plainly an alias of God. Hegel clearly did has grown old, and with grey on grey it not believe in a transcendent God, eter- cannot be rejuvenated, but only compre- nally omniscient and omnipotent; but he hended. The owl of Minerva begins its thought there was a force at work in the flight only at dusk’. development of the material universe In the Phenomenology these tendencies which eventually fashions humanity and are less prominent than in Hegel’s later finds expression in the human spirit, and work. It is a work of youthful exuberance, that it may legitimately be named after its though the Preface makes clear the final and highest manifestation – just as author’s desire to put an end to romanti- we call an embryo an undeveloped human cism in philosophy. What is wanted is not being. According to Hegel, it is only in Hegel, G.W. F. 155 humanity that the spirit achieves self- translations, however, introduce the word consciousness. Nevertheless Hegel does ‘antithesis’ in all kinds of places to render not repudiate traditional conceptions of the words that literally mean ‘other’ or ‘oppo- Trinity, the Incarnation, or God: he often site’ and secondary sources perpetuate the makes use of Christian terms, praising legend that Hegel construed everything Christianity for recognizing that God is mechanically in terms of three concepts spirit, that God becomes man, etc. This which he actually spurned. gives rise to the paradox that ‘God’ finds The Encyclopedia contains his entire out about himself only in Hegel’s system. system in outline form. A shorter version The paradox disappears when we say that of the Logic, slightly rearranged, (some- Hegel did not believe in ‘God’ but, like times called the ‘Lesser Logic’) comprises many other philosophers and theologians, part one; part two contains the Philosophy did not make a point of this fact, prefer- of Nature, subdivided into mechanics, ring to pour new wine into old skins. physics and organics; and the Philosophy Hegel’s Logic – the work which inau- of Spirit forms part three. This too is gurates his third and final phase – is divided into three parts, and each of these marred to an even greater degree by into three sub-parts; but these pseudo-demonstrations and a confused divisions cannot be reduced to theses, notion of necessity. But again, much antitheses and syntheses. Subjective Spirit remains after allowance has been made comprises sections on , the for these faults: above all, perhaps the phenomenology of the spirit, and psychol- most sustained attempt since ARISTOTLE ogy. Then comes Objective Spirit which to articulate the meaning of philosophi- contains sections on right, morality and cally interesting and important terms and ethical life. Finally, the whole system their relation to each other. Unfortunately, culminates in a chapter on Absolute Spirit, many readers have never got beyond divided into sections on art, revealed the first three terms: Being, Nothing and religion and – the pinnacle – philosophy. Becoming. Partly as a result of this, partly The state belongs in the sphere of because it is a commonplace in the litera- Objective Spirit – that is, spirit embodied in ture, they suppose, mistakenly, that all of institutions – and is discussed in the section Hegel is reducible to the three steps of on ethical life (Sittlichkeit), after family and Thesis, Antithesis and Synthesis. As a mat- (see also POLITICAL PHILOSO- ter of fact, Hegel does not speak of theses, PHY). This whole realm is the basis on which antitheses and syntheses at all, although art, religion and philosophy develop. ‘All his immediate predecessors, Fichte and great men have formed themselves in soli- Schelling, did; and neither his analyses in tude, but they have done so only by assimi- the Logic nor his dialectic in general can lating what has been created by the state.’ be reduced to any such three steps. Hegel’s philosophy of Objective Spirit is The point is even more obvious in developed in more detail in his Philosophy Hegel’s . He divides of Right and the lectures on the philosophy world history into three stages: in the of history, from which the last quotation is first, in the ancient , only one is taken. The philosophy of Absolute Spirit is considered free (the ruler); in the second elaborated in eight volumes of lectures on period, in Greece and Rome, some are free; art, religion and the history of philosophy. in the modern world, all are considered After Hegel’s death, his followers free, at least in principle. Some English quickly divided into two camps: a right 156 Heidegger, Martin wing that made the most of Hegel’s theol- unfinished magnum opus, Being and ogy and tried to infuse new life into Time (1927), and then revised in lec- , and a left wing of so-called tures, books and essays until his death. who included brilliant Heidegger’s Seinsfrage arose from a num- atheists and revolutionaries – most notably ber of sources, among them ARISTOTLE’s Ludwig FEUERBACH and . Marx physics, metaphysics and ethics, inter- accepted Hegel’s preoccupation with his- preted in the light of his mentor HUSSERL’s tory and development but claimed that phenomenological method, KANT’s Critique Hegel had stood humanity on its head, as of Pure Reason, and the historical and if spirit and ideas were fundamental, HERMENEUTICAL investigations of Wilhelm while he, Marx, would set it on its feet DILTHEY. Aristotle inspired Heidegger to again by pointing out that material fac- challenge Husserl’s neo-Kantian thesis tors are basic. Kierkegaard also protested concerning ‘acts of consciousness’ as the against the Hegelian theologians. He sole resource of philosophy by asking: repudiated all attempts to transcend faith, ‘how does the being of acts relate to the or even to comprehend Christianity (which, being of the objects of those acts?’ Thus he insisted, is absurd but must be believed), the question of being was from the outset or to use a system to hide from the prob- a question concerning TRUTH, understood lems of one’s own concrete existence. not as the correspondence of propositions During the latter half of the nineteenth to states of affairs but as disclosure, uncon- century, Hegelianism came to England cealment and what Heidegger later called and profoundly influenced T. H. GREEN, the ‘clearing of being’, die Lichtung B. BOSANQUET, F. H. BRADLEY and des Seins. Dilthey encouraged Heidegger J. M. E. MCTAGGART against whom, in to challenge Husserl’s emphasis on ‘evi- turn, G. E. MOORE and Betrand RUSSELL dence’ as the sole philosophical recourse revolted at the beginning of the twentieth by asking: ‘what sort of historical self- century. In the United States, William understanding lies behind philosophy’s JAMES rebelled against the Hegelian ideal- search for apodictic and adequate evi- ism of Josiah ROYCE and dozens of less dence; indeed, behind its fascination with gifted philosophers. John DEWEY was a cognition and theory of knowledge in Hegelian when young. In Italy, CROCE general?’ developed the Hegelian tradition. In Heidegger first elaborated the ques- France, SARTRE’s Being and Nothingness tion of being as , leant heavily on Hegel. Beyond that, the the ‘science’ of being. He set out in Being historical approach to art, religion and and Time to revise all the categories which literature, no less than philosophy, owes prior philosophers had applied to the rela- a great deal to Hegel. Perhaps no other tions between human beings and their thinker since Kant has had a comparable world. Fundamental ontology, as enquiry influence. (W.K.) into being, was itself a possibility of human being (which Heideger called , Heidegger, Martin (1889–1976) ‘being-there’ or ‘existence’). Dasein always Heidegger taught at Marburg University operates within a prevailing understand- from 1923 to 1928 and at the University of ing of being, or Seinsverständnis, even Freiburg-im-Breisgau from 1928 to 1958. when it is not philosophizing. Traditional His life-long preoccupation with the ‘ques- and metaphysical systems tion of being’ was first formulated in his appeared to have forgotten the salient Heidegger, Martin 157 features of human being as being-in-the- his principal concern. What is being? Why world: our manipulation of tools in the is there being, why not far rather nothing? workaday world, a manipulation that does How and why are beings understood as not depend on concepts such as ‘extended grounded in another being – for example, substance’ or ‘primary and secondary a Creator God? Heidegger’s pursuit of the qualities’; our absorption in a kind of grounding question of metaphysics uncov- ‘public self’ that defines most of the pos- ered what he called the history or destiny sibilities that shape our lives; and the occa- of the truth of being: Seinsgeschichte/ sional upsurge of an anxiety that exposes Seinsgeschick. That history or destiny, human being as eminently finite and viewed as a whole, unfolded essentially as mortal. None of these things pertains to oblivion of being, Seinsvergessenheit, the ‘knowledge’: knowing the world is not self-occultation of being. Nevertheless, the primary way of being in the world. the history of being consisted of more or Heidegger’s reading of AUGUSTINE, Luther, less well-defined epochs: (1) early Greek KIERKEGAARD and NIETZSCHE had con- thinking, which experienced the clearing vinced him of the ‘falling’ character of the of being without preserving that experi- world and the need for human existence, ence in texts, leaving only mere traces of as ‘concern’ (Sorge), to resist the everyday, being (see PRE-SOCRATICS); (2) PLATO and public world. Such resistance does not Aristotle, who founded metaphysics – in take the form of an epistemological solip- which ‘being’ is accepted uncritically as sism; rather, it is a matter of confronting ‘permanence of presence’ – and who thus without subterfuge one’s own impending in some sense initiated the forgetting of death. In this way one achieves an appro- the question of being, yet in whose works priate relation to one’s own death. This reminiscences of the great Greek tradition proper relation to the finitude of Dasein can still be found; (3) Latin and MEDIEVAL Heidegger called Eigentlichkeit, a word thought, which at least in its orthodox that came to be translated by as ‘authen- representatives obscured the Greek tradi- ticity’. Such an appropriate or ‘ownmost’ tion and perpetuated an inferior version relation to the possibility of one’s own of Greek ontology; (4) modernity, which death is said to reveal temporality and from DESCARTES and LEIBNIZ onward ultimately time itself as the horizon upon sought security no longer in sanctity but which the meaning of being is projected. in certitude of cognition. The epochs of In essays and lecture courses of the being thus culminate in an age of technol- 1930s and 1940s Heidegger expanded the ogy, and because technology closes off all scope of his question beyond human other ways in which beings are disclosed, being to being as a whole, das Seiende- the age of technology completes the his- im-Ganzen. Actually, the tendency of tory in which being is forgotten. Thus it human dispositions and moods to reveal is the epoch of . Modern science is being as a whole had long been noted by itself part of the technological framework Heidegger. The expansion thus did not so of beings, and by no means the master of much abandon the ontology of Dasein as technology. Contemporary philosophy, exceed its terms of reference in the direc- with its compulsion to epistemological tion of ‘meta-ontology’. Yet Heidegger rigour, formal precision, calculability of soon let the vocabulary of ontology recede truth, clarity and ‘cashable’ value of argu- altogether: the guiding and grounding ment, exhibits both a Cartesian heritage questions of METAPHYSICS now became and a technological destiny. Contemporary 158 Heraclitus thinking is bound to be one-track thinking. For reasons that resist all explanation, he ‘The most thought-provoking thing in our failed to speak out after the War in con- thought-provoking time’, wrote Heidegger demnation of Nazi atrocities. Even if his in 1951, ‘is that we are still not thinking’. reasons for refusing had more to do with a In writings after the Second World Kierkegaardian contempt for publicity than War, such as the famous ‘Letter on with crass indifference, that silence more “Humanism” ’, Heidegger turned increas- than anything else inhibits the reception of ingly to the theme of language, especially his thought. However, much research has the language of poetry. Language in been done on Heidegger’s politics, and a Heidegger’s view is not the vehicle of more insightful and differentiated evalua- thought. Nor is it subject to manipulation – tion is becoming possible. Such nuanced except as flattening out and vulgarizing. responses are important if one of the most Nor, finally, does its ‘normal’ use, even in significant voices in modern European ‘speech acts’, allow it to serve as the arbiter thought is not itself to be silenced. of philosophical disputes. Heidegger Major works by Heidegger include: strives to hear in language what he calls (1927); Kant and the Ereignis, the event by which human beings, Problem of Metaphysics (1929); ‘On the as mortals, are claimed and called upon to Essence of Truth’ (1943, first delivered think. What they are called upon to think 1931); ‘The Origin of the Work of Art’ will vary from epoch to epoch, but it will (1950, 1935); Introduction to Metaphysics invariably have to do with the ‘granting’ – (1953, 1935); Nietzsche (1961, 1936–41), the bestowing and preserving – of time and ‘Letter on “Humanism” ’ (1947); What is being, and thereby of the particular ways Called Thinking? (1954); ‘The Question in which being as a whole is revealed: in Concerning Technology’ (1954); Identity our time, for example, as a stockpile of and Difference (1957); On the Way to resources awaiting exploitation. Language (1959); On Time and Being Within the CONTINENTAL tradition, (1969, 1961). [D.F.K.] Heidegger is without doubt the most pow- erfully original and influential philosopher Heraclitus Heraclitus of (a of the twentieth century. PHENOMENOLOGY, Greek city in Asia Minor) flourished c.500 EXISTENTIALISM and deconstruction (see BC. Of aristocratic family, he withdrew from DERRIDA) are unthinkable without him, society and, in notoriously obscure lan- but so are philosophy of literature and guage, attacked the Ephesians, and every- many social-critical or neo-Marxian one else, for their stupidity in failing to strands of thought. His importance in the apprehend the – a kind of common English-speaking world has also grown characteristic of all natural objects, in part steadily, because no other thinker so identifiable with fire. Like ANAXIMANDER, unsettles the enterprise of ANALYTIC he believed that things in the world PHILOSOPHY. Yet the greatest single obsta- were divided into opposites, and that all cle to the reception of Heidegger’s work change was change between opposites. both in the Anglo-American world and on Despite appearances, these opposites were the Continent is his commitment during actually ‘one and the same’, being con- the 1930s to National Socialism. While his nected by the Logos in a ‘joining that active engagement (as of Freiburg stretches in both directions’, which ensured University in 1933–4) was brief, his antilib- the ultimate balance and continuity of all eral, anti-democratic sentiments endured. changes. Thus Heraclitus located the unity History of Philosophy 159 of the world in its structure and behaviour See PRE-SOCRATICS. rather than its matter. But the primary mate- Hilbert, David (1862–1943) German rial was fire, which controlled the ‘turnings’ mathematician and proponent of a ‘for- into each other of the three great cosmic malist’ interpretation of mathematics; see components – fire, sea and earth. Change – GO¯DEL, MATHEMATICS. or ‘strife’ as Heraclitus called it – was nec- essary for the continued unification of Historical Materialism The doctrine, opposites: not perhaps continuous change in famously articulated by MARX, that the everything (as PLATO, thinking of the exag- fundamental historical discipline is the gerated Heracliteanism of CRATYLUS, main- history of economic forms rather than of tained), but the certainty of ultimate change legal or political institutions or philosoph- between opposites. Wisdom consists in ical ideas. ‘Just as one does not judge an understanding the Logos, how the world individual by what he thinks about him- works; for humanity itself is part of the self,’ Marx wrote in 1859, ‘so one cannot world and subject to the Logos, which is the judge an epoch of transformation by its active and fiery part of the human soul. consciousness, but, on the contrary, this This fiery part, which must be preserved consciousness must be explained from the from the moisture produced by sleep, stu- contradictions of material life.’ See pidity and vice, makes contact with the DIALECTICAL MATERIALISM, GRAMSCI, Logos-element in external objects, and IDEOLOGY. in some form can survive even death. The view that the only Thus Heraclitus produced a remarkably fully adequate way of understanding coherent system, which gave a real things (particularly human affairs) is by motive for philosophy, and which for the reference to their history, or the history of first time gave some account of EPISTE- the contexts in which they occur or of MOLOGY. Its obscure presentation, and humanity or nature as a whole is histori- PARMENIDES’ re-alignment of thought, cism. Ever since its origins in the nine- prevented it from being as influential teenth century, the term (alternatively (until the STOICS) as it deserved to be. See historism) has been used polemically and also PRE-SOCRATICS. (G.S.K.) mainly pejoratively – in PHENOMENOLOGY, for example, to denounce those who seek Hermeneutics The theory and prac- to substitute historical explanation for tice of interpretation (Greek: hermeneia). philosophical understanding and end up Originally applied to biblical criticism, in the swamps of RELATIVISM; or by the concept of hermeneutics was extended POPPER and his followers, to ridicule the by Schleiermacher (1768–1834) and espe- belief (which they ascribe to MARX and cially DILTHEY to cover the whole of HEGEL and associate with totalitarianism) human existence, and made the basis for a that human affairs are governed by laws projected science of the human as distinct of history, just as natural processes are by from the natural world. The concept was laws of nature. {J.R.} further developed within PHENOMENOLOGY, particularly by GADAMER and RICOEUR, History of Philosophy It has com- and usually carries the implication that monly been agreed (too readily, perhaps) whilst some interpretations are better than that the task of the scientist is to produce others, none can ever be final. See also theories, and that theories are good or bad PSYCHOANALYSIS. [J.R.] depending on how adequately they describe 160 History of Philosophy or explain established facts. On this view, however; and it is hard to see why the study of the history of science, though philosophers should bother with the past it can be entertaining or chastening or at all, if they are as uninterested in history inspiring, is a distraction from science as they profess to be. May it be that the proper. ‘A science which hesitates to forget entanglement of philosophy with its past its founders’, as WHITEHEAD said, ‘is lost’. is inevitable, even though unwelcome to Philosophers who have aspired to some philosophers? model their discipline on the progress of There are three main ways in which the sciences have therefore disdained the philosophy gets involved with its past. The study of the history of philosophy. KANT, first can be described as connoisseurship: for example, made a division between the just as poets or painters learn to be dis- authentic philosophers, ‘who endeavour to criminating about their art, and hence draw from the fountain of reason itself’, capable of meaningful innovation, by and their boring colleagues, the ‘scholarly acquainting themselves with existing men to whom the history of philosophy is masterpieces, so it is, presumably, with itself philosophy’. ANALYTIC PHILOSOPHERS philosophers as well. Indeed the signifi- have typically taken the same view; as cance of a work of art, or poetry, or phi- QUINE put it, ‘there are two kinds of losophy, may be wholly mysterious unless people interested in philosophy, those it is seen in relation to the past works to interested in philosophy and those inter- which – implicitly or explicitly, negatively ested in the history of philosophy’. or positively – it refers. This is especially In practice, however, would-be scien- true of philosophy, which is as often tific philosophers have seldom succeeded engaged in the exposure and diagnosis of in confining their attention to a suppos- plausible errors in the works of the illus- edly ahistorical ‘fountain of reason’. trious dead, as with positive expositions Whereas scientists have often discussed of evident truths. theories without caring about their origi- An even closer connection between nal formulation or context, philosophers philosophy and its past can be identified have repeatedly succumbed to histori- under the rubric of canonicity. The canon cal curiosity. Many of them (RUSSELL for is, strictly speaking, the list of the books example) have produced both detailed of the Bible which are accepted as gen- studies of particular events in philoso- uine or inspired; by extension, it is the set phy’s past, and synoptic surveys of peri- of acknowledged masterpieces in which a ods, movements or even the ‘history of practice acknowledges, or claims, its philosophy’ taken as a whole. They have legitimate ancestry, and thereby forges a attempted to square this with their philo- sense of its identity. If a discipline is uncer- sophical conscience by appealing to a dis- tain or divided about its aims, objects and tinction between their own approach methods (as seems to be chronically the to philosophy’s past, which they take to case with philosophy), then its canon be ‘purely philosophical’, and that of becomes especially vital to it. The unity of Kant’s ‘scholarly men’, which they dis- the field of philosophical issues, and the miss as ‘merely historical’. The practical cohesion of communities of philosophers, utility of this distinction is evident: it per- will depend on agreement about the con- mits philosophers to insulate their histories tents of the philosophical canon. And spe- of philosophy from historical criticism. cific theoretical projects, such as ANALYTIC Its theoretical justification is obscure PHILOSOPHY, CONTINENTAL PHILOSOPHY, History of Philosophy 161

EMPIRICISM or PHENOMENOLOGY, or indeed century AD, which defined philosophy ‘Western philosophy’ or ‘philosophy’ itself, in Europe throughout the middle ages will define themselves very largely in and the renaissance. Georg Horn was the terms of their rival canons. Controversies first to mount a systematic challenge to as to the canonical status of works by, for Diogenes. His Philosophical Histories example, HERACLITUS, SPINOZA, HEGEL, (1655) added postclassical authors to EMERSON, NIETZSCHE, GREEN, HEIDEGGER the philosophical canon, and organized or DAVIDSON turn out to be debates about ancient (pagan) and modern (Christian) philosophy’s nature and future, disguised philosophy into a single ‘Judaeo- as discussions of its past. Christian’ plot, in which Jesus Christ The third and most intimate link played a pivotal role. But Diogenes was between philosophy and its past is pro- not definitively displaced until the vided by plot. By means of plot, the his- appearance of Johann Jakob Brucker’s tory of philosophy is divided into periods, Critical History of Philosophy (1742–4) – and partitioned between various schools a monumental work which firmly estab- of thought, in such a way that it exhibits lished a three-part plot for the history a philosophically meaningful develop- of philosophy, with ancient philosophi- ment over time, probably leading to some cal wisdom at the beginning, medieval present or imminent crisis. (If the addi- scholastic darkness in the middle and tion of an idea of completeness to the modern eclectic enlightenment at the end. objects of philosophical connoisseurship This tightly articulated history had the turns philosophy’s past into a canon, then fateful effect of presenting the whole his- the addition of significant organization in tory of philosophy as culminating exclu- time to the canon, produces philosophy’s sively in (see AFRICAN past as plot.) PHILOSOPHY). These three kinds of connection For Hegel the historicity of philosophy between philosophy and its past can be was a cardinal philosophical problem: true traced back to SOCRATES, a connoisseur philosophy would have to go behind who defined himself against the historical the apparently self-defeating quarrels of background of the ; to PLATO, who the past, and the complacent canonized past philosophers as partici- of modern enlightenment as celebrated by pants in his dialogues; and to ARISTOTLE, Brucker, in order to reveal an underlying who conceived philosophy as a continuing intellectual unity in the history of philos- cooperative enterprise whose plot should ophy as a whole. According to Hegel, all display rational progress. CICERO system- true philosophers incorporated the princi- atized the Aristotelian story by dividing ples of their predecessors, even if they philosophy into four Schools – EPICUREAN, thought they were rejecting or igno- STOIC, ACADEMIC (Platonic) and PERIPATETIC ring them; despite appearances, therefore, (Aristotelian); and SENECA drew the obvi- the plot of philosophy’s past expressed a ous eclectic moral; ‘we must imitate the single unified argument, and ‘the same bees’, he said, ‘who raid whichever flow- Architect has been directing the work for ers they need for making their honey’. thousands of years’. Whether they knew it The classical view of the canon and or not, philosophers could only articulate plot of philosophy’s past was crystallized this inherited argument for the benefit of in DIOGENES LAERTIUS’ gossipy Lives of their own age, and clarify its implications the Philosophers, written in the third for the future. Philosophy might attempt 162 Hobbes,Thomas to escape its past, but it was never going Heidegger and DERRIDA have argued to succeed. that the development of philosophy as Of course philosophers may still try to recounted by Hegel is really an increas- avoid a Hegelian submission to history by ingly disastrous forgetting of philosophi- imitating the progress of the sciences. But cal questions, rather than a triumphantly unfortunately for them, this unhistorical progressive solution of them. And concept of scientific progress has been FOUCAULT has suggested that the whole discredited by the progress (if such it is) conception of a Western philosophical of the PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE. POPPER’s tradition benignly seeking the truth is a theory of science as a cycle of arbitrary systematic concealment of the processes conjectures and systematic refutations, in which political powers establish and followed by KUHN’s idea of scientific legitimize themselves through a violent revolutions as instituting new paradigms exclusion of those whom they define as incommensurable with the old, and mad or otherwise beyond the bounds of BACHELARD’s idea of the ‘breaks’ which reason. Such attempts to ‘invert’ Hegel – inaugurate the different sciences, have whether Popperian, Marxist, Nietzschean all suggested that criteria of scientific or Foucaldian – all agree with Hegel on truth may themselves be contingent and one point, though: detached objectivity is perspectival. RORTY has drawn negative impossible in any history of philosophy, or conclusions about the whole of ‘tradi- for that matter in an encyclopedia. [J.R.] tional philosophy’. MACINTYRE however has attempted to get round the difficulty Hobbes, Thomas (1588–1679) English by arguing that whilst both science and philosopher educated at Oxford. In 1608 philosophy are ‘essentially historical’, he became tutor to the young son of they are still rational, and indeed that they William Cavendish, Earl of Devonshire, could not be rational unless they were and spent the rest of his long life in similar embedded in particular traditions. On employment, mainly with the Cavendish this view, the distinction between histori- family. He was tutor to Charles II during cal and philosophical approaches to phi- his exile in Paris in 1646. losophy crumbles, and many elements of Hobbes’ intellectual history can be Hegelian HISTORICISM are reinstated. conveniently related to his three visits to However, Hegel’s view of the history the continent. His first, in 1610, inspired of philosophy tends to conceal the arbi- him with a desire to master the thought of trary artifice in the smooth idea of a self- the ancient world. His dissatisfaction with contained tradition called ‘(Western) Aristotelianism was probably encouraged philosophy’ which fuses Jewish, Christian by his talks with . In 1628 and ancient Greek elements. MARX tried he published a translation of , to escape Hegel’s emollient philosophi- partly to warn his fellow-countrymen of cal historicism (if not his ) the dangers of democracy. In 1628, dur- by replacing a history of modes of ing his second journey to the continent, philosophising by a history of modes he developed both a passionate interest in of production. Both KIERKEGAARD and geometry, whose method he thought he Nietzsche revolted against Hegel’s homog- might use to present his conclusions about enized conception of history by affirm- democracy as irrefragable demonstrations. ing the awkward and absurd irreducibility He thought, like Bacon, that knowledge of the ‘actually existing individual’. meant power, and hoped to cure the ills of Hobbes,Thomas 163 a society on the verge of Civil War by of De Cive, but with the arrival of Charles sketching a rational reconstruction of II in Paris, Hobbes started work on his society like a geometer’s figure. Hobbes’ masterpiece, , which stated in a third journey to the continent provided pungent form his views on Man and the final ingredient for his natural and Citizen. It was published in 1651 and civil philosophy: he visited Galileo in soon afterwards Hobbes was permitted by 1636 and conceived the imaginative idea Cromwell to return to England. which permeated his whole philosophy – For Hobbes used the SOCIAL CONTRACT the generalization of the science of theory to demonstrate the necessity of mechanics and the geometrical deduction an absolute sovereign – by consent, not by of the behaviour of men from the abstract Divine Right. So his doctrine could principles of the new science of motion. be used to justify any government, pro- Hobbes claimed originality for two vided it governed effectively. main parts of his work: the optics and the Soon after his return to England, civil philosophy. His Little Treatise Hobbes became involved in a dispute (1630–7) was an attack on the Aristotelian with Bishop Bramhall on the subject of theory of sense and a sketch for a new FREE WILL. His Questions Concerning mechanical theory. On returning to Liberty, Necessity, and Chance was the England his thoughts turned again to result (1656). Hobbes was then led into politics, owing to the turbulent state of the a most humiliating controversy; for in country. In 1640 he published Elements of De Corpore (1655) he had inserted an Law – which demonstrated the need for attempt to square the circle. This was undivided – while Parliament seized on by John Wallis and Seth Ward, was sitting. When Parliament impeached both of them Puritans and foundation Strafford, Hobbes fled to the continent, members of the Royal Society, who were priding himself in later times on being irritated by Hobbes’ criticisms of the ‘the first of all that fled’. In De Cive universities and ruthlessly exposed his (1642, published in English in 1651 mathematical ineptitude. The wrangle under the title Philosophical Rudiments lasted for about twenty years. Concerning Government and Society), Hobbes’ energy was remarkable (he he tried to demonstrate conclusively the played tennis up till the age of 70). In proper purpose and extent of the civil 1657 he published the second part of power, and the relationship between church his trilogy, the De Homine. After the and state. Restoration he was received at Court, Hobbes’ originality revealed itself not where his wit was appreciated. But at only in his views about optics and politics, the time of the Plague and Great Fire but also in the links he forged between some reason was sought for God’s dis- them. He thought an all-inclusive theory pleasure, and when a bill was brought could be constructed starting with simple before Parliament for the suppression of movements studied in geometry and cul- atheism, a committee was set up to look minating in the movements of men in into Leviathan. The matter was however political life. He envisaged a deductive dropped, probably through the interven- trilogy comprising works on Body, Man tion of the King, but Hobbes was forbid- and Citizen, but the project was con- den to publish his opinions. He turned stantly interrupted by events. He started to history and in 1668 completed his on De Corpore soon after the publication Behemoth – a history of the Civil War, 164 Hobbes,Thomas interpreted in the light of his opinions explicable in terms of all-pervasive about man and society. (It was published mechanical laws. This was made plausi- posthumously in 1682.) He was also sent ble by the introduction of the concept of Bacon’s Elements of Common Law by ‘endeavour’ to postulate infinitely small his friend John Aubrey and, at the age motions of various sorts – especially of 76, produced Dialogues Between a those in the medium between man and Philosopher and a Student of the Common external objects, in the sense-organs, and Laws of England. (Published posthu- within the body. The phenomena of sense, mously in 1681.) At 84 he wrote his imagination and dreams were regarded as autobiography in Latin verse and at 86 pub- appearances of minute bodies conforming lished a translation of the and Odyssey. to the law of inertia, and the phenomena He died at the age of 91. of motivation were explained as reactions His contribution to philosophy can be prompted by external and internal stimu- summarized under eight headings. lation. Hobbes became famous, however, 1 Philosophical Method. Like his (and notorious), for his suggestion that contemporaries BACON and DESCARTES, all human motivation is a particular case Hobbes believed that natural reason was of one of two basic bodily movements – in decay for want of a proper method, and appetite, or movements towards objects, clouded over by the vaporous doctrines and aversion, or movements away of the Schools. He saw philosophy as a from them. necessary preliminary to rational govern- 3 Politics. In his political writings ment and the avoidance of Civil War – these basic responses appeared as the the worst of all evils, from which come desire for power and the fear of death, ‘slaughter, solitude, and the want of all which were the reality beneath all the things’. But he understood philosophy in appearances of political behaviour. Hobbes a very wide sense: ‘such knowledge of thought that a multitude became a com- effects or appearances as we acquire by monwealth by the device of authority in true ratiocination from the knowledge we which they gave up unlimited self-assertion have first of their causes or generation. against each other – their ‘rights of And again, of such causes or generations nature’ – and authorized some individual as may be from knowing first their or body to act on their behalf. This ‘social effects’. Like all his rationalist contempo- contract’, which was presupposed by raries, he believed that the reality beneath sovereignty, was a consequence of the the deceptive appearances of sense was overwhelming fear of death which geometrical in character. He regarded the haunted humanity in a . use of reason as a kind of adding and sub- Hobbes also deduced from this ‘ideal tracting ‘of the consequences of general experiment’ that such a sovereign must be names agreed upon for the marking and absolute, the sole reason for the institu- signifying of our thoughts’. tion of government being the safety of 2 The Metaphysics of Motion. the people. Hobbes’ analysis was, as a matter of fact, 4 Ethics. This deductive scheme usually subservient to his wider specula- determined the general pattern of Hobbes’ tions. For his dream of a trilogy covering thinking about morals, law and religion. Body, Man and Citizen coloured all his In moral philosophy he held that the rules work. He conceived of human actions as of civilized behaviour (‘natural law’ or particular cases of bodies in motion, ‘the laws of nature’) were deducible from Hobbes,Thomas 165 the rules of prudence which must be threats of Catholicism, with its extra- accepted by any reasonable agent with a mundane authority, and the Puritans who fear of death. Civilization, he contended, took seriously the priesthood of all believ- is based on fear, not on natural sociability. ers. In the course of this onslaught he By ‘good’ we mean an object of desire, by dealt mercilessly, from the point of view ‘evil’ an object of aversion. He believed, of mechanical metaphysics, with Biblical too, in DETERMINISM and made important concepts such as ‘spirit’, ‘inspiration’, contributions to the free will controversy ‘miracles’ and ‘the kingdom of God’. On by maintaining that ‘free’ is a term prop- the he pointed out very erly applied to people and their actions, acutely that the only solution was to stress rather than to the will, which is but ‘the God’s power. Did not God reply to Job last appetite in deliberating’. People are ‘where wast thou when I laid the founda- free when there is no constraint on their tions of the earth?’ actions; but all actions are necessitated, 7 Philosophy of Language. Many in that they have causes, even though they modern philosophers hold that Hobbes’ may be free. For the opposite of ‘necessi- outstanding contribution to philosophy tated’ is not ‘free’ but ‘contingent’. Hobbes was his theory of speech. He tried to com- was also singularly clear-sighted on the bine a mechanical view about the causes subject of punishment, holding that it is of speech with a NOMINALIST account of by its nature retributive, though its justifi- the meaning of general terms. He was cation must be sought along UTILITARIAN particularly vitriolic about the scholastic lines. doctrine of essences. Names could be 5 Law. Hobbes is famous for his either names of bodies, of properties, or view that law is the command of the sov- of names. If one of these classes of names ereign. This was, historically speaking, a was used as if it belonged to another very important thesis in that it attempted class, an absurdity would be generated. to make clear the procedural difference ‘UNIVERSAL’, for instance, was a name for between statute law (which was then in its a class of names, not for essences desig- infancy) and Common Law, and insisted nated by names; such names are ‘univer- on distinguishing the questions: ‘what is sal’ because of their use, not because they the law?’ and ‘is the law just?’ refer to a special type of entity. Similarly 6 Religion. Hobbes’ views on reli- redness (which is a property) is not in gion were, to a large extent, directed to blood in the same way as blood (which showing that there were general grounds is a body) is in a bloody cloth (which is as well as scriptural authority for the another body). Hobbes’ distinctions were belief that the sovereign was the best crude, but he anticipated the techniques interpreter of God’s will. Religion was a of logical analysis by supplementing the system of law, not a system of truth. To demand for concreteness and clarity of establish this Hobbes distinguished speech by a theory of how absurdities are between knowledge and faith. He sug- generated by insensitivity to the logical gested that we could know nothing of the behaviour of different classes of terms. attributes of God. The adjectives used to But of much more general importance describe him were expressions of adora- was his insistence that speech was essen- tion, not products of reason. He was par- tial to reasoning and that it was reasoning, ticularly vehement in defending what he in the sense of laying down definitions called the ‘true religion’ against the twin and drawing out the implications of 166 Hocking,W. E. general names, that distinguished men Hocking, William Ernest (1873–1966) from animals. Hocking was born in Cleveland, Ohio, and 8 Assessments of Hobbes. Hobbes’ became a disciple of Josiah ROYCE. At a contemporaries were alarmed at his denial time when most professional philosophers of any sort of extra-human authority, at his in America were abandoning philosophical thoroughgoing doctrine of human selfish- IDEALISM, Hocking defended it with an ness, and at his suggestion that we can eloquence which made him a significant know none of God’s attributes. SPINOZA, factor in American intellectual history. His who owed a lot to Hobbes, purged his influence was especially strong in religious political doctrines of their inconsistencies and theological circles. His most important and converted political philosophy into a books were The Meaning of God in Human theory of power. LOCKE criticized Hobbes Experience (1912) and Human Nature and mainly for his doctrine of human selfish- its Remaking (1923). (J.W.S.) ness and his willingness to substitute Holbach, Baron d’ (1723–89) Franco- the terror of an arbitrary sovereign for that German exponent of materialistic atheism, of a state of nature. LEIBNIZ was full of see ENCYCLOPEDISTS, MATERIALISM. admiration for Hobbes – especially his nominalism – but aghast at his deter- Holism The term ‘holism’ (from the minism and agnosticism about God’s Greek holos, meaning ‘whole’) denotes attributes. During the eighteenth century, the thesis that wholes are more than the criticism was focused on Hobbes’ account sum of their parts. It is a rational, rather of the passions – especially his attempt than mystical, alternative to atomism and to show that benevolence is a special case scientific mechanism. The doctrine inhab- of self-love. The UTILITARIANS regarded its many disciplines: in political philo- Hobbes as their intellectual ancestor and sophy, for example, holism opposes were impressed by his , his individualism by collectivism; in histori- mechanical psychology, his nominalism, ography and social science, it maintains and his theory of law and punishment. And that the objects of social inquiry are MARX viewed Hobbes as a pioneer of mate- wholes rather than individual actions; in rialism and approved of his determination psychology, it sets the focus on Gestalts, to use knowledge for practical purposes not elements; and in the philosophy of rather than merely to understand. Modern biology, it opposes both mechanism and philosophers have tended to criticize vitalism, asserting that life consists in the Hobbes for his naturalism in ethics and for dynamic system of the organism. his mechanical account of man. They have, While predecessors like SPINOZA and however, dwelt on the startling similarity HEGEL thought in a holistic way, the term between Hobbes’ account of a state of ‘holism’ was coined by the South African nature and international affairs. They have statesman-scholar J. C. Smuts (1870–1950), praised Hobbes for his interest in lan- who argued that wholes – both animate and guage, for his analytic techniques, and for inanimate – are real, while parts are his clarity in handling political concepts. abstract analytical distinctions, and wholes And even if they disagree with most of the are flexible patterns that are not simply details of his scheme, they accord Hobbes mechanical assemblages of self-sufficient the doubtful honour of being the father of elements. Like BERGSON, he rejected modern psychology and one of the first Darwin’s theory of natural selection and systematic social scientists. (R.S.P.) argued for ‘internal holistic selection’, Humanism 167 though as a natural rather than immaterial Zeitschrift, now collected in the two-volume principle. Kritische Theorie; and for Dialectic of Among analytic philosophers, QUINE Enlightenment, which he wrote in 1944 has opposed the atomistically formulated with Adorno. In his writings of the 1930s, verifiability theory of meaning in claim- notably ‘Traditional and Critical Theory’ ing that it is not the isolated statement, (1937), he developed an original version but the whole ensemble of assumptions of the sort of philosophy of praxis inau- involving it, which is amenable to empir- gurated by Georg LUKÁCS. Increasingly, ical testing. POPPER, on the other hand, however, he saw the impossibility of an though maintaining that scientific method integration of philosophy with social sci- is applicable to the study of individual ence, or of critical theory with revolution- aspects of social systems, has rejected ary practice. After the War, Horkheimer’s holistic attempts to formulate laws hold- critical theory became a critique of ing for social wholes, regarding the latter ‘enlightened’ reason and rationality. as theoretical constructs. [M.M.] Reason, he argued, has been reduced to an instrumental, means-end, reason, which Hook, Sidney (1902–89) American suppresses difference and particularity pragmatist born in New York. Hook wrote through the establishment of regimes of extensively on the philosophy of Karl MARX identity. The model for such regimes was (Towards the Understanding of Karl Marx, the domination of (concrete) use values 1933; From Hegel to Marx, 1936), defend- by (abstract) exchange value. The critical ing Marxism as a version of American and paradoxical auto-critique of Reason PRAGMATISM, rather than as DIALECTICAL must acknowledge suffering in the name MATERIALISM. But with the passage of of that which is dominated and suppressed time he decided that what he approved by identity thinking. [J.M.B] therein was certainly not what the usual ‘Marxists’ advocated (Marx and the Humanism The term ‘humanism’ Marxists, the Ambiguous Legacy, 1955). entered the philosophical vocabulary by His later work expressed rancorous disil- way of the studia humanitatis, associated lusion with Marxism. (J.W.S) with the focus of Renaissance education Horkheimer, Max (1895–1973) on classical culture as opposed to German social theorist born in Stuttgart. Christian scripture. In the late nineteenth Along with Theodor ADORNO and Herbert century it established itself as an umbrella MARCUSE, Horkheimer was one of the term for any disposition of thought stress- architects of the FRANKFURT SCHOOL con- ing the centrality of ‘Man’ or the human ception of ‘Critical Theory’. Horkheimer species in the order of nature. Today, in the assumed the directorship of the Institute for Anglophone world, humanism is more or Social Research in 1930, guiding it less synonymous with atheism or secular throughout the period of its greatest pro- rationalism. In the CONTINENTAL tradition, ductivity; he edited the Institute’s journal, however, it has come to designate (often Zeitschrift für Sozialforschung (1932–9), pejoratively) any philosophy (FEUERBACH, and oversaw the Institute’s move from the young MARX, PHENOMENOLOGY, Frankfurt to New York in 1935 and its EXISTENTIALISM, for example) premised on return to Frankfurt in 1949. ontological differences between humanity Horkheimer is best known for the and the rest of nature, and according pri- numerous essays he wrote for the ority to it in the explanation of society, 168 Hume, David history and culture. According to human- Hume, David (1711–76) Scottish ists, there are qualities and capacities historian and philosopher, who never held peculiar to human beings which make any academic post, though in 1745 he their products – whether historical events, stood unsuccessfully for the Chair of economic systems or literary works – ‘Ethics and Pneumatic Philosophy’ at unamenable to the objective and reduc- Edinburgh. His ruling passion, he tells us, tive analyses associated with standard was a love of literary fame, and this he scientific explanation. achieved in his lifetime mainly by essays While the epistemological reference of on moral, political and economic sub- humanism is to the human subject as the jects, and historical works. The only locus of experience and source of knowl- important post he held was that of secre- edge, the political stress falls on human tary to the British Embassy in Paris agency and hence control over historical (1763–9), where he cut a considerable process. Marxist and socialist humanists figure. Though not without friends in the have wanted to respect the ‘dialectic’ church, he was an opponent of all estab- between human agency and the circum- lished religions, and enjoyed notoriety as stances in which it is exercised, but there an ‘infidel’. has been a certain polarization in their Hume’s first philosophical work, argument: the existentialist approach has A Treatise of Human Nature, was com- placed an emphasis on consciousness pleted by 1737, when he was 26. It was the which is difficult to reconcile with the product of ten years of unremitting intel- idea of ‘unwilled’ social forces whilst the lectual effort and its aim was ambitious: to Hegelian-Lukácsian school has empha- remedy the defects of previous philoso- sized the loss of humanity inflicted by phies, which seemed to ‘depend more generalized processes of reification and upon invention than experience’, by estab- ALIENATION, though perhaps at the cost of lishing the foundations of a genuinely making them appear inescapable. empirical science of human nature. The In contrast to both these positions, first step was to investigate the under- STRUCTURALIST and ‘post-structuralist’ standing and the passions, on which all anti-humanists either insisted on the human judgements and actions depend. subordination of individuals to economic The Treatise was divided into three books, structures, codes and regulating forces ‘Of the Understanding’, ‘Of the Passions’ (modes of production, kinship systems, and ‘Of Morals’, and was intended to lay the unconscious etc.) or attempted to the foundations of the most fundamental ‘deconstruct’ the very idea of a ‘human of sciences: ‘there is no question of impor- meaning’ prior to the discourse and cul- tance’, Hume wrote, ‘whose decision is tural systems whose qualities it is sup- not comprised in the science of man’. posed to explain. Thus, Jacques DERRIDA 1 Impressions and Ideas. The mind, detected a ‘humanist’ residue even in Hume said, consists of nothing but per- SAUSSURE’s structural linguistics, in so far ceptions, and these are of two kinds, as it allows the sign to retain a reference impressions and ideas. Roughly speak- to a ‘signified’. More generally, humanist ing, impressions are sensations, feelings argument has been rejected by these and emotions; and ideas are thoughts. schools of thought for its ‘mythological Impressions are forceful and vivacious, anthropology’, teleology and ethnocen- and ideas are faint copies of them. tricity. [K.S.] Impressions are of two kinds: primary Hume, David 169 impressions of sense, which arise in the English, all objects sufficiently like soul ‘from unknown causes’, and second- those in whose presence we have heard ary impressions of reflection, which arise the word used. Understanding a word is the from our ideas. Aversion, for instance, is activation of these associations. caused by the idea of pain, itself a copy of Space and time, however, are evidently the primary impression of pain. Ideas too neither impressions nor groups of impres- are of two kinds, simple and complex. sions, so Hume describes each of them as Simple ideas are copies of simple impres- a ‘manner’ in which impressions appear to sions that we have actually had, while us, mirrored in the manner of appearance complex ideas are combinations of simple of the resulting ideas. Time is the ‘manner’ ideas and need not mirror any actual com- in which all perceptions occur, that is bination of impressions (if they do, and successively or simultaneously. Space is do so vividly, they are memories). That is the manner in which coloured and tangible how we are able to think of dragons and points are disposed, that is alongside one other things we have never perceived. But another. Since size and duration are defined we cannot have a simple idea which is not in terms of the manner in which unitary derived from a corresponding impression, perceptions are disposed, these latter can- and all our complex ideas are constructed not themselves have size or duration, and out of simpler ideas derived from impres- are consequently simple and indivisible. sions. This, Hume says, implies that we Since no ideas are infinitely divisible, we have no ‘innate ideas’: all our ideas are have no idea of infinite divisibility, and it derived from experience. The objects of is therefore inconceivable, whatever the our thoughts are confined to such as we may say. have experienced, or conceivably might 2 Causal Reasoning. Reasoning, experience, by the senses or inner feeling. according to Hume, consists in the dis- All these propositions, Hume thinks, are covery of relations. These may be either evident from experience, known from (a) ‘relations of ideas’, which yield observation of our own minds. EMPIRICISM demonstrative reasoning, showing what is is an empirical truth. conceivable or inconceivable (i.e. absurd Though the fancy may join ideas as it or self-contradictory), or (b) relations in pleases, it tends to join those whose cor- which objects as a matter of fact to stand responding impressions have been either one to another. That three is half six, and alike, or contiguous in time or place, or the internal angles of a triangle equal to related as cause and effect. Hume attached two right angles, are relations of ideas, the greatest importance to these princi- depending on the nature of the ideas ples of association. ‘Here is a kind of related. That mercury is heavier than lead, attraction, which in the mental world will that Caesar was murdered in the Forum, be found to have as extraordinary effects that the number of the planets is nine, are as in the natural, and show itself in as matters of fact, which could conceivably many and as various forms.’ ‘These are the have been otherwise. A matter of fact only ties of our thoughts, they are really cannot be demonstrated, since its opposite to us the cement of the universe.’ The is conceivable without absurdity or meaning of a word, according to Hume, is contradiction; it can only be learned from the range of ideas associated with one experience. The only important field of another by resemblance, with which the demonstrative reasoning, Hume said, was word is associated by contiguity; in plain mathematics. Consequently any books that 170 Hume, David comprise neither mathematical demonstra- occurred without it, then when we see a tions nor empirical reasoning (i.e. most flame we infer the presence of heat, and works on metaphysics and theology), con- ‘without further ceremony we call the one tain ‘nothing but sophistry and illusion’, cause and the other effect’. The necessary and should be ‘committed to the flames’. connection we refer to when we say flame Though matters of fact cannot be causes heat, consists in nothing but the demonstrated, they can be inferred with fact that heat has regularly followed probability, and the relation on which flame in the past, and that we cannot help such inferences depend is cause and expecting it to do so again. The ‘must’ of effect. There is no other relation, accord- causal necessity expresses only our readi- ing to Hume, which enables us to infer ness to infer, which is due to experienced the existence of an object we have not regularity. observed from the existence of one we Hume subsumed this account of causal have. This relationship is therefore of inference under the general principle of ‘prodigious consequence’, and Hume’s association of ideas. Seeing the flame is account of it is the most fundamental fea- an impression, associated by resemblance ture of his philosophy. Hume insists that with the ideas of flames seen in the past, neither the proposition that everything each of which is associated by contiguity has a cause, nor any proposition assigning with the idea of heat. So the impression of a particular cause to a particular occur- flame readily evokes the idea of heat. The rence, is demonstrable. A priori, it is per- vivacity of the impression transfers itself fectly conceivable that some events should in part to the associated idea, and the be fortuitous, and that anything should frequent repetition of the transition from cause anything. Nothing but experience impression to associated idea gives it a teaches us the orderliness of nature, or customary facility, a kind of felt unavoid- what exactly causes what. ability. These two features, the vivacity of But how do we learn that one thing is the idea, and the steadiness of custom, the cause of another? The effect, we all make it what we call a belief. Where the suppose, immediately succeeds the cause regularity in past cases is unbroken, and and is contiguous to it in space, and we the custom consequently full and perfect, can identify these features – succession we have certainty and empirical proof. and contiguity – by our impressions of Where either the regularity or the resem- sense. But there is a third feature which blance of the present case to the past cases is more elusive. The effect necessarily is imperfect, the inference is uncertain, follows the cause. It is this necessary and we speak of probability. connexion that enables us to infer the one 3 Scepticism. So far Hume has from the other. And it is not a logical attempted to present a constructive theory connexion, demonstrable or self-evident of knowledge, sceptical only in so far as it like the proportions of numbers. What is undermines various pretensions – those of it then? Hume’s answer is as follows. the metaphysicians and theologians who The necessary connection we seek is the try to provide a priori demonstrations of foundation of inferences from cause to matters of fact (e.g. the existence of God, effect, so let us consider the foundation of or how the world began), and those of the inference in common life. It is not far the natural scientists who try to prove to seek. If, for instance, flame has always exact and final truths, or provide rational been attended by heat, and has never explanations a posteriori. He has opened Hume, David 171 the way for a descriptive science of man, the accounts show is equal to the probability in every way as respectable as the physi- of there being no error in the books. But cal sciences. But when Hume discusses the probability of the auditors being right the fallibility of reason and the senses, in thinking that there is no error may well and the nature of the mind, he reaches be greater than the original probability of conclusions so sceptical that no science the accounts being correct. could possibly be founded on them. Hume’s account of sense-perception is Hume’s argument against the efficacy equally unsatisfactory. How can our pre- of reason is designed to support his con- ceptions – either impressions or ideas – tention that belief is a psychological state give rise to knowledge of physical objects? due to instinct and habituation, not the The impressions of sense are interrupted, completion of a logical exercise. If the as well as being part of, and dependent on exercise of reasoning were ever carried to us, whereas physical objects are relatively its logical conclusion, it would destroy permanent, and independent and distinct assurance about everything. Belief, there- from us. Hence they cannot be known by fore, since it undoubtedly occurs, must be sense alone; nor can they be inferred by due to something else: it must be natural, an argument from effect to cause. For to not logical. The sceptic’s arguments fail know that a given sensation was due to a to carry conviction, not because they are certain material thing, we would have had invalid, but because they are ‘remote and to be able to observe the two separately strained’, carrying us far beyond the and notice the constant conjunction bet- experiences of common life. But now the ween them. And our ability to observe the baby of science has been thrown out with material thing apart from the sensation is the bathwater of metaphysics, as Hume precisely the question at issue. realizes: ‘Shall we then establish it for Since neither sense nor reason pro- a general maxim that no refined or elabo- duces our belief in material things, Hume rate reasoning is ever to be received? concludes that it must arise from imagina- By this means you cut off all science and tion. By certain weird ‘propensities’, quite philosophy.’ different from the ordinary principles of Hume need not have despaired. His association of ideas, we are impelled to arguments for the self-destructiveness construct a picture of a relatively perma- of reason are fallacious. If we make a cal- nent and regular world in which the gaps culation according to sure mathematical in the series of impressions we call moun- principles, we may still make a mistake. tains and fires are filled with fictitious The probability of our conclusion is the unperceived impressions. This ‘world’ probability of our not having made a mis- provides the material for the investigations take. But in estimating this probability of natural science, which soon convince us we may again make a mistake, and the that impressions and their sensible quali- probability of our original conclusion ties, such as colour and warmth, are sinks to that of our not having made this wholly dependent on our perception of second mistake. And so on ad infinitum. them and cannot have an independent This process would, according to Hume, existence. Science consequently bids us ultimately reduce the probability to zero. accept an unimaginable world of atoms But there is no reason why these proba- with no qualities at all, and sense and bilities should decrease. The probability imagination bid us accept a world which of a firm’s profits for the year being what is scientifically impossible. ‘Carelessness 172 Hume, David and inattention’ are the only remedies for as a matter of fact the case. And just as this and other sceptical quandaries. matters of fact cannot be inferred from 4 The Human Mind. Hume’s account relations of ideas, so ethical statements of the mind is similar. Nothing is discov- cannot be inferred from either. Just as the erable but perceptions, which are distinct discovery of matters of fact depends on occurrences, like the successive pictures relations of necessary connection, which in a cinema display. They stand in relations seem to be objective, but are really dispo- of succession, similarity and causation, but sitions of the mind, so ethical judgements there is no other real bond between them. depend on rightness and wrongness, The self is a mere figment, an imaginary goodness and badness, which seem to be string on which the beads are strung. objective qualities of persons and acts, ‘I am nothing but a bundle of perceptions.’ but are really the approvals and disap- But who or what imagines the string? How provals of the judger’s mind. Just as is the series conscious of its own serial our dispositions to expect depend on our existence? Hume cannot answer, ‘pleads experience of regular conjunctions, so the privilege of a sceptic’, and says the our approvals and disapprovals depend question is too hard. on our past experience of pleasant and The absurdities of Hume’s accounts of unpleasant consequences. Just as the natural sensory perception and of the mind arise scientist regulates our expectations by from the starting point of his philosophy – means of general and well-substantiated the doctrine of impressions and ideas. regularities, so the moralist regulates our Hume supposes them to be the undeniable approvals and disapprovals by means of elements of which experience is composed, general and well-substantiated tenden- but in fact they are nothing but the frag- cies – the tendencies of actions and char- ments of a metaphysical ghost exploded acter to promote human happiness. If the by Hume himself. That ghost was the epistemologist describes the psycho- ‘simple indivisible incorporeal substance’, logical mechanisms of belief, the moral conscious only of its own ideas, and per- philosopher describes psychological forming on them sundry ghostly acts – mechanisms of approval and disapproval. perception, volition, judgement, doubting But the mechanisms Hume describes etc. – which DESCARTES had foisted on are equally fantastic in either field, philosophers as the human mind. Hume and equally irrelevant to his main con- rejected ghostly substance and its ghostly tentions. acts, but retained ‘ideas’, or ‘perceptions’ The main psychological principle as he preferred to call them, and attempted employed by Hume is HEDONISM. Nothing to reconstruct the world of common sense but pleasure and pain influence voluntary out of their spontaneous antics. action. The influence may be direct, as 5 Moral Philosophy. Hume’s contri- when I let go of a hot plate because it bution to moral philosophy is closely par- hurts my hand, or indirect, as when fear of allel to his contribution to the theory of pain prevents me from touching a plate knowledge. As he distinguished matters I believe to be hot. And this occurs of fact from relations of ideas, so he now because fear is a ‘disagreeable’ sentiment: distinguishes ethical judgements from if it were not painful, the belief that the both of them. An ethical judgement states plate is hot would not affect my actions. neither that something could not conceiv- Reason cannot influence conduct by ably be otherwise, nor that something is itself, but only ‘obliquely’ – by discovering Hume, David 173 either an object which arouses a ‘passion’, of promises) and governments are only or the means to gratify it. useful artifices, owing their obligatory Hume thus has two arguments against power solely to their utility, it is pointless the widely held view that reason alone dis- (quite apart from the fact that the social tinguishes moral good and evil. The first, contract is a myth) to try and base one based on his psychological theory, is that upon the other. Promising is neither utter- reason alone cannot influence conduct, ing a verbal spell, nor performing a mental though moral judgements sometimes do. act by which a metaphysical entity called The second is that reason consists in the an ‘obligation’ is created out of the void. discovery of truth and falsehood, which It is simply operating the machinery of a pertain only to matters of fact or relations convention, according to which, if I make of ideas. Since moral judgements are a promise and fail to keep it, I will not be based neither in matters of fact nor in rela- trusted again. We have here the germs of tions of ideas, reason cannot decide moral the SPEECH-ACT theory of language. questions. This second argument is some- It will be seen that the impartiality of times regarded as Hume’s major contribu- genuine moral approval is for Hume tion to ethics: the contention that there is founded on ‘sympathy’, which alone gives no logical argument from ‘is’ to ‘ought’, us a concern for the happiness of our from description to evaluation. fellows in general. Sympathy, he admits, is The obligations of justice (e.g. keep- a pretty feeble motive, and moral principles ing promises, respecting property and control selfish passions mainly by means of allegiance to the state), present difficul- the system of sanctions which self-interest ties to Hume, since the acts they require leads us to set up. But it may be asked why do not always increase the happiness of virtue and vice seem important, independ- the agent, or even that of all concerned. ently of the rewards and punishments they Hume’s answer is that these obligations sometimes receive. Hume’s answer – inter- rest on artificial conventions, without esting if not convincing – is that if we reg- which society could not hold together, ulated our approval and disapproval and which could not perform their func- according to our personal interests, we tion if everyone could choose whether or would face the inconvenience that our not to support them, depending on their judgements were variable and opposed to particular circumstances. Our sympathetic those of others. But if we seek a common concern for the long-term happiness of coin, as it were, for valuing human beings, our fellows creates a moral obligation to we will find none so suitable as sympathy, be just (which is not very effective by that mild preference we have for anybody’s itself ), and our concern for the happiness happiness, other things being equal. So we of ourselves and our friends leads us to set ask of any human characteristic or institu- up a system of laws and penalties which tion: ‘is it in general likely to promote the create a natural obligation to be just. But long-run happiness of all whom it affects?’ by ‘obligation’ Hume means only a sort of The proper use of ethical terms is to motive. express the feelings of approval or disap- This account enables Hume to argue proval which we experience through sym- forcibly against the SOCIAL CONTRACT pathy in response to this question. theory of political obligation, and offer a 6 Conclusion. Hume can hardly be valuable suggestion about the nature of said to have succeeded in laying the foun- promises. Since contracts (i.e. exchanges dations of an empirical science of human 174 Husserl, Edmund nature. His contentions rest not on necessary truths, personal identity and discoveries of new facts, but on appeals to are either explicitly or what we all already know. We have all implicitly answers to problems raised by learned how to distinguish causal connec- Hume. (D.G.C.MACN.) tions from coincidences, estimate likeli- hood, make and follow demonstrations, Husserl, Edmund (1859–1938) and make moral judgements. No one in German philosopher and founder of the common life looks for empirical excep- movement known as PHENOMENOLOGY. The tions to mathematical truths, or attempts main influence on Husserl’s thought was wholly to anticipate by abstract reasoning the intentional psychology of BRENTANO the verdict of experience on questions of under whom he studied in Vienna in fact. It is perhaps not so clear that no one 1884–6. Husserl taught at Halle, and in common life approves what increases held philosophical chairs at Göttingen misery or disapproves what decreases it. and Freiburg. His principal works are: The But it can be said that many things have Philosophy of Arithmetic (1891) much crit- come to be recognized as certainly bad icized by FREGE; Logical Investigations, because of the misery they produce, and (1900–1, revised edition 1913–21); Ideas that no moral judgement has ever been for a Pure Phenomenology (book I, justified except by appeal to some moral General Introduction, 1913; books II principle which itself either lacks justifi- and III posthumously published, 1952); cation or is controversial. Phenomenology of Internal Time- Hume’s achievement is that he tries to consciousness (1905–10, published 1928); describe clearly how we do certain things Formal and Transcendental Logic (1929); which we very well know how to do in Cartesian Meditations (1931); Experience familiar contexts, and so make it clear and Judgment (1948); The Crisis of that in unfamiliar contexts we are some- European Sciences (1954). times not really doing these things, Husserl’s phenomenology represents though we think we are. Metaphysicians a vast extension and transformation of who pretend to be reasoning about the Brentano’s ‘psychognosy’, which was an origin of the universe or the immortality attempt to work out a logical geography of the soul seem to be doing the same of mental concepts as a necessary prelim- sort of thing as people who reason about the inary to empirical psychology. Husserl origin of Stonehenge or the evaporation accepts Brentano’s main thesis that states of water. But in fact they are not: they are of mind are characterized by ‘intentional- simply doing things we have all learned ity’ or directedness-to-objects, all states not to do in the familiar contexts. No one of mind being of objects (whether real or who has understood Hume can continue to unreal), and different states of mind being do metaphysics in the old way. Among the of their objects in varying manners. more important philosophers influenced He starts by building on Brentano’s by Hume were Jeremy BENTHAM and classification of mental states into pre- . Bentham said that scales sentations, judgements, and affective- fell from his eyes when he read Hume. desiderative attitudes. But he carries the Kant claimed that Hume woke him from classification much further, and develops his dogmatic slumber. Many of Kant’s it into such a ramifying tangle of fine dis- important tenets, especially his accounts tinctions that it becomes an independent of space and time, causality and substance, discipline rather than mere prolegomena Husserl, Edmund 175 to an empirical psychology. Husserl is, for subject-matter of phenomenology. The example, deeply interested in the distinc- name ‘phenomenology’ in fact derives its tion between those conscious states in significance from this ‘bracketed’ treat- which something is merely ‘meant’ and ment of anything whatever: it connotes a those in which it is concretely ‘present’, study of things as they appear in conscious- the latter being said to ‘fulfil’ the former. ness, and from that point of view it does not He is also interested in the distinction, matter whether what appears is ever more analogous to Frege’s distinction between than an appearance. The things postulated ‘sense’ and ‘reference’, between the object by physics, theology or as such and the object as meant – the victor remain phenomenologically interesting of Jena is in a sense different from the van- whether or not they are metaphysically real. quished of Waterloo; and he is interested in Husserl’s phenomenology in its full devel- the way in which successive thoughts or opment is in fact not unlike the philosophy intuitions are ‘synthesized’ in the develop- of KANT, an affinity of which Husserl ing consciousness of the ‘same’ object, and himself was fully conscious. Husserl, like in the way in which we pass from a prob- Kant, wished to discover a priori principles lematic assertion to an assertion of proba- governing mind, phenomenal nature, law, bility; he is above all interested in the society, ethics, religion etc., which should processes involved in the understanding never go beyond what appears to con- and meaningful use of words. sciousness, and which should derive their Husserl also stresses, as Brentano does warrant from the nature of such conscious not, that the sort of investigation he is appearances. pursuing is conceptual or ‘eidetic’ rather In the actual carrying out of his phe- than empirical – that he is trying to see nomenological venture there are, however, what factors are involved in, and what some singularities. Great use is made of possibilities flow from, the mere notions the terms ‘intuition’, ‘experience’, ‘descrip- of perceiving, believing, predication etc., tion’ in contexts where the subject-matter rather than to find out what empirically is notional, and where such terms can be obtains when we perceive, believe or pred- misleading. The notion of ‘acts’ is scrupu- icate. A wholly imaginary instance may lously explained, but their description therefore be as decisive in a phenomeno- reads like an account of ghostly per- logical investigation as one that is actual. formances. In the Logical Investigations Husserl further widens the scope of there is even said to be a ‘categorical intu- Brentano’s inquiry by making it include ition’ of the meanings of the logical con- any and every object of a mental intention, nectives ‘and’ and ‘or’, and though this not, however, in a naturalistic or realistic, use, too, is innocuously defined, it leaves but in a ‘bracketed’ or phenomenologi- a legacy of misunderstanding. After 1907 cal form. We can, that is, discuss the Husserl also became addicted to a quasi- ideal objects of mathematics, sense-given Cartesian approach; the phenomenologi- natural objects or sociological groups, in cal philosopher was represented as having so far as these latter are possible cogitata to ‘put out of action’ any sort of realistic of mental references in which, to use conviction so that the ‘structures’ of con- Husserl’s terminology, they are ‘consti- sciousness itself might become reflec- tuted’. As objects ‘constituted’ in con- tively evident. Great use was made of the sciousness, both the choir of heaven notion of an epoché or transcendental and the furniture of earth enter into the suspension of belief: the abstraction 176 Hutcheson, Francis necessary for a conceptual investigation as that of CLARKE. To Hutcheson, the became a mystical exercise for which the discernment of value was an activity not natural world dissolved, while phenome- of reason but of certain ‘internal senses’ nological structures made their appear- specially furnished by God for that pur- ance. But Husserl, like other saints, fell a pose. The ‘moral sense’, for instance, victim to his own : he was unable inclines us by ‘strong affections’ to seek to come out of this transcendental suspen- the greatest happiness of the greatest sion. The harmless ‘bracketing’ of com- number. Hutcheson’s doctrine looks back monsense realities became the to LOCKE, with his distinction between the metaphysical thesis that they can have external and internal senses, and SHAFTES- none but an ‘intentional’ existence in and BURY, whose somewhat untidy ‘moral for consciousness. Husserl does not see sense’ theory Hutcheson developed and that we cannot suspend a belief if it is systematized; and forward to HUME and meaningless. After 1907, therefore, phe- the BENTHAMITES. For it was through nomenology passes over into a form of Hutcheson that Hume learned that moral traditional German IDEALISM. judgments cannot ultimately be justified The works of Husserl form a slowly by reason alone – a view he was to extend declining series: as the fruitful analyses far beyond ethics into his general philoso- diminish, the metaphysical generalities phy. And here too is the first clear statement increase. The Logical Investigations, with of the UTILITARIAN ‘greatest happiness’ its fine studies of meaning, intentionality principle. Seen in the light of both Hume and knowledge, is undoubtedly one of the and the utilitarians, however, Hutcheson’s greatest of philosophical masterpieces; philosophy – shored up by theology and in the later works there is much, but not proliferating in special ad hoc senses so much, to admire. But the influence of (sense of decency, of honour, of religion Husserl’s thought increased as its philo- etc.) – shows up as rather unwieldy and sophical importance declined: hence the unstable. (R.W.H.) strange drop from phenomenology to Huxley, Thomas Henry (1825–95) EXISTENTIALISM.(J.N.F.) Self-educated Victorian scientist and Hutcheson, Francis (1694–1747) exponent of an optimistic if naïve materi- Hutcheson was born in the north of Ireland alism. ‘The mind stands related to the and ran a private academy for a time in body as the bell of the clock to the works’, Dublin, before moving to where he wrote, ‘and consciousness answers to he held the Chair of Moral Philosophy the sound which the bell gives out when it from 1729 to his death. His biggest work, is struck’. He gave a polemical edge to A System of Moral Philosophy, was pub- the work of DARWIN, and coined the term lished posthumously by his son. ‘agnostic’ to describe his preferred atti- Hutcheson opposed any ‘rationalist’ and a tude to metaphysics in general and religion priori account of value-judgement, such in particular. {J.R.} I

Iamblichus See NEOPLATONISM. that they exist in God’s mind, thus provid- ing a new argument for God. Idealism In its philosophical use, the Berkeley made practically no converts term ‘idealism’ is quite distinct from ‘ide- in his lifetime, and the ‘idealist’ school alism’ in the sense of high moral aims. only began to gain ground with KANT, While the term has sometimes been who however approached the subject in a employed by philosophers to cover all very different way. He contended that we views according to which the basis of the can account for our a priori knowledge of universe is ultimately spiritual, it has most things only by supposing that our mind commonly stood (in opposition to REALISM) has imposed on them a structure to which for a theory according to which physical they must conform. But the human mind objects can have no existence apart from a cannot impose on reality itself, but only mind which is conscious of them. (Thus on appearances, so Kant concluded that it does not cover those who, while they our knowledge must be limited to appear- believe in God, also ascribe a substantial ances. Appearances have to obey the con- existence to matter as quite conceivable ditions which our mind imposes, since independently of being experienced, they exist only as objects of actual or pos- although ultimately created by God.) sible experience. This was the reason, Kant Idealism in this narrower sense origi- thought, why we are able to apply cate- nated in the eighteenth century with gories such as substance and cause to the BERKELEY. He argued that physical physical world, but it also debars us from objects were only ‘ideas’ (hence the term extending them beyond the realm of ‘idealism’), or that their esse (existence) human experience and thus proceeding, was percipi (to be perceived). His main with Berkeley, to metaphysics. This, Kant argument was that we could not conceive insisted, does not cast doubt on science; the qualities we ascribe to them as existing on the contrary it is the only way of sav- in abstraction from our sense-experience. ing it from scepticism. If we claimed that He also used the negative argument that the function of science was to tell us the we could not possibly know unexperi- truth about reality, we should have to enced physical objects. These two argu- admit that it was wholly illusory; but not ments in some form are common to most if it tells us only about appearances (phe- idealist thinkers. He then argued that nomena). Kant consequently called him- ideas, being passive, cannot cause any- self both an ‘empirical realist’ and a thing and that those which cannot be ‘transcendental idealist’. By this he meant explained by human action must be due to approximately what some later thinkers the direct action of a non-human spirit, expressed by saying that physical-object spirits being the only possible causal propositions have to be analysed in terms agents since they alone are ‘active’, that is of ‘SENSE-DATA’. He also argued that, if possess volition. He explained the fact we hold that reality is in space and time, that physical things still seem to exist we will become involved in certain self- when no one is perceiving them by saying contradictions (‘antinomies’). We will 178 Idealism have to hold either that the world in space things-in-themselves, we are left with and time is infinite or that it is finite, and minds and objects of experience, and we either alternative, he maintained, leads to are back with what Kant called dogmatic self-contradictory conclusions; hence the idealism. The resultant philosophy only solution is to say that reality is not in (‘’ or ‘absolutism’) held space or time at all. that reality can be known to be ultimately Unlike Berkeley, Kant did not use spiritual, but that there must also be an idealism as the basis of an argument for objective material element since spirit God; he repudiated all theoretical argu- would not be able to realise itself without ments for theism, saying we can have no it. Object implied subject, but subject also knowledge of ‘things-in-themselves’. He implied object, even if subject was ulti- did however think that the existence of mately prior. Reality as a whole was con- God could be established – if not with ceived not as dependent on a mind distinct certainty, at least sufficiently to justify from finite minds (God), but as itself a belief – by means of an ethical argument. single all-embracing experience of which He was convinced that the moral law was finite minds are differentiations (the objective and argued that it commanded Absolute). Such a view stressed the unity us to strive for ideals which could only be and rationality of the cosmos and even realized if we were immortal and if the described it as perfect, since any evil in its world was ordered in the interests of the parts could be seen as arising from the moral law, which implied that it must have fact that they were only parts. been created and governed by an omnipo- It is reasonable to class Hegel as an tent and perfectly good being. His denial idealist, but it is disputable in what sense of the reality of time led to the conse- he was one. He undoubtedly thought that quence that our own real self is timeless matter was the manifestation of spirit, but and therefore unknowable – a paradoxical it is unclear how he saw the status of conclusion which he nevertheless wel- unperceived physical objects. His philos- comed, because it enabled him to reconcile ophy centred on a ‘dialectic’ by which he freedom with universal causality by say- sought to show that, starting with the ing that the real self is free, even though most abstract and empty of all concepts, the apparent or phenomenal self is com- mere being, we could pass by an a priori pletely determined by the past. process of thought to the highest logical The chief idealists in the first half of categories of the spiritual life. A leading the nineteenth century – FICHTE, SCHELLING characteristic of this mode of argument, and HEGEL – were all much influenced by which he also regarded as characteristic Kant, though they completely transformed of reality itself, is that it proceeded in his philosophy. The first element they triads. An adequate concept was taken rejected was the concept of unknowable first, its inconsistencies led to its being things-in-themselves. It was argued that replaced by the opposite extreme, but the there could be no ground for asserting latter displayed fundamentally the same something quite unknowable, and no defects, and the only cure was to combine meaning in doing so, and that Kant’s the good points of the two in a third con- attempts to exclude metaphysics involved cept, solving the previous problems and inconsistencies since he himself only taking us a stage nearer to the truth. But excluded it by making metaphysical this concept would exhibit inconsisten- assumptions of his own. Now, if we reject cies in its turn, generating a new thesis Idealism 179 and antithesis, whose would be like Kant and Hegel, on the place of solved by a new synthesis, and so on till thought in perception. His argument for we reached the fundamental category of God was based mainly on the view that the ‘absolute idea’ and proved the whole relations imply mind and yet are inde- of reality to be the expression of spirit. pendent of human minds. F. H. BRADLEY, Hegel traced such processes not only in also of Oxford, began his leading work logic but also in ethics and politics. In Appearance and Reality with an attempt politics, for example, some seek liberty at to show that all our ordinary concepts are the expense of order, others order at the self-contradictory. This argument how- expense of liberty, but both can turn into ever led him not to scepticism, but to the the same evil, the rule of the strongest conclusion that we must suppose the exis- regardless of others; political develop- tence of a perfect thought-transcending ment consisted of successive syntheses of Absolute Whole in which all these contra- the two, preserving more and more of dictions are reconciled. Bradley developed what was of value in order and liberty. the coherence theory of truth, according Unfortunately Hegel sometimes gave the to which the definition and criterion of impression that the final syntheses had truth lie in the coherence of a system. been achieved in the Prussian state of his Truth for him was a matter of degree, all day, so that his philosophy was used to our judgements being both partly false bolster stubborn conservatism, and to fos- (corrigible in the light of a wider system) ter the impression that the state, as the and partly true (inevitably embracing representative of the Absolute on earth, some elements of the real). He did not can do no wrong. (On the other hand the mean to deny that in a limited system ‘Hegelian left’ developed the almost for ordinary purposes judgements could equally one-sided doctrine of Marxism.) be taken as absolutely true or false. The It may be doubted whether Hegel believed coherence theory was also expounded by in a personal God: he regarded philosophy BLANSHARD in America. as superior to religion, but called himself J. M. E. McTAGGART, who taught at a Christian and attached great importance Cambridge, developed a form of idealism to Christian dogmas, at least as symbolic according to which reality consists of representations of the spiritual nature of a number of spirits (including human reality. beings) united in a supersensuous har- Idealism spread from Germany to mony. By way of an elaborate a priori Britain in the latter half of the nineteenth argument he arrived at the conclusion that century and became dominant in Oxford matter, time and almost all the unsatisfac- and Scotland. T. H. GREEN, who exercised tory features of human experience are only a great influence at Oxford, was specially apparent, and that in reality nothing exists concerned to bring idealism into connec- except immortal spirits loving each other. tion with Christianity and with liberal Especially in the 1920s of the twentieth political ideas. He used a more subtle century, a great influence was exercised form of Berkeley’s argument to show that by the Italian idealists CROCE and GENTILE. physical objects cannot be conceived It will be seen from the above that the except in relation to mind and therefore idealist case against independent matter should be thought as dependent on a divine leaves room for a number of different mind, but he discarded Berkeley’s empiri- views. It may be combined with theism, cism in theory of knowledge and insisted, as by Berkeley, or it may take the form of 180 Ideas absolutism, or of some kind of pluralism. of the eighteenth century. An early critic, It may even be maintained that physical , went so far as to suggest that objects are merely abstractions from all the major errors of Locke, BERKELEY human experience. Other idealists have and HUME could be traced to it, and that, taken the view that what we call inanimate but for unclarity at this key point, some of matter is the appearance of very inferior their tenets could scarcely have been minds (). This view has been stated. This contention, though extreme, supported by the argument that the prob- was by no means baseless. The root of the lem of the relation between the human trouble was that the meaning of ‘idea’ was body and mind can only be solved if we either made undesirably wide, or left regard our body (or brain) as the appear- highly indeterminate. Locke, in introduc- ance of our minds, which naturally led ing the expression, writes of it thus: ‘it to the theory that everything physical is the being that term which, I think, serves best appearance of something mental. It would to stand for whatsoever is the object of the be hard to find many philosophers who understanding when a man thinks, I have would call themselves idealists today. There used it to express whatever is meant by are indeed many who would reject the view phantasm, notion, species, or whatever it that physical objects should be regarded as is which the mind can be employed about entities existing independently of experi- in thinking’. This remark is conspicu- ence except in the hypothetical sense that ously unclear. In actual fact Locke used under suitable conditions they would the word ‘idea’ in at least four ways. appear in experience; and some trends in (1) He often uses it in the sense – itself modern science can be regarded as sup- not perspicuous – of the modern expres- porting this conclusion (see QUANTUM sion ‘SENSE-DATUM’, to refer to the MECHANICS, RELATIVITY). But such views ‘immediate objects’ of sense-experience. are usually referred to not as ‘idealism’ (2) He uses it also, occasionally, in the but as ‘PHENOMENALISM’. (A.C.E.) sense of an image, notably in his discus- sions of imagination and memory. (3) The Ideas The term ‘idea’ has a double term ‘idea’ sometimes designates the history in philosophy in English, only dis- meaning of a word (or a concept): for tantly related to its ordinary use. It is in instance to have the ‘idea’ of whiteness is the first place a transliteration of the Greek to know what ‘white’ means. (4) Less word for ‘form’, and hence occurs com- clearly, Locke sometimes seems to mean monly in translations of PLATO, and in the by ‘ideas’ whatever it is that one has in development of aspects of Platonism by mind when one thinks or understands. KANT, HEGEL, SCHOPENHAUER or HUSSERL. The greatest danger in such a liberal Second, it was extensively employed by use of terms is that it makes it easy to LOCKE in the late seventeenth century, discuss very different things in identical and remained in philosophical use for language, obscuring how different they a hundred years. The expression idée are. In the present case perhaps the most had already been much employed by seriously harmful result was that, from French writers, notably DESCARTES and Locke to Hume, no adequate distinctions MALEBRANCHE, and Locke’s usage no were ever drawn between perceiving, doubt derived from that source. thinking, understanding, imagining and The word was in fact the cause of a even believing. Indeed there was a con- great deal of confusion in the philosophy stant tendency to assimilate them all to Ideology 181 perceiving. Hume sought to improve the theory. Before MARX it referred to a position by distinguishing ideas from supposed ‘science of ideas’ devised in the ‘impressions’, a term intended for sepa- 1790s by the French philosopher and rate reference to sense-data or sensations. political reformer Destutt de Tracy However, since he held ideas to be like (1754–1836), and derived from LOCKE impressions except for a lower degree and CONDILLAC. Ideology was a branch of of ‘force and vivacity’, his subsequent zoology; it analysed ideas into their sen- analyses of belief, imagination and think- sory elements and dismissed any remain- ing in general retained the inappropriate der (such as religion or metaphysics) as underlying model of perception. groundless. Its proponents believed that Berkeley’s case is somewhat different. it would enable all citizens to decide He proceeded, with unjustified confi- matters of right and wrong for them- dence, as if the term ‘idea’ were already selves. When Napoleon came to power quite clear. He employed it in all of in 1799, he derided the Ideologists for Locke’s diverse senses, and exploited overestimating the reasonableness and the unclarity of one of them, listed as (1) malleability of human nature and the above. Berkeley wished to maintain the eliminability of religion, and the word ontological thesis, that there exist only ‘ideology’ acquired a derogatory connota- ‘spirits’ and ‘ideas’, on the basis that it tion which has clung to it ever since. was really no more than an elucidation In an early work, Marx and ENGELS wit- of common-sense beliefs. If he appears to tily denounced the Young Hegelians of the succeed, it is partly – as Reid saw – in 1840s as the ‘German Ideologists’, on the virtue of his double, or at any rate fluid, grounds that their understanding of society use of the principle that we ‘perceive was based not on ‘material activity’ but nothing but ideas’. At times he represents on ‘the ideological reflexes and echoes this principle as a truism – ideas just of this life-process’ (see DIALECTICAL are ‘the things that we perceive’; but at MATERIALISM). Beside Hegelianism, the other times he stresses that ideas ‘have chief examples of ideology were morality, not any existence without a mind’; and religion and metaphysics; and ‘in all then he can appear to have shown that ideology human beings and their circum- the things we perceive exist only ‘in a stances appear upside down’. mind’. It would be unjust to the subtlety The concept of ideology has thus of Berkeley’s argument to suggest that it acquired a double meaning. On the one rests wholly on so simple a manoeuvre. hand, it refers to ‘world-pictures’ or However, this concealed unclarity proba- bodies of ideas, as opposed to the real bly accounts for Berkeley’s strange con- world which they (mis)represent. Thus in viction that his startling doctrines were the ‘Preface’ to the Contribution to the obviously correct, and scarcely needed Critique of Political Economy (1859) supporting argument; and it is, perhaps, in Marx distinguished between his own his writings above all that the employ- topic – ‘the material transformation of the ment of the term ‘idea’ calls for critical economic conditions of production’ – and scrutiny. (G.J.W.) ‘the legal, political, religious, artistic or philosophical – in short, ideological – Identity See PERSONAL IDENTITY. forms in which people become conscious Ideology ‘Ideology’ is an indispensable of this conflict and fight it out’. The but highly controversial term in Marxist Marxist doctrine that the course of history 182 Induction is determined by ‘material conditions’ Induction ‘Induction’ is a technical rather than ‘ideological forms’ is known term in LOGIC; but unfortunately it is used as ‘HISTORICAL MATERIALISM’. But the con- in at least two ways. In one, it stands for cept of ideology also refers, on the other any procedure other than DEDUCTION by hand, to systems of ideas which are sys- which we attempt to justify some conclu- tematically deceptive, as opposed to sion. Thus the procedures of mathematics scientific theories which reveal underly- and pure logic are deductive, but the argu- ing truths. In this sense ideologies con- ments of the scientist and the detective stantly confuse the natural with the social, are inductive. But the term has also been the necessary with the contingent, the real used – principally by POPPER – to stand for with the apparent, and use-value with one particular theory about how scientists exchange-value; and the goal of Marxist and detectives justify their conclusions. theory is to decipher or ‘demystify’ the This theory, espoused by BACON and J. S. innumerable ‘fetishized’ forms in which MILL, states that science proceeds by a capitalist societies present themselves to special sort of argument in which the their participants, or in other words to premises are singular statements of obser- provide ‘critiques of ideology’, perhaps vation and experiment, and the conclu- allied with HERMENEUTICS. sions, scientific laws and theories. Popper Much controversy within Marxist opposed this view by arguing that scien- theory can be understood in terms of tists arrive at their laws and theories by a tensions between ‘historical materialists’ process of testing hypotheses – though on and ‘critics of ideology’. For the former, the wider acceptation of the term this Marxism is a ‘natural science’ of history, would itself be a form of induction. See but can itself be treated as an ideology – also DETERMINISM.(J.O.U.) the socialist ideology of the working class, Intentionality In medieval philosophy, for example. For the latter, Marxism is an intentionality was a status attributed to open-ended art of interpretation, and not objects of thought which are in the mind itself ideological. In the formulations of but which do not, or may not, actually exist Destutt de Tracy, and of Marx and Engels, (e.g. a unicorn, tomorrow’s lucky bet). The the two meanings were of course not sep- concept was revived by BRENTANO, who arated; despite the efforts of theorists like used it to define the psychical as distinct LENIN, LUKÁCS and ALTHUSSER, there must from the physical world, and this usage was be some doubt as to whether they can ever further developed by MEINONG, HUSSERL be reconciled. [J.R.] and PHENOMENOLOGY generally. [J.R.] J

James, William (1842–1910) American the result of a total bodily state which psychologist born in New York, whose includes striking him. thought passed through three major 2 Pragmatism. James acknowledged stages: work in psychology, the defence the source of his pragmatism in of PRAGMATISM, and ‘’. C. S. PEIRCE, who formulated the ‘prag- James was always more interested in spe- matic maxim’ as one of several rules cific problems than in fitting his work governing intelligent inquiry. For Peirce it into a consistent pattern, but each of his was simply a rule for achieving clarity of three periods may be looked upon as a meaning, requiring that the significance logical outgrowth of its predecessor; and of any concept or hypothesis be expressed all can be read as products of a single by a specification of the ‘sensible differ- philosophical intent. ence’ its being true would make. James’ 1 Psychology. The key to James’ ‘pragmatic rule’ had a far more over- work in psychology is his method, gener- arching status: his view was that if a con- ally called ‘functionalism’. Functionalism cept literally means what you do with it, in general is the demand that things be then its truth must consist in a successful understood exclusively in terms of the doing. Ideas, like minds, were to be treated differences they make in experience, and in terms of their function. To judge that hence our conception of mentality must an idea is true was simply to claim that be rooted in an inspection of what it does. it successfully leads one through the At the outset of Principles of Psychology labyrinth of experience. Ideas were not (1890), James stipulates that ‘the pur- mysteries but tools. suance of future ends and the choice of According to James, traditional EMPIRI- means for their attainment are the mark CISM paid too much attention to the ori- and criterion of the presence of mentality gins of ideas and not enough to their in a phenomenon’. James argued that function as pointers to future experience; mental life is always experienced as a moreover its concentration on the discrete ‘flow’ in which each succeeding moment elements of experience generated inatten- grasps and ‘owns’ its predecessor, and tion to their equally real relatedness. For came to the startling conviction that James, pragmatism was the only genuinely ‘whenever my introspective glance suc- radical empiricism, and its essence lay in ceeds in turning around quickly enough a stress upon the relatedness of ideas to to catch one of these manifestations... future experiences, which fulfil their all it can ever feel distinctly is some meaning. James repeatedly defined the bodily process, for the most part taking mental life as a continuous ‘substitution place within the head’. This led to the of concepts for percepts’, but in the last famous ‘James–Lange’ theory of the analysis he always defined a concept as a emotions, which states that emotion is no percept functioning in a certain way, that more than the feeling of a bodily state: is to say in a predictive manner. If James’ for instance, I do not strike a man psychology rests upon suspicion of any because I am angry; my anger is simply difference of kind between minds and 184 Jaspers, Karl bodies, his theory of knowledge rests divine or supernatural element in reality. upon suspicion of any difference of kind He failed to anticipate that later pragma- between percepts and concepts. tists might claim that beliefs like com- In his psychology, James always munism and scientism could ‘integrate’ refused to distinguish mental and material one’s life and actions more efficiently ‘stuff’, and in his later work he defended than the religious beliefs with which he a technical version of REALISM under the was concerned. (J.W.S) label ‘Neutral Monism’. If he was to com- mit himself to a ‘stuff’ of the world, inde- Jaspers, Karl (1883–1969) Jaspers was pendent of human investigation, he could the chief exponent of German EXISTENTIAL- not label it either ‘mental’ or ‘material’, ISM next to HEIDEGGER, although he repudi- so he took the bull by the horns and called ated both the label and the philosophy of it ‘neutral’. Minds were this stuff organ- Heidegger. He took his doctorate in medi- ized in one way; material objects the same cine, published a General Psychopathology stuff organized differently. in 1913 and a Psychology of 3 Religion. Few philosophical works in 1919, and then became a professor are more clearly the product of personal of philosophy at Heidelberg. In 1932 he experience than (1897), published his chief work, Philosophy. where James describes a decision which Under the Hitler regime he was forbidden enabled him to surmount a period of acute to lecture. melancholy and depression. His argument His work was a sustained protest is threefold. (a) There are ‘forced options’ against the ‘professors’ philosophy’ of the in intellectual life – questions where one later nineteenth century. The two giants of has to make up one’s mind either for or the period after HEGEL are, to his mind, against, and there is no middle course. KIERKEGAARD and NIETZSCHE. What mat- Thus, one must either believe or not ters is neither Kierkegaard’s ‘forced believe that one is free, or that God exists. Christianity’ nor Nietzsche’s ‘forced anti- (b) In cases where no evidence could Christianity’, but their shared concern possibly settle the matter, the only truly with human existence and the unexampled empirical approach is to recognize the fluidity and elusiveness of their thought: need to transcend the evidence. One must ‘Out of every position one may have look for evidence at second remove, adopted, out of every finitude, we are examining the effects on the integrity and expelled; we are set whirling.’ It is only power of one’s life which would follow after reason has suffered ‘shipwreck’ in choosing one option rather than the other. its quest for certainty that true philoso- (c) James also makes the startling claim phizing can begin. Extreme situations that in cases of this sort the act of believing (Grenzsituationen) confront us with the tends to make what is believed more true. inadequacy of all philosophies and Thus if I seriously believe that I am free become, to cite Jaspers’ characterization I will act as a free agent; and if not, not. of his own Nietzsche, ‘an introduction to The theme was followed up in The that shaking up of thought from which Varieties of Religious Experience (1902), Existenzphilosophie must spring’. Jaspers’ where James claimed that RELIGION can consistent disparagement of all content be ‘justified’ by its tendency to organize poses a problem about the contents of and energize men’s lives. By ‘religious his own voluminous writings. They are belief’ James meant a commitment to the very largely filled with highly subjective Jonas, Hans 185 paraphrases of the alleged positions of Royal and Papal Power drew on ARIS- other writers, followed again and again by TOTLE and AQUINAS to define two separate an appeal to the reader (appellieren is one sets of divinely instituted rights, and of Jaspers’ key concepts) to be seriously anticipated the later doctrine of indirect concerned with his own existence instead control. He also defended Aquinas of seeking refuge in finished positions. against the English Franciscan, William (W.K.) de la Mare, denying that matter can exist without form, and maintaining the real Jevons, William Stanley (1835–82) distinction between essence and existence The logician and inventor W.S. Jevons in finite things; but he seems not to have was born in Liverpool and studied chem- appreciated how far Aquinas had istry at University College, London. After advanced from AVICENNA. (T.G.) working for some years as a metallurgist in Australia, he went back to University Jonas, Hans (1903–93) College to study economics and philoso- was born in Germany and studied under phy. In 1863 he was appointed to teach in HEIDEGGER in Marburg in the 1920s. He Manchester, returning to London in 1875 believed that Being and Time had revital- as professor in his old college. ized philosophy by orienting it to human Pure Logic (1864) is a study of BOOLE existence in history, and like Heidegger’s which introduces some notational improve- other Jewish students – MARCUSE, LEVINAS ments and amendments. (Jevons’ later and ARENDT for instance – he was shocked work on Boolean algebra included the when his brilliant teacher came out as a construction of a calculating machine, sullen Nazi. ‘When the most profound the so-called ‘logical piano’.) Principles thinker of my time fell into step with the of Science (1874) contains an elaborate thundering march of Hitler’s brown batal- account of inductive reasoning in which lions’, he wrote, ‘it was not merely a bit- hypotheses are first framed by the ter personal disappointment for me but in informed insight of the scientist and then my eyes a débacle for philosophy’. He left confirmed by evaluating evidence in Germany in 1933, fought with the British accordance with a calculus of probability. army, and eventually moved to New York. The theory is developed in conscious Jonas devoted his philosophical intelli- opposition to J. S. MILL’s account of induc- gence to questions about ethics and nature. tion as depending on a process of elimi- He believed that DARWIN’s account of evo- nation, and Jevons makes an important lution, if it had wounded human vanity, point against Mill by insisting on the also gave a certain dignity ‘to the realm essential of all inductive con- of life as a whole’. In particular it demon- clusions. Jevons’ general view of induc- strated the preciousness of all those organ- tion keeps close to the fact of scientific isms that had been lucky enough to find an practice, and received a powerful and ecological harbour in which to shelter from original reformulation in the work of extinction. In The Imperative of POPPER. (D.J.O’C.) Responsibility (1979), Jonas argued that John of Paris (c.1269–1306) John of the scope of our ethical community could Paris (also known as Jean Quidort) was a no longer be restricted to ‘neighbours’ and Dominican and Paris master who ‘sharers of a common present’. It was nec- bravely defended civil prerogatives essary to fashion cautious new principles against the power of the Church. His Of for a brash . Our technological 186 Jurisprudence reach had outgrown our moral grasp, and as an independent and important study. the future of humanity could no longer be The systematic analysis of legal concepts expected to take care of itself. The kind of was begun by BENTHAM in The Fragment moral heroism that insists on justice on Government (1776), The Principles of regardless of the cost was irresponsible in Morals and Legislation (1789) and the view of the prospects of sublime destruc- Limits of Jurisprudence Defined (1782), tion opened up by modern science. The and developed by his disciple John worst of tyrannies might be preferable to Austin in The Province of Jurisprudence nuclear holocaust and the irrevocable Determined (1832) and Lectures on degradation, desolation and exhaustion of The Philosophy of Positive Law (1863). the planet. The ‘principle of hope’ that Ernst Modern forms of analytical study of law BLOCH had proposed as the basis for a happy have been developed in the ‘pure theory’ human future needed to be abandoned and of law of (1881–1973), replaced with a ‘heuristics of fear’. {J.R.} described in General Theory of Law and State (1945), and by jurists influ- Jurisprudence ‘Jurisprudence’ is the enced by linguistic philosophy. Analytical name of a loosely related group of studies jurisprudence is usually associated with concerned with certain general questions (though logically independent of) ‘legal about law which knowledge of particular positivism’, that is the doctrine that there legal systems does not suffice to answer. is no necessary but only a historical con- Among the general questions of jurispru- nection between law and morality. dence are: What is law? Can there be law 2 Critical and Evaluative Inquiries. without coercion? Is The doctrines of NATURAL LAW developed really law? How is law related to morality by the scholastics (especially AQUINAS) and justice and how does it differ from from Aristotelian metaphysics and them? How do judges reason in deciding founded a lasting tra- particular cases? How do social and eco- dition in the criticism of law. Its distin- nomic conditions affect the law, and how guishing feature is the insistence (a) that are they affected by it? Are there any there are fixed principles for the guidance fixed principles by which laws may be of human conduct not made by humans appraised as good or bad? Jurisprudence but discernible by reason; (b) that these is thus concerned to further the under- principles constitute a natural law by standing and reasoned criticism of law as which all human-made law is to be judged. distinct from knowledge of its details. In Some theorists hold that failure to con- pursuit of these general aims it has drawn form to natural law renders human law heavily on other disciplines, especially phi- invalid; others look upon natural law not losophy. Distinctions are sometimes made as a test of legal validity but only as a between jurisprudence, standard of criticism. Despite their objec- and legal theory, but these mean little; it is tion to natural law doctrines, criticism of more important to distinguish between dif- law (on UTILITARIAN grounds) was a major ferent types of inquiry as follows. concern of Bentham and Austin. Most 1 Analytical Inquiries. The elucida- modern critical jurisprudence has been tion of the expression ‘law’ and of terms based on a variety of social policies and is embodying fundamental legal concepts independent of natural law theory, though (e.g. rights and duties, legal personality, its essentials have been reasserted in ownership, sources of law) is now regarded some quarters. Jurisprudence 187

Study of the judicial process especially developed by Russian writers, for example in America stimulated two forms of E. B. Pashukanis in his General theory of jurisprudence, one constructive, the other Law and Marxism (1924). Official Soviet sceptical. Both emphasized the fact that legal theory suppressed the anarchical legal rules have at best a central core of side of this doctrine. Non-Marxist theo- settled meaning, so that when courts apply ries such as E. Ehrlich’s Fundamental general rules to borderline cases, their rea- Principles of Sociology of Law (1913) soning is not (despite appearances) deduc- insist that the ‘formal’ law to be found in tive, but represents a choice between social statutes is a less important social influ- values. One movement, led by Roscoe ence than moral and other non-legal Pound (often termed ‘functional’ jurispru- norms (‘the living law’). Though general dence) is concerned to determine the programmes for ‘sociological jurispru- social interests which should guide courts dence’ have often been announced, the in the area left open by legal rules. The best work consists of studies of the rela- sceptical movement, originating with tion of special legal institutions to spe- O. W. Holmes (The Path of the Law, 1897) cific economic or social conditions, for and J. C. Gray (The Nature and Sources of example Berle’s and Means’ The Modern Law, 1902), stressed the diversity of non- Corporation and Private Property (1932). legal influences on judicial decisions latent 4 Historical Inquiries. The work of beneath the legal forms. Later ‘realist’ Savigny, The Vocation of Our Age for writers challenged the conventional con- Legislation and Jurisprudence (1814) and ception of law as consisting of rules as dis- Sir Henry ’s two works, Ancient Law tinct from more or less predictable (1881) and Early History of Institutions operations of the courts (see, e.g. (1875), are usually described as ‘histori- Frank’s Law and The Modern Mind, 1930). cal jurisprudence’, but no single form These developments were anticipated by of inquiry is distinguishable under this the advocacy of unfettered judicial discre- name. Savigny thought that the naturally tion by Continental jurists of the ‘Free law’ developing law of a society should be school (e.g. Ehrlich, Freie Rechtsfindung, interfered with only in accordance with 1903) and by Scandinavian writers such as its natural genius, which could best he Axel Hägeström. grasped in the earliest of its legal forms. 3 Sociological Inquiries. Various Maine wished to free the understand- general theories concerning the interplay ing of early law from modern precon- of law with economic and social forces ceptions concerning the nature of law, fall under this head. The MARXIST doctrine and to exhibit characteristic stages of legal that law is determined by economic con- development followed by ‘progressive’ ditions and destined to ‘wither away’ was societies. (H.L.A.H.) K

Kant, Immanuel (1724–1804) twofold classification of judgments. Immanuel Kant was born in Königsberg According to him every judgment is in Eastern Prussia, the son of a saddler. (i) either ANALYTIC or synthetic and He was educated at a grammar school in (ii) either A PRIORI or a posteriori. A judg- the city, and at its University, where he ment is analytic if its negation results later taught first as a Dozent (lecturer) in logical absurdity. For example ‘a father and then, for many years, as professor. As is male’, ‘a green thing is coloured’ are a student he studied mathematics and analytic judgments, since their negations physics as well as philosophy, and, (‘a father is not male’, ‘a green thing is throughout life, he kept an interest in these not coloured’) are logically absurd. Their subjects. (The so-called Kant-Laplace the- truth is clear from a mere analysis of the ory of the origin of the solar system is terms in which they are formulated. Any partly based on an early cosmological judgment which is not analytic is syn- essay of his.) Externally, he lived the quiet thetic, notably judgments about empirical and uneventful life of an unmarried matters of fact, in particular those stating scholar, devoted to his work and friends. empirical laws of nature, such as ‘copper He had no particular taste for music and conducts electricity’. Such judgments, the fine arts but was well acquainted with whether true or false, can always be denied ancient and modern literature. His interest without contradiction. in the political events of his time was A judgment is a priori if it is ‘inde- intense, and he sympathized with both the pendent of all experience and even of all American and French revolutions. He was impressions of the senses’. Thus ‘man has one of the greatest of all philosophers. an immortal soul’, which can be neither Two main streams of European philos- confirmed nor falsified by experience, ophy influenced his thought: RATIONALISM, is – if meaningful – a priori. Again all which reached him through his own analytic judgments are a priori. Their teachers, in the form given it by LEIBNIZ truth, and indeed their logical necessity, and WOLFF; and EMPIRICISM, the impact can he made evident by a mere analysis of of which he felt most strongly when he their terms, without resort to experiment came across some of HUME’s writings in or observation. German translation. His own mature If we combine these two classifica- philosophy begins with the Critique of tions, and note that all analytic judgments Pure Reason (1781) and is known as must also be a priori, we see that there the Critical Philosophy. It is a synthesis – are three classes of judgments, mutually as distinct from a mere combination – of exclusive and jointly exhaustive, namely: rationalism and empiricism, each of which, (i) analytic a priori, (ii) synthetic a poste- in his view, give a one-sided and distorted riori, and (iii) synthetic a priori. It is account of the structure and content of worth remarking that Leibniz considered human knowledge. all judgments to be analytic: according Perhaps the best approach to Kant’s to him, even empirical judgments can in philosophical system is through his theory have their terms analysed till their Kant, Immanuel 189 connection is seen to be logically neces- Philosophy, they would yield all the fun- sary; on the other hand Hume and his damental synthetic a priori propositions, modern followers hold that all judgments any others being deducible from them by are either analytic (and so a priori) or syn- ordinary reasoning. Experts are divided on thetic a posteriori; none are synthetic a the question of how far the development of priori. Kant was convinced to the contrary. non-Euclidean geometry, RELATIVITY and He found synthetic a priori judgments quantum theory, and the new mathemati- both in the mathematics and science of his cal logic demonstrates that Kant cannot day and in morality. An example would be possibly have succeeded in producing a the judgment ‘every event has a cause’, complete outline of a priori knowledge. which can be denied without logical One of the fundamental assumptions absurdity even though, in its complete of the Kantian philosophy is that perceiv- generality, it is neither confirmable nor fal- ing and thinking are different. Following sifiable by sense-experience. (If no cause the psychology of his day, Kant attributes of a given event is known, we can always them to two distinct faculties of the mind, go on looking; and even if all known sense and understanding. Apart from ana- events had causes, there might be others lytical judgments – which merely eluci- which had none; the dominant interpreta- date the meaning of their terms – every tion of QUANTUM MECHANICS does in fact judgment consists, or appears to consist, reject the principle of causality.) in applying a concept to some particular. For Kant, the occurrence of synthetic a Apprehension of particulars belongs to priori judgments gives rise to two philo- the faculty of sense; apprehension of sophical tasks: first, to exhibit them concepts and the rules by which they are clearly and, if possible, completely; and applied belongs to the understanding. In second, to demonstrate that they are justi- order to grasp the function and legitimacy fied. Kant formulates this problem by of a synthetic a priori judgement it is asking ‘How are synthetic a priori judg- necessary to inquire into its constituents – ments possible?’ It is the central question the type of concept and particular which of the Critical Philosophy, and its answer make it what it is. required a critique of all theoretical and Concepts are of three types. First, a moral knowledge as well as an examina- posteriori concepts which are abstracted tion of METAPHYSICS and its claim to yield from sense-perception and applicable to it transcendent knowledge, that is, knowl- (thus ‘green’ is abstracted from perceptual edge of what transcends every possible data and applied to them when we judge experience. that something is green); second, a priori 1 Critique of Pure Reason. The task concepts which, though not abstracted of the first Critique was (i) to exhibit the from sense-perception, are nevertheless synthetic a priori judgments which enter applicable to it; and third, Ideas, which are into pure mathematics and natural sci- neither abstracted from sense-perception ence, and show ‘how they are possible’; nor applicable to it. While Kant’s account and (ii) to examine the claims of meta- of a posteriori concepts contains nothing physics. It is important to note that Kant not familiar in traditional empiricism, was convinced that the mathematics of his his account of a priori concepts and Ideas day, Newtonian physics, and Aristotelian is all his own, and distinctive of the Critical logic were complete, and that, when Philosophy. This account is essential analysed by the methods of the Critical (i) to an understanding of the nature of 190 Kant, Immanuel those synthetic a priori propositions which possibility of varying in imagination all are contained in mathematics, natural the features of a perceptual object except science, metaphysics, morality, aesthetic its being in space and time. One of his judgement and teleological explanation; arguments for the conclusion that space (ii) to an understanding of their claim to and time are particulars rather than be true; and (iii) to the decision whether general notions is that ‘division’ is a quite and how far they are true in each of these different process in the two cases: space cases. divides into sub-spaces and time into (a) Kant’s philosophy of mathematics. temporal intervals, whereas a general In discussing the mathematics of his time – notion divides into various species (e.g. arithmetic, classical analysis and Euclidean ‘animal’ divides into ‘vertebrate’ and ‘non- geometry – Kant tries to show that the vertebrate’). Now if space and time are a propositions embodying their axioms and priori particulars, then Kant can explain theorems are synthetic a priori. Since the the legitimacy of the synthetic a priori discovery of non-Euclidean judgments of arithmetic and geometry. and their successful use in physics it has Those of arithmetic describe the structure been fairly generally agreed that the postu- of time with its repetition of units; those of lates of Euclidean geometry can be denied geometry describe the structure of space without logical absurdity, and yet are inde- with its extended patterns. Mathematical pendent of sense-perception – which cor- synthetic a priori judgments are thus responds to what Kant meant by saying ‘possible’ because they involve applying a that they are synthetic and a priori. As far priori concepts to space and time, which as arithmetic is concerned, Kant holds are a priori particulars. that such judgments as ‘7ϩ5ϭ12’ are Kant characterizes this kind of explana- synthetic because the notion of ‘12’ is not tion of the legitimacy of synthetic a priori ‘contained’ in the notion of adding 7 and 5. judgments as ‘transcendental’; indeed The synthetic a priori character of arith- he calls his whole philosophy not only metical propositions is, however, disputed ‘Critical’ but also ‘Transcendental’, because by many experts, although some, con- its concern is ‘not so much with objects cerning ‘the totality of all integers’, have as with the manner of our cognition of been denied without contradiction and are objects, in so far as it is possible a priori’. independent of sense in that they do not (b) Kant’s philosophy of science. Kant describe sense-perceptions of any kind. proceeds to show that synthetic a priori Assuming now that the axioms and judgments are employed not only in pure theorems of every system of pure mathe- mathematics but also in science and com- matics are synthetic a priori judgments, mon sense factual knowledge. Here too, Kant has to ask: How are they possible? he urges, it is the task of the Critical or Are there, perhaps, particular objects Transcendental Philosophy to recognize other than sense-perceptions which the our synthetic a priori possessions and concepts of arithmetic and geometry char- prove our entitlement to them. We all make acterize? Kant’s answer is that there are. judgments to the effect that a particular According to Kant, space and time – as event caused something else to happen. opposed to the sense-perceptions located in Moreover, before the advent of quantum them – are (i) a priori and (ii) particulars mechanics the general principle of rather than general notions. One of his causality – that every event has a cause – arguments for their a priori status is the was generally accepted. The judgment Kant, Immanuel 191 expressing this principle is, according to empirical judgments and their form. The Kant, synthetic a priori. Moreover, the matter of such judgments is always concept ‘x causes y’, which is involved in expressed by its a posteriori concepts, the the general principle, and applied when- form by the fact that the judgment has a ever we make a particular causal judgment, certain structure. Thus the judgment ‘if is an a priori concept. It is not abstracted the sun shines, the stone will get warmer’ from perceived necessary connexions, has the if-then form, or the structure of a since all that we ever perceive is succes- hypothetical judgment. This, according to sions of occurrences. That we do not Kant, expresses the fact that in making abstract the relation of causal necessity the judgment we are applying the Category from perception had already been shown ‘x causes y’. In considering on the one by Hume, whose views in this respect hand the difference between subjective Kant substantially accepts. Yet we do perceptual and objective empirical judg- apply this concept to perception. The ments, and on the other hand the difference name Kant adopts for concepts which are between the matter and form of objective applicable to perception – but which, empirical ones, Kant thinks we can see that unlike mathematical ones, are not charac- the form or structure of objective empiri- teristic of space and time – is CATEGORIES. cal judgments embodies the Categories. The fact that they are constituents in syn- It follows that if we could list every thetic a priori judgments makes it neces- possible form of judgment – all the vari- sary to list them systematically. eties of logical structure – we would know Kant believes there are certain clues to all the Categories. Now Kant held that help us with this task. First, there is the traditional logic (slightly modified by difference between subjective perceptual himself) did contain a list of all possible judgments and judgments which are objec- logical forms of judgment. Hence it con- tive and empirical. Compare, for example, tained, implicitly, all the Categories, ‘what now appears to me is green’ and namely (i) Categories of quantity: Unity, ‘this is a green object’. The first judgment Plurality and Totality; (ii) Categories of does not claim to be about a public thing quality: Reality, Negation and Limitation; or substance, independent of my percep- (iii) Categories of Relation: Substance- tion, but the second does. Yet both have and-accident, Causality-and-dependence the same perceptual content. Hence, Kant and Community or Interaction; and argues, the concept, or more precisely the (iv) Categories of modality: Possibility- Category, ‘substance’ is applied in the Impossibility, Existence–Non-existence objective empirical judgment but not in and Necessity–Contingency. the subjective perceptual judgment. This Synthetic a priori judgments consist in leads to the conclusion that if we compare applying the Categories to the data given objective empirical judgments with sub- to the senses in space and time, that is, jective perceptual ones having the same to the perceptual manifold. Since the perceptual content, and if we as it were Categories are not abstracted from the subtract the latter from the former, we will manifold, their application to it is more than be left with one or more Categories. a mere declaration of what is found in A second clue concerns the criterion perception. (How could we declare that for judging whether we have discovered we have found e.g. causal necessity in all the Categories, and lies in the differ- perception, when all we have perceived is ence between the matter of objective, regularity of sequence between events?) 192 Kant, Immanuel

Kant’s account of how the Categories perceptions are all located in time. (i) To apply to the manifold of perception is one the Categories of quantity there corre- of the central points of his philosophy. He sponds the principle ‘all perceptions himself compared it with the revolution- are extensive magnitudes’; (ii) to the ary idea of Copernicus who ‘made the Categories of quality, there corresponds observer turn round (the sun) and kept the principle ‘in all appearances the real the stars still’. The applicability of the which is an object of sensation has inten- Categories transforms the subjective mani- sive magnitude, that is degree’; (iii) the fold of otherwise disconnected appear- principle corresponding to the Categories ances in space and time into an objective of relation, is that ‘objective experience (or inter-subjective) reality, in which we is possible only by means of the presenta- discern physical objects as SUBSTANCES tion of a necessary connexion of per- capable of causal interactions and as the ceptions’ (more concretely expressed in source of our systematically connected three synthetic a priori propositions pre- perceptions. To be an object – as opposed supposed in Newtonian physics: the to a mere subjective impression – is thus, principles of conservation of substance, for Kant, to be a bearer of Categories, of causality and of interaction); and (iv) which are not abstracted from the mani- to the Categories of modality there corre- fold of perception but, as it were, imposed spond three principles which are held to on it by the subject. The reality of inter- explain possibility, reality and necessity subjective objects is due to the activity of as characterizing our judgments about the the thinking subject, the pure self which objective world. connects the manifold by means of the Having, as he thinks, discovered all Categories. But Kant distinguishes sharply the synthetic a priori principles, Kant between the pure self which imposes the embarks, in the ‘Transcendental Deduction Categories, and the empirical self which of the Categories’ upon their justification. apprehends its own states and does so His central point is that the application of through the application of the Categories. the Categories to objects, in accordance There can be no self-awareness of the with the principles, is legitimate because pure self. to be an object is nothing else than to Once we understand that objects are be capable of being characterized by the constituted by the application of Categories Categories. Whatever one may think of to the perceptual manifold, we will be on his claim to have discovered the presup- the way to understanding those synthetic positions of all objective and scientific a priori judgments which are not mathe- knowledge, Kant’s most important contri- matical. Kant conceives them as the prin- bution to the theory of knowledge lies in ciples according to which the Categories the suggestion that we employ Categories are applied to the manifold of perception. in our thinking about matters of fact, and They express the conditions under which that their application constitutes objective objective experience is possible. They are reality. the presuppositions of the apprehension (c) Kant’s metaphysical views. The of the objects of common sense and science. analysis of mathematics and theoretical The conditions for applying the Categories, knowledge results in the thesis that all expressed by non-mathematical synthetic theoretical knowledge consists in ‘catego- a priori judgments, are according to Kant rizing’ perceptual material located in connected with the fact that objects and space and time. But Kant believes there Kant, Immanuel 193 must also be something apart from space, deducible from synthetic a priori princi- time and the Categories – a ‘thing in itself’, ples. But if the Categories are taken as an ‘intelligible’ or ‘’ – about characterizing things in themselves, or if which, however, we can know nothing. the Ideas are taken as characterizing Kant calls this doctrine ‘transcendental’ something given in experience, then meta- idealism (as opposed to ‘transcendent’ physics becomes spurious. The mistaken idealism, which would claim that the employment of Categories and Ideas ‘things in itself’ is knowable). Any attempt leads, as Kant tries to show, to obstinate to apply the Categories to things in them- fallacies, such as the alleged proofs of selves, Kant says, will result in confusion the existence of God – in particular the and illusion. ONTOLOGICAL ARGUMENT, according to Another source of illusion is the which we can deduce God’s existence improper use of the Ideas of Reason. Just from the fact that we can conceive of God as Kant derived the Categories from the as a perfect being, and that as such God possible forms of judgment, so he derives must exist since non-existence would be the Ideas from the possible forms of logi- an imperfection. Kant’s reply is that exis- cal inference. In doing so he again accepts tence is not a predicate. Other fallacies the traditional logic as, on the whole, include the so-called antinomies, of which complete. The guiding principle is that the most important is that between free- we can always go on asking to have the dom of the will and natural causality. Here premises of our inferences deduced from Kant distinguishes between the Idea of higher premises without limit (We can moral freedom, which does not apply to ask for the ‘conditions of the conditions, phenomena, and the Category of causal- of the conditions...of the truth of any ity, which does. Our experience of moral statement’.). An Idea is formed when we obligation logically implies the Idea of assume that this potentially infinite series moral freedom. It is a notion which we is actually given in its totality. Kant rec- must think, but cannot know, and is quite ognizes three types of deductive infer- compatible with the Category of causality. ence, each giving rise to a potentially Whereas the Categories constitute phe- infinite sequence of premises, and hence nomena as objects, the Ideas have only a to three Ideas of Reason, namely: (i) the ‘regulative’ function. They ‘direct the Idea of the absolute unity of the thinking understanding to a certain goal...which subject; (ii) the Idea of the absolute unity of serves the purpose of giving the greatest the sequence of the conditions of appear- unity and the greatest breadth at the same ance; and (iii) the Idea of the absolute unity time’. As we have seen, they have their of the conditions of objects of thought in root in the demand that we should search general. Each of these Ideas provides the for the conditions of any true judgment spurious subject matter of a spurious and in the assumption that the totality of metaphysical discipline; first, speculative these conditions, which form a potentially psychology (alleged a priori knowledge of infinite sequence, is actually given. This the soul); second, speculative cosmology assumption, unlike the demand, is the (alleged a priori knowledge of the world); source of a pretended knowledge. But the and third, speculative theology (alleged a demand does indeed confer greater unity priori knowledge of God). on our judgments, since in following it we Genuine metaphysical knowledge of connect them systematically by deductive matters of fact is, according to Kant, relations. 194 Kant, Immanuel

2 Critique of Practical Reason. The we are causally determined, but as non- second part of the critical philosophy is phenomenal or noumenal we are free. concerned with the synthetic a priori prin- We know we are free, even though we are ciples which underlie our knowledge of ignorant of what our freedom is. Thus what we ought to do and what ought to be the compatibility of moral freedom with the case. It aims to exhibit these principles the causal order of nature can be demon- and demonstrate their legitimacy. The strated, while the nature of moral freedom moral law – which enables us to decide remains mysterious. whether an action is obligatory or not – is It is clear that for Kant morality ‘needs discovered by analysis of our moral expe- neither the idea of another being above rience and the language in which we for- man, for man to recognize his duty, nor mulate it. The morality of an action, Kant does it need another motive apart from tries to show, is not a quality of behaviour, the law that he should fulfil his duty.’ or of a desire to bring about a certain state Unavoidably, however, morality gives rise of affairs; it depends rather on what Kant to the assumption that virtue has some calls the maxim on which the agent is act- connexion with happiness, that the two ing, in other words the general rule which are adequately correlated, and it thus sug- would be used to justify the action. gests the Idea of a power which would Kant argues that a maxim is moral if it secure this correlation. But the connexion conforms to the moral law. This law – a between religion and morality is not logi- purely formal principle supposedly derived cal. It is based on an act of faith which from the analysis of moral experience – is explains the otherwise mysterious consis- the famous CATEGORICAL IMPERATIVE, tency between moral freedom and causally which states that the maxim of my action determined nature. To make room for this is moral if and only if I can will that it act of faith is, according to Kant, a more should become a universal law. (One of important task than trying to give rational Kant’s alternative formulations runs: ‘Act proofs of the existence of God. in such a way that you treat humanity 3 The . In the both in your own person and in the person first two Critiques Kant tried to discover of all others, never as a means only but and justify the principles presupposed in always equally as an end.’). This formal our objective judgments of what is or test separates maxims into moral and non- ought to be the case. In the Critique of moral, just as syllogisms are divided into Judgment, however, he sought for the sub- valid and invalid. jective principles at the root of (i) our Our experience of the conflict between search for system in our explanations of duty and desire is supposed to commit us natural phenomena and (ii) our apprehen- to the categorical imperative. But is this sion of beauty. The key notions investi- commitment objective, in the sense of gated in the third Critique are ‘purpose’ being possible in a world which stands and ‘purposiveness’ (the latter in the sense under the law of causality? Kant believes of a harmony we might apprehend with- that it is. The Idea of freedom, which can out recognizing any specific purpose). be thought but not known, is not only The notion of purpose is always demanded by our sense of duty; it is, as presupposed by scientific explanations, already noted, compatible with the rule which are based on the assumption that of the principle of causality in the phe- the special empirical laws which we dis- nomenal world. As phenomenal beings cover are more than a heap of unrelated Kierkegaard, Søren 195 generalizations. We look for a certain of interest, and that it pleases universally. systematic unity, treating them ‘as if The universality claimed for aesthetic an understanding (though not our own) judgments is quite different from the had given them to our cognitive faculties, (objective) universality of synthetic a priori in order to make possible a system of judgments. It has a merely subjective experience in accordance with the laws of foundation in our cognitive faculties. In nature’. This assumption is not a state- this respect aesthetic judgments are on the ment of fact, but a subjective, method- same footing as teleological explanation. ological principle. Apart from the general 4 Kant’s Influence. Kant’s view of assumption of a harmony between our mathematics as a system of synthetic a understanding and the nature which we priori propositions describing the struc- try to understand, Kant considers particu- ture of space and time was to a large lar fields of inquiry, and the teleological extent adopted by mathematicians of both explanations sometimes used in them. the formalist and the intuitionist schools. They have their use as preparing the way His philosophy of science has been kept for causal explanations, or as filling tem- alive by anti-phenomenalists, and was porary – perhaps even permanent – causal substantially accepted by Einstein. The gaps. The notion of purposes in Nature is Critical Philosophy also had considerable a methodologically useful and indispensa- influence on the rise of German idealism – ble Idea; but as an Idea it has, unlike the particularly the philosophy of FICHTE and Categories, no objective application. his followers, who regarded the self as not Kant argues that teleological explana- only apprehending but somehow creating tions foster the assumption that ‘the the world. Kant’s demonstrations of the universe has it source in an intelligent antinomies which arise when Ideas are being...existing outside the world’. But taken to characterize objective reality is not even the most complete teleology one of the sources of the Hegelian doc- amounts to a proof of God’s existence, trine that reality is self-contradictory, and since teleological principles are merely his view of the function of Ideas influ- subjective expressions of ‘our cognitive enced PEIRCE and other pragmatists. His faculties being what they are’. Kant, as distinction between pure and practical we have seen, admits purposiveness with- reason has been widely accepted, and his out purpose. Indeed he defines beauty as anti-naturalism has been very influential ‘the form of purposiveness in so far as it in ethics. (S.K.) is perceived apart from the presentation of a purpose’. The unity of aesthetic expe- Kierkegaard, Søren Aabye (1813–55) rience is due to an indefinite interplay of Danish writer whose critique of contem- the faculties of perception and imagina- porary Christianity contained a radical tion on the one hand and understanding rejection of Hegelian philosophy, setting on the other. An aesthetic experience calls the stage (and providing the conceptual for the application of concepts, but over- tools) for modern EXISTENTIALISM. He flows every conceptual characterization. was born in Copenhagen, the youngest Apart from ascribing purposiveness to of seven children five of whom, along what is judged beautiful, aesthetic judg- with their mother, died before he was ments also claim that the beautiful object twenty-one. is necessarily connected with pleasurable Kierkegaard’s formative years were feeling – that qua beautiful is not an object spent under the influence of his 196 Knowledge oppressively religious father. There the subjective viewpoint from which alone ensued a period of extravagant socializing the questions which prompt faith can which, combined with a deepening per- meaningfully be raised. The Sickness sonal despair, ended in an apparently unto Death (1849) offers a systematic rehabilitative decision to assume social psychopathology of progressively delib- responsibilities as cleric and husband. But erate renunciations of a Christian ideal of shortly after completing his doctoral disser- human fulfilment. Kierkegaard also pub- tation, On the Concept of Irony (1841), lished in his own name a large number Kierkegaard gave up these plans and of ‘edifying’ discourses dedicated to ‘that embarked on a writer’s career which over individual’, as well as extensive works the next ten years produced a constant flow on specifically Christian themes, notably of books and pamphlets including no fewer Works of Love (1847) and Training in than twelve major philosophical essays. Christianity (1850). When he died at the Beginning with Either-Or (1843), the age of forty-two Kierkegaard had become focus of the early works is on the task and a target of ridicule and public anger, the rewards of adopting an ethical in prefer- former through a feud he had himself ence to a consciously hedonistic or ‘aes- provoked with a satirical weekly almost thetic’ way of life. From Repetition ten years earlier, the latter through his (1843) to Stages on Life’s Way (1845) savage attack, in the last two years of his there emerges a need for a specifically life, on the State Church, its dignitaries, religious orientation to support the open- and the naturalized form of Christianity ness required of an ethical mode of life. In he referred to as ‘Christendom’. Fear and Trembling (1843) the notion of Kierkegaard is widely admired for the actual conflict between ethical and divine profundity of his psychological insight, duties is epitomized by the ‘teleological his moral fervour, and the subtle pene- suspension of the ethical’ in Abraham’s tration of his thought. Among his many decision to sacrifice his son in obedience seminal ideas are a nonsubstantialist to God’s command. That these are all view of the self (or ‘spirit’) as a ‘relation pseudonymous works is due partly to which relates itself to itself’, the centrality Kierkegaard’s need to distance himself of choice and commitment in the estab- from their clearly autobiographical refer- lishment of selfhood, and the communica- ence to the problematic status of the tive role of indirect communication. social outsider, but also to the fact – as Kierkegaard rejects system-philosophy, Kierkegaard later says in reference to but without denying that the kinds of these particular works – that they were questions it addresses have meaning deliberately written from an ‘aesthetic’ once raised from the point of view of the point of view to help people in its grip to ‘existing individual’, who must still come find their way back to an authentic reli- to terms with them without recourse to gious understanding. rational philosophy or science. A number In (1844) of modern thinkers, especially HEIDEGGER and Concluding Unscientific Postscript and SARTRE, owe much to Kierkegaard’s (1846) Kierkegaard’s principal philosoph- writings. He is also greatly admired as an ical pseudonym attacks the Hegelian innovative literary stylist. [A.H.] notion of an objective science of human spirit for obscuring the nature and place Knowledge See A PRIORI, EMPIRICISM, of Christian faith, as well as for eclipsing EPISTEMOLOGY, RATIONALISM. Kuhn,Thomas S. 197

Kojève, Alexandre (1900–68) epistemological theories of necessity. He Hegelian Marxist born in Moscow, argued that identities involving proper who studied in Germany under JASPERS names, like ‘Cicero-Tully’, were meta- and then taught in France. Between 1933 physically necessary, even though they and 1939 he gave seminars on HEGEL’s could not be known to be true on the basis Phenomenology of Spirit in Paris. These of the meanings of the names alone; and he were attended by, amongst others, accounted for this , , on the grounds that a proper name, like Alexandre Koyré, and ‘Cicero’ or ‘Tully’, is a ‘’, Maurice MERLEAU-PONTY, and they also which has the same referent in all possible influenced SARTRE and DE BEAUVOIR. worlds. Allied to the notion of rigid desig- Kojève held that ‘history can never refute nation was the ‘causal theory of reference’, Hegelianism; it can only choose between according to which a proper name refers, conflicting interpretations of it’. His not to the object that speakers recognize as own interpretation focused on the discus- its referent, but to the object that was the sion of ‘lordship and bondage’ in the causal origin of the use of that name. Phenomenology – the so-called ‘master– Other works by Kripke include ‘Outline slave dialectic’. On this basis Kojève of a Theory of Truth’ (1975), which indi- constructed a Hegelian reading of cates how languages can contain their MARX’s theory of history which bypassed own truth predicates without running into DIALECTICAL MATERIALISM and connected the semantic paradoxes, and Wittgenstein with EXISTENTIALISM and the theory of on Rules and Private Languages (1982). ALIENATION. He thereby initiated a Hegel [D.P.] renaissance in France, and is conse- quently often regarded as the ‘father’ of Kuhn, Thomas S. (1922–96) American in the second half of philosopher of science, born in Cincinnatti. the twentieth century. Raymond Queneau Kuhn trained as a physicist but turned to compiled an edition of the seminars, pub- history of science because he was lished in 1947; the English translation amazed by the difference between the (Introduction to the Reading of Hegel, pretty picture of scientific rationality 1968) is abbreviated. [J.R.] offered by philosophers (and eagerly accepted by scientists), and its actuality. In Kripke, Saul (1940– ) American The Structure of Scientific Revolutions philosopher born at Bayshore, New York (1962) he argued that science is not a care- State. His earliest published papers were ful construction of theories on a basis of in mathematical logic. In particular, his laboriously accumulated neutral fact, but a ‘Semantical Considerations on Modal contingent social activity. ‘Normal sci- Logic’ (1963) showed how different modal ence’ is what scientists do ‘almost all their could be interpreted in terms of time’, and consists in ‘puzzle-solving’ systems of possible worlds with differ- within particular scientific communities. It ent kinds of ‘accessibility’ relationships assumes that scientists ‘know what the between the worlds. world is like’, but in reality it is based on In (1973) ‘world views’. Kuhn claimed that these Kripke developed his thinking about scientific world views – or ‘paradigms’ as into a fundamental critique he called them – ‘provide models from of description theories of reference and which spring particular coherent traditions 198 Kuhn,Thomas S. of scientific research’. According to science. Kuhn’s work opened lines of Kuhn, a choice of paradigm – such as communication between PHILOSOPHY OF Ptolemaic astronomy, Newtonian dynam- SCIENCE and history, but many critics have ics, or wave optics – is presupposed by been alarmed by its seeming irrationalism scientific rationality, not founded upon it; it or RELATIVISM. See also HISTORY OF belongs to ‘revolutionary’ rather than normal PHILOSOPHY. [J.R.] L

Lacan, Jacques (1901–81) The most London in 1956, see PHILOSOPHY OF controversial and influential French psy- SCIENCE, RELATIVISM. choanalyst of his generation; the papers collected in his Écrits (1966) contributed Language See ANALYTIC PHILOSOPHY, CHOMSKY, HEIDEGGER, SAUSSURE, STRUC- greatly to the prestige enjoyed by PSYCHO- TURALISM, WITTGENSTEIN. ANALYSIS in France. The hallmarks of

Lacan’s work are a highly literary style, Law See FREEDOM OF THE WILL, INDUC- perhaps influenced by his early associa- TION, JURISPRUDENCE, LOGIC, NATURAL LAW. tion with the surrealists, and a close but selective reading of Freud. Lacan concen- Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm trates on Freud’s earlier texts and makes a (1646–1716) German philosopher, son polemical attack on post-Freudian ego- of the Professor of Moral Philosophy at psychology, which he sees as a quintes- the University of Leipzig. At the age of sentially American deviation. This, fifteen he entered the University, graduat- together with a controversy over training ing in 1663 with a thesis on the Principle methods and the length of analytic ses- of Individuation. This work contained sions, led to conflict with the establish- many of the ideas of his later writings in ment and to Lacan’s departure from the embryo. From 1663 to 1666 he studied International Psychoanalytic Association. Jurisprudence at Jena and published a Lacan exploits the linguistics of SAUSSURE on legal education. This paper and Jakobson, and the structural anthro- brought him to the notice of the Archbishop pology of Lévi-Strauss, to argue that the of Mainz who thereupon took him into his unconscious is structured like a language, service. He entered wholeheartedly into but the emphasis placed on the role of the Archbishop’s plans for preserving language in the constitution of subjectiv- peace within the Empire and between ity also recalls HEIDEGGER’s dictum that Germany and her neighbours. This led language is the house of being. At the him to search for a rational foundation same time, Lacan draws upon HEGELIAN for the Christian religion, acceptable to phenomenology, and particularly on the Protestants and Catholics alike, which master–slave dialectic, for his theory of would provide a sound basis for active the ego and of inter-subjective relations religious toleration. Sent to Paris on a (see also KOJÈVE). Thus, mission to Louis XIV, Leibniz stayed for is always founded in a relationship of four years, and made the acquaintance of aggression and identification, whilst the MALEBRANCHE, ARNAULD, Huygens, and ego is not the central agency of the per- Tschirnhausen. He also invented a calcu- sonality but a false self with which lating machine which would be an the subject identifies in a dialectic of improvement on PASCAL’s in that it could ALIENATION. [D.M.] extract roots, multiply and divide as well as add and subtract. In 1673 he visited Lakatos, Imré (1922–74) Hungarian London, met BOYLE and Oldenburg, and philosopher of science who came to demonstrated his calculating machine to 200 Leibniz, G.W. the Royal Society, which thereupon his basic positions with arguments drawn elected him to membership. In 1676, the from science, logic and metaphysics and Archbishop of Mainz died, and Leibniz believed that his ‘new principle’ of ‘pre- became Librarian to the Duke of established harmony’ was ‘proved’ in all Brunswick at Hanover. On his way to these disciplines, as well as in religious Hanover, Leibniz spent a month at and moral theory. Amsterdam, where he met SPINOZA and Leibniz’s account of SUBSTANCE as discussed with him those parts of his essentially active arose out of his dissatis- writings which he had been permitted to faction with the extended substance of the read. This was his last personal contact ‘new philosophy’ and his equal dissatisfac- with fellow philosophers. From this time tion with ATOMISM, and with the absolute till his death he was at work on a history space, time and matter of Newtonian of the House of Brunswick. In his corre- mechanics. His objections to these con- spondence with Clarke, he attacked the cepts were both scientific and metaphysi- of the Newtonian cal. He showed that DESCARTES’ formulation system, opposing to it his own system of of the laws of motion was scientifically monads and relative space and time, set unsound, and that his view of motion as out in the Discourse on Metaphysics miraculously imparted to essentially inert (1686) and the Monadology (1714). In his matter was metaphysically unsatisfactory. correspondence with Arnauld, he defended He described ‘atoms of matter’ as con- his view of individuality and human and trary to reason, since a ‘smallest particle divine freedom, to which Arnauld had of matter’ was an absurdity: if the particle objected on reading a summary of the was extended, it was divisible; if not, it Discourse. In his later years, Leibniz was was not a particle of matter. Moreover, the involved in a controversy with the friends laws of motion demanded that the ele- of Newton as to the authorship of the ments involved should be bearers of Infinitesimal Calculus. His highly origi- energy. No extended being could be either nal work in symbolic logic was almost active or truly unified. The only possible entirely unknown before the twentieth element must be a ‘simple substance, century, and his discoveries had to be without parts’. This simple substance made over again while his work lay buried Leibniz called a . in masses of manuscripts in the royal Since the monad has no parts, it is library at Hanover. Leibniz ended his life indestructible except by annihilation, and in a similar state of neglect. The Academy can come into existence only by creation. of Berlin, of which Leibniz was founder It can produce no effect on another and first President, ignored his death as monad, so there is no causal interaction. did the Royal Society of London. (‘The monad has no windows.’) Since it is Leibniz was a first-class mathemati- non-extended it is not in space or time, cian and scientist, sharing with Newton and not material. Furthermore, since the the honour of having discovered the infin- only essential characteristic of a monad is itesimal calculus and contributing the con- that it is active, all monads are of the cept of kinetic energy to mechanics. He same kind. However, there is no doubt was also an excellent philosopher whose that the observed world, which is the metaphysics is peculiarly interesting in starting point for speculation about sub- that it can also be interpreted as a system stance, appears to be spatio-temporal, of logical doctrines. Leibniz established and to contain moving bodies in causal Leibniz, G.W. 201 relations with one another, and entities of and to the movement of iron towards fundamentally different kinds – stones, a lodestone or a sunflower towards the sun. plants, animals and humans, for instance. Space is the well-founded appearance All these appearances are, in Leibniz’s of the ‘order of possible co-existences’, and phrase, ‘well-founded’, in that they can be time of the ‘order of possibilities which systematically connected with real prop- are inconsistent’. Space and time as con- erties of the system of monads. ceived by mathematicians are abstrac- A proper description, however, would tions. The monads form an infinite series go behind these appearances to a world according to their degree of activity, each comprising only monads varying in their term differing infinitely little from those degree of activity – an infinite series of next to it. Similarly, successive states of a monads ranging from the completely monad form a continuous series, each active to the almost inert. The proper according to its own principle. Leibniz activity of monads is perception, repre- described the plenum of the universe with sentation or ‘mirroring’, to use Leibniz’s its two ordered series of compossibles and metaphor. (‘Perception’ as he understands incompatibles as the ‘actual infinite’. For it is applicable to stones and plants as well him, space and time were not only infi- as people and animals.) Every monad per- nitely divisible, but infinitely divided, ceives every other monad with some not into the mathematician’s abstractions degree of clarity, and its perceptions are of atom, point and instant but into ‘real true in that they are in pre-established har- beings’, the monads. mony with other monads. Pre-established In describing the series of monads, harmony is ‘proved’ by the joint fact of Leibniz invokes his famous principle of the impossibility of interaction and the the Identity of Indiscernibles. If two actuality of perception. The less active beings have exactly the same set of prop- monads present the well-founded appear- erties then they are ‘indiscernible’, that is ance of materiality. High- and low-grade indistinguishable from one another. The monads mutually mirror one another, and properties of a monad are a function of its every ‘body’ is a colony of monads of place, so no two beings could have all the varying degrees of activity. A human being same properties, since they would then be is such a colony and the relation between in the same place, in which case they mind and body is not a Cartesian miracle would be one and not two. Leibniz invokes but part of the natural order, a special case the same principle in arguing for the of the universal mirroring. The history of absurdity of absolute space and time. Space each monad is the unfolding of its states and time have meaning only as the place in accordance with its own principle, and of material bodies; but to place a body the appearance of interaction is the result here rather than there in absolute space, of the unfolding of each monad in pre- or earlier rather than later in time, would established harmony with others. Leibniz make no discernible difference, so that used the examples of two synchronized God, in creating the world, could not have clocks and two choirs singing from the made a rational choice between them. This same score to explain how there could be objection is made in a letter to Samuel the appearance of interaction without the CLARKE, who replied that God needed no reality. He described the unfolding of reason for his choice other than his will. the states as ‘appetition’, a notion appli- In response, Leibniz appealed to the prin- cable equally to purposive human activity ciple that for every matter of fact, there 202 Leibniz, G.W. must be a sufficient reason why it is so and Moreover, in creating the actual Adam, not otherwise (‘the principle of Sufficient God had regard to all the free acts that Reason’), claiming that this principle was would ever be performed by his creatures, valid not only in relation to the various and adapted the whole state of affairs to parts of the world, but also in relation to them. Free and spontaneous activity is the acts of God. allowed for in the pre-established har- In the Discourse on Metaphysics (the mony. All monads choose the best and elaboration of a letter to Arnauld), Leibniz their capacity to discern the best varies tried to support the doctrine of monads by with the degree of clarity with which they means of arguments drawn from logic. mirror the world. God, with perfect The logical counterpart of his factual knowledge and goodness, freely chose to arguments for simple substances was create this, the best of all possible worlds that every proposition is of the subject- (see EVIL). predicate form and that every true propo- At this point Leibniz’s system shows a sition has its predicate contained in its fundamental inconsistency. He wanted to subject. Just as there is no interaction maintain the contingency of matters of between monads, there are no relational fact within a system where the concept of propositions; and just as every monad every individual contained all that it would contains its states enfolded in it, so every ever become. In the same way, he wanted true proposition contains its predicate in to maintain a real distinction between its subject. Leibniz’s logical calculus pre- mathematical truths, based on the princi- supposes that every true proposition has, ple of contradiction (their opposites being as its subject, a name showing the ana- impossible), and empirical truths, based lytic constitution of the subject and, as its on the principle of sufficient reason (their predicate, a name for one or more of these opposites being a manifest absurdity). constituents. Any true proposition is Our reasons for our acts, he thought, expressible in the form ‘ABC is A’ (or ‘incline without necessitating’; yet he ‘ABC is AB’, or ‘B’ , ‘AC’, ‘ C’ or ‘ABC’). also maintained that the proposition This view is closely connected with ‘Julius Caesar did not cross the Rubicon’, Leibniz’s life-long search for a ‘universal properly formulated by someone with characteristic’, a language in which false complete knowledge of Julius Caesar, propositions would appear as manifest would appear as a self-contradiction. God, absurdities (‘ABC is not A’ or ‘not B’ and who alone possesses complete concepts so on). Calculation could then take the of each individual, can ‘read off’ any state place of inference, and disagreement of any monad from any other state of would disappear. that or any other monad. The distinction These logical arguments left Arnauld that Leibniz certainly wished to maintain completely dissatisfied. If every true between necessary and contingent truths, proposition is analytic, if the history of was that the former are true of all possible every monad is contained in its concept, worlds, the latter of this world only. then freedom, both human and divine, is a Necessary truths depend on God’s intel- myth. Leibniz’s reply was that every lect but not his will; but he wills contin- actual state of affairs has hypothetical but gent truths in choosing to create this not absolute necessity. When God chose world. True statements about this world to create the actual Adam, he chose to form a system such that it is not possible create everything that goes with him too. that some should be true and others false. Lenin,V. I. 203

Correspondingly, while it is abstractly facts. But what makes the truths of logic possible that any part of the universe should and mathematics true? What do we know be other than it is, it could not be other than when we know them? Leibniz’s answer is it is while the other parts remained the that we know them as they are present to same. A state of affairs must be not only the mind of God. God’s intellect is the possible, but also compossible with all ‘place’ of the eternal truths. (For philoso- other states of affairs. Leibniz provided a phers inclined to POSITIVISM, this whole formal system by which possibilities as issue is of course a pseudo-problem: nec- combinations of simples might be derived. essary truths are not true of anything; they He called this the ‘Combinatory Art’, and it are either analytic or self-contradictory, may be compared with a table of elements and we do not need to look beyond our in chemistry. A formula for a possible com- own concepts for their validation.) bination of simples might lead us to the dis- The ontological argument is preceded covery of a hitherto unknown entity. Used by a proof that the concept of a ‘perfect with a well-chosen system of ‘names’, the being’ is possible. Leibniz first defines combinatory art could provide an encyclo- perfection: a property is a perfection, he pedia of all knowledge and a means of says, if it may be possessed in a superla- communication between all nations. tive degree, and if its possession does not Leibniz’s metaphysical system is com- exclude other properties. Spatial and tem- pleted by his proofs of the existence of poral properties are not perfections, since God. The system of created monads is, in all superlatives involving them (e.g. a sense, complete in itself, that is, it has to ‘greatest size’, ‘last event’) are self- be as it is, granted that any part of it exists. contradictory. Properties perceptible by But no one part of it contains the reason the senses are not perfections either, since for its own existence, so the reason for its their ascription to an object carries with it existence must lie in a being which does the denial of other properties: to ascribe contain its own reason for existence – a ‘red’ to an object implies that it is not blue, necessary being, which we call God. This green, etc. On the other hand, ‘good’, ‘cosmological argument’ appears in the ‘wise’, and ‘knowledgeable’ are adjec- Monadology but it is not peculiar to tives whose superlatives involve no self- Leibniz: all the RATIONALISTS took God to contradiction, so they may be ascribed to be the necessary creating and sustaining the being who possesses all perfections in cause of the universe. However, Leibniz’s perfection. ‘Perfect being’ is therefore a formulation of the ‘ontological argument’ possible concept, and since existence is is peculiar to him in two ways: he couples itself (so Leibniz assumes) a perfection, it with a new argument, from the existence ‘perfect being’ is not only a possible of necessary truths, and he completes it by concept, but an actuality. (R.L.S.) a proof that ‘God’ is a possible concept. Hitherto, according to Leibniz, philoso- Lenin,Ulyanov V.I.(1870–1924) Lenin phers have succeeded in proving only that was a Russian revolutionary and one of if God’s existence is possible, then it is the most original and ruthless political necessary. The argument from the exis- leaders and statesmen of the twentieth tence of necessary truths presupposes that century. His claim to be taken seriously as all truths are ‘made true by’ facts of some a philosopher derives from three main sort. There is no difficulty with contingent sources: his book-length polemic against truths – they are made true by empirical ‘Machism’ amongst the Bolshevik 204 Leucippus philosophers; his posthumously published of the fifth century BC. He was the first to philosophical notebooks; and the sup- formulate the ATOMIC theory but he is a posed philosophical achievements implicit shadowy figure from whose work only in his more substantive economic and polit- one doubtfully authentic sentence sur- ical analysis and in his approach to political vives. Our earliest authorities usually refer practice. The ideas of the radical empiricist to Leucippus in conjunction with philosopher of science, Ernst MACH, DEMOCRITUS, and it is quite impossible to became influential among Russian revolu- determine what was the original contribu- tionary intellectuals in the first decade tion of each. It is however reasonable to of the twentieth century, and Lenin’s believe that Leucippus is in the tradition of Materialism and Empirio-criticism the PRE-SOCRATIC Milesian philosopher- (1908) was devoted to a re-assertion of scientists, but his theory was designed to MATERIALISM as the philosophy of ortho- take notice of the criticisms of the ELEATIC dox Marxists, against the ‘IDEALISM’ and philosophers, with whom he was probably ‘agnosticism’ of Machism. In taking their personally acquainted. In particular, the cue from the recent revolution in physical doctrine of the void was intended to science, the followers of Mach, according answer Eleatic objections to the notion of to Lenin, confused specific scientific not-being, in such a way that that which concepts of matter with the philosophical was not (the void) could be said to be (there category, which refers to the mind- was a void). The decisive importance of independent reality which is the source Leucippus in the history of thought was and object of human perception and that he proposed a completely mechanistic knowledge. Their rejection of this materi- account of the world without reference to alist category, he argued, could only purpose or other teleological principles, strengthen idealism, and reaction. and that he singled out as fundamental From the outbreak of the those properties of matter which can be the War until 1916 Lenin was again pre- subject of quantitative science. (J.O.U.) occupied with philosophical issues. His Philosophical Notebooks contain extended Levinas, Emmanuel (1906–95) French quotation and commentary on works by philosopher born in Lithuania. He was HEGEL and they suggest that Lenin was indebted both to Jewish dialogical philos- developing a new and more positive valu- ophy (Rosenzweig and to a lesser extent ation of dialectics. Whilst his hostility to BUBER) and to PHEMOMENOLOGY (HUSSERL, idealism was undiminished, his denuncia- of whom he was the foremost exponent tion of ‘crude, simple, metaphysical mate- in France in the 1930s, and HEIDEGGER). rialism’ became much sharper. It is Existence and Existents (1947) and Time arguable that Lenin’s reading of Hegel and the Other (1948) presented original facilitated his subsequent dismissal of descriptions of the instant, time, death, the orthodox view of rigidly demarcated the feminine and fecundity which forced ‘stages’ in the historical process and so him to the limits of phenomenology and, played some part in Lenin’s change of he claimed, beyond ontology. The con- strategic perspective in 1917. See also frontation with previous philosophy which DIALECTICAL MATERIALISM.[T.B.]these analyses represented was elaborated further when in Totality and Infinity (1961) Leucippus Probably a native of Abdera, they were integrated into in account of Greece, Leucippus lived about the middle the possibility of ethics. The face-to-face Lewis, David 205 relation with the Other, a relation with an to him, just as the map-maker provides exteriority irreducible to thematization, the principles by which territory is repre- exposed the neutrality of previous philos- sented on a map, so the mind supplies the ophy. In Otherwise than Being or Beyond categories or principles in terms of which Essence (1974) Levinas sought to restate it interprets the sensuous content of direct this ‘beyond ontology’ in a language which experience. The categories and the rela- minimized its debts to the ontological tra- tions of entailment between them are thus dition. This also led him to elaborate his a priori, but place no limitation upon the account of language as an address to the content of the sensuously given. On the Other – a ‘saying’ as well as a ‘said’. other hand, there are alternative systems Alongside his philosophical texts, there of categories, just as there are alternative are a number of ‘confessional writings’ logics and alternative principles of map- on Jewish topics, mainly readings of the making. But a choice between these alter- Talmud. [R.L.B] natives can be made only on the pragmatic ground that some categorical schemata Lévi-Strauss, Claude (1908– ) French may be more convenient than others. anthropologist, see STRUCTURALISM. However, Lewis also argued that every Lewis, Clarence I. (1883–1964) claim to knowledge of objective reality American philosopher, born at Stoneham, involves an interpretation of what is sen- Massachusetts. He made fundamental suously presented, and a prediction con- contributions to mathematical LOGIC and cerning its consequences. To claim, for the theory of knowledge. His major example, that the round rosy thing in my achievement in logic was the calculus of visual field is an apple, is to assert among ‘strict implication’, one of the first many other items that if I were to bite it successful symbolic systems of ‘modal’ I would experience a characteristic taste. logic. It is called a modal logic because it But since such predictive judgements may employs the modal term ‘impossible’ in be erroneous, Lewis concluded that empir- defining ‘p implies q’ as ‘it is impossible ical knowledge is only probable. He then for both p and not-q to be true’. Lewis outlined a conception of probability akin developed his theory as an alternative to to CARNAP’s notion of logical probability. RUSSELL’s system of ‘material implica- Lewis also applied the main principles tion’ because the latter yields such ‘para- emerging from his general account of doxical’ theorems as ‘a false proposition knowledge to some outstanding issues in implies every proposition’, and does not ETHICS, and claimed that judgements capture the sense in which one proposi- about moral values can be as objective as tion is commonly said to imply another. judgements about matters of fact. (E.N.) However, Lewis recognized that his and Russell’s systems are but two out of a Lewis, David (1941–2001) American large number of distinct but self-consistent philosopher, a devoted but disobedient calculi, none of which is intrinsically student of QUINE. His books include superior to the others. He held that the Convention (1969), but he is best known sole ground of choice between them is the for his ‘’, in other words his pragmatic one of greater convenience in doctrine that statements of necessity, pos- organizing our intellectual experience. sibility and impossibility imply the reality Lewis generalized this claim in his of an infinite number of ‘possible worlds’ pragmatic theory of the a priori. According (see On the Plurality of Worlds, 1986). 206 Liberalism and Communitarianism

He knew his opinions were regarded as accordance with their own freely chosen wild, but responded by saying, ‘I cannot values. And the central problem it has refute an incredulous stare.’ faced had been how any set of fair princi- ples of cooperation could be justified to all Liberalism and Communitarianism those who are subject to these principles ‘Liberalism’ is a protean term that often even while they are divided by deep and means little more than giving a certain enduring moral disagreements. priority to individual liberty. But liberal- Rawlsian liberalism has been subject ism in this sense is consistent with very to a range of criticisms. Some accuse it of different degrees of commitment to social reducing political theory to a branch of and economic equality. Moreover differ- applied ethics. Feminists think it mistak- ent kinds of liberals have different views enly prioritises justice over other social of what freedom is and why it matters. virtues, or pays insufficient attention to Hence a great variety of political pro- injustices in the private, familial realm. grammes and doctrines have historically Critics from the left think it too indulgent qualified as ‘liberal’. In the twentieth cen- about economic inequality, while those on tury, liberalism came to be identified with the right, like , think it state minimalism in the political domain insists too much on economic equality. and free markets in the economic sphere. Perhaps the principal opposition to Rawls’s As such it was exposed to criticism from liberalism has come from so-called com- both right and left. Conservatives berated munitarians (such as , it for a heartless individualism that ignored , Alasdair MACINTYRE, and the ties of community and tradition, while Charles TAYLOR). Their criticisms are of socialists argued for a greater role for the various kinds. Some communitarians state in promoting social and economic claim that liberalism overlooks the fact equality. But by the end of the century, that people’s identities are constituted in liberalism had made a philosophical large part by their membership of com- comeback, in a form that embraces egali- munities (national, religious, ethnic, etc.). tarian state welfarism. John RAWLS’s Rawls’s defenders respond by pointing A Theory of Justice (1971) offered a sys- out that his theory was concerned with tematic philosophical defence of the mod- citizens in the abstract, not with concrete ern democratic welfare state on the basis individuals, and by asking whether or not of recognizably liberal principles. individuals should have the right to According to Rawls a liberal state must change and shape their lives. Certain com- not only guarantee that all its citizens munitarians also accuse liberalism of have an equality of fundamental liberty underestimating the importance of shared rights, such as voting, and freedom of values, while Rawls’s supporters reply that speech, religion and association; it must it would take unacceptable state coercion also ensure that those who are least well to keep a community united round a single off are assured as good a life as possible. moral viewpoint. Liberalism is also criti- One of the fundamental marks of cized for trying to override the particular Rawlsian liberalism is its understanding distinctive values espoused by different of society as a regulated cooperative ven- societies and replace them with universal ture whose terms of cooperation must be political principles. But it can be retorted justifiable to all. Another is its political that such particularism risks descending view of citizens as entitled to live in into a which would make Locke, John 207 it impossible to criticize the values of any has no obvious alternative explanation of community. Moreover it might prove action which would preserve responsibility. possible to ascend from divergent local It is in fact customary for libertarians to use understandings to agreements on princi- such language as ‘a creative act of will’ but ples of genuinely universal application. it is not clear that such expressions can be Nevertheless Rawlsian liberalism may used to do more than affirm choice without owe its critics a fuller account of the place explaining it. (J.O.U.) of community in modern political life. In ‘Linguistic Turn’ A phrase used by particular it should acknowledge that a in 1964 to describe political society united only by a commit- what he took to be a decisive turning point ment to abstract principles of justice in twentieth century thought whereby might not be fragile and disorderly. On philosophers (in particular analytic philo- the other hand, communitarians need to sophers such as CARNAP) started to ‘talk give a positive account of the kind of com- about the world by means of talking about munity they favour. Must a non-liberal a suitable language.’ society be an illiberal one, or can it acknowledge individual rights? Rawls’s Locke, John (1632–1704) Locke was liberalism is close to some democratic born in , England, the son of a versions of socialism; but it remains to be lawyer of no great distinction. He went to seen whether the communitarian alterna- Westminster School and, in 1652, to Christ tive is conservative, or socialistic or some- Church, Oxford. There he was trained in thing completely different. {D.A.} the philosophical orthodoxy of the day. In 1659 he was elected to a Senior Libertarianism is the Studentship in his college – an office sup- thesis which attempts to vindicate the posed to be tenable for life, though Locke FREEDOM OF THE WILL and responsibility for was actually dispossessed, on political action by denying the principle of DETER- grounds, in 1684. MINISM at least in the case of some spheres In the years after his , Locke’s of human activity. It is not easy to state this main interests appear to have been scien- thesis in a positive way. If it be said that tific. Through his friendship with Robert human actions are uncaused it might seem BOYLE, who was in Oxford from 1654 to that they are attributed to pure chance, in 1668, he was brought into close and prac- which case it would be absurd to attribute tical contact with current work in physics responsibility to the agent. If we are to be and chemistry, and on his own account he held responsible for actions it would seem had taken to the study of medicine. In fact that in some way they must arise out of our he obtained, though with some difficulty, character; indeed it is often easy to predict a medical degree from his University, and, the actions of people whom we know well in 1674, a licence to practise medicine. on the basis of their character, and this is His interest in philosophy, however, was not naturally taken to diminish their respon- eventually re-awakened by the study of sibility. But it is evident that we are not DESCARTES; and Descartes’ influence is responsible for our inherited character or for clearly discernible in the vocabulary the environment by which that character has and the pre-occupations of Locke’s own been modified. Thus libertarianism is faced philosophical work. with a double problem: it has to justify His connection with Lord Ashley, rejection of the deterministic thesis, but it afterwards Earl of SHAFTESBURY, began in 208 Locke, John

1666. They first met in Oxford, but by the with the grounds and degrees of Belief, middle of the following year Locke had Opinion, and Assent’. However, underlying become one of Ashley’s most esteemed this ‘analytic’, clarificatory programme, friends and advisers, partly as his physi- and greatly influencing its course, is an cian, but also generally on public affairs. unsystematic and indeed almost uncon- In 1671 Locke composed two short drafts scious metaphysical doctrine. Locke of what was to grow, over the next twenty believed that philosophers ought to take years, into his Essay Concerning Human account of the impact of scientific discov- Understanding; but for the present he was eries upon their own beliefs, and on ‘com- deeply engaged in the private and politi- mon sense’. But, half unwittingly, he went cal affairs of his patron, who became much further: he evidently believed that Lord Chancellor in 1672. In 1680, after the world is really what the physicist says many vicissitudes in the scheming it is. He even adapts to this conviction a Shaftesbury’s fortunes, and several jour- fragment of the medieval apparatus which neys abroad for the sake of his own he had acquired in his student days: the health, Locke was back in Oxford. But in ‘nominal essence’ of a substance, he says, 1683, after his patron’s death in extreme consists in those observable qualities political disfavour, Locke judged it pru- which determine the ordinary application dent to retire to Holland, in whose com- of its name; its ‘real essence’, on the other paratively calm and liberal atmosphere he hand, consists in the physical structure of passed, to the great profit of his writings, its ‘insensible parts’. In this and in many the next five years. After the Whig revo- other passages, Locke in effect erects the lution of 1688, he became a celebrated current physicists’ atomic, or ‘corpuscu- figure. The Essay and Two Treatises of lar’, theory of matter into an ultimate Government both appeared in 1690; and metaphysical truth. It was, incidentally, until 1700, when his health became pre- this aspect of Locke’s position which was carious, he both wrote much on current regarded by BERKELEY as most odious, issues of controversy and held various dangerous and mistaken. active political appointments. In that year The general picture of the world which he brought out a fourth edition of the Locke thus took for granted may be sum- Essay. marized as follows: the physical universe Locke’s Essay, by far his most impor- really consists of indefinitely many mate- tant work, is a vast, untidy composition, rial bodies, which are composed of cor- bearing all too clearly in its wanderings puscles, or ‘insensible particles’, which and repetitions the signs of having been are themselves very small bodies. This written piecemeal over many years. Its whole system operates mechanically; style is sober and usually clear; but Locke indeed Locke sometimes refers to ordi- was not careful over points of detail, not nary objects as ‘machines’, and says that always consistent with himself, and by no impact, or ‘impulse’, is ‘the only way means rigorous in working out the full which we can conceive bodies operate in’. consequences of his position. Now besides this system of mechanically 1 The Way of Ideas. Locke’s official interacting material bodies there exist concern is with EPISTEMOLOGY, the theory also, Locke believes, immaterial sub- of knowledge; his purpose is, as he puts stances, some at least of which are associ- it, ‘to inquire into the origin, certainty, ated, in a manner not clearly understood, and extent of human knowledge, together with particular material things, namely Locke, John 209 human bodies. These bodies have certain striking expression to his conviction that physical features known as sense-organs; the world is nothing but a physical mech- and it is a fact, perhaps not further expli- anism; the qualities he asserts to be really cable, that when these sense-organs are ‘in’ bodies are precisely those relevant to stimulated – mechanically of course – the their mechanical behaviour. However, he resultant motion ‘produces in us those seems not to notice the difficulty that, if different sensations which we have’, or we can ‘contemplate’ only our own ideas, ‘produces in our minds . . . particular it is not apparent how we could ever ideas’. In addition to such ‘ideas of sen- decide what relations hold between these sation’, we acquire further ‘ideas of and ‘external’ bodies: how could we tell reflection’ from ‘the perception of the that our ideas are faithful representatives operations of our minds within us, as it is in any respect, if we can never contem- employed about the ideas it has got’. plate that which they represent to us? It These IDEAS together, Locke holds, supply was indeed urged by Berkeley that, on the whole of the material of conscious- Locke’s view, we should have no solid ness, experience, perception and thought; ground even for the conviction that any all are derived ‘from experience’ (the vague ‘external’ bodies exist; still less, then, is but fundamental tenet of EMPIRICISM); and Locke in a position to assert so confi- ‘we can have knowledge no farther than we dently that those bodies really do have have ideas’. certain qualities, but only appear to have Thus the mind, Locke says, ‘in all its others. thoughts and reasonings, hath no other Locke’s difficulties as to knowledge are immediate object but its own ideas, which somewhat similar. Defining knowledge as it alone does or can contemplate’. This ‘the perception of the connexion and agree- conviction leads to serious difficulties ment, or disagreement and repugnancy, of about perception and knowledge. As to any of our ideas’, he is first obliged to add perception, it is of course possible, on the inconsistent rider that our ideas must Locke’s principles, to ask whether the be perceived also to ‘agree with the reality ‘ideas’ of which we are aware faithfully of things’, and then to evade the resulting represent the character of the ‘external’ question as to how, on his principles, this material things which cause them. latter perception can occur. He sometimes Locke’s own answer is that, in part, they appears to hold that knowledge, strictly do: our ideas of ‘primary qualities’ – speaking, extends only to the relations ‘solidity, extension, figure, motion or between ideas; but even if so, it is not clear rest, and number’ – represent qualities how he could consistently admit that even that bodies do really possess. Ideas of so much as a well-grounded opinion could ‘secondary’ qualities, on the other hand – be achieved as to the relation between ideas ‘as colours, sounds, tastes, etc.’ – are and ‘the reality of things’. merely modes in which bodies happen to It will be observed that these major appear to organisms constituted as we are; difficulties in Locke’s position derive they are ‘in truth nothing in the objects from his basic principle, that we can be themselves, but powers to produce vari- actually – ‘immediately’ – aware only of ous sensations in us by their primary the contents of our own minds. It is in this qualities, that is, by the bulk, figure, tex- way that ideas, in his system, become what ture, and motion of their insensible parts’. has been described as an ‘iron curtain’ In making this distinction Locke gives between the observer and the world. And 210 Locke, John it is important to notice that this principle In the exposition of his political princi- was not, as Locke seems to have supposed, ples Locke adopted the pseudo-historical forced on him by his adherence to scien- convention of the period. He describes, tific theory. For the scientific account of purporting to trace an actual process, soci- perception addresses itself to the question, eties as emerging from a pristine ‘state of how perception occurs – the orthodox nature’, as a result of a ‘contract’ by which answer being, in Locke’s day, that it occurs individuals jointly agree to submit them- by means of the mechanical operation of selves, for the sake of certain advantages, ‘insensible particles’ upon the sense- to a ruler or rulers. Now Hobbes had organs. Now this is not an answer to the argued that, in such a case, the designated question, what it is that is really perceived. ruler could only be absolute; if any mem- It may be that some occurrence ‘in the bers of society were to be effectively mind’ is the last item in the causal trans- restrained, the ruler must have absolute action between the observer and the envi- power over all. Locke argues against this, ronment; but it does not follow that what first, that the ruler’s rights are limited, as occurs in the mind is all that is really are those of everyone, by the ‘law of observed. nature’; and second, that in any case they 2 Political theory. Locke’s political are assigned as a trust for the good of the writings were for the most part directed members of society, and hence can prop- towards supplying a theoretical justifica- erly be taken away if that trust is broken. tion for the views of those who wished to Though thus opposed to authoritarianism, overthrow the arbitrary government of Locke was of course in no sense a demo- the Stuarts, and replace it by a monarchy crat. He had no uncritical faith in elected of strictly limited powers. Of his Two assemblies, still less in the populace at Treatises of Government, the first is a large, and he did not envisage universal successful refutation of a view that suffrage. He believed that monarchy was scarcely deserved such extended notice. the best political arrangement, provided Locke’s target here is the absolutist the- some assembly could hold the to ory, not, unfortunately, of the powerful account, and itself be in some degree HOBBES, but of the zealous Royalist answerable to the people. Unlike Hobbes, , who had argued that the he did not think it essential that any person authority of a king is identical with that of or persons in society should be a centre of a father over his children, and is derived final sovereignty, and able in the last directly from God’s grant of such author- resort to settle all disputes. No doubt this ity to Adam. Locke gravely points out, was because, unlike Hobbes, he believed first, that a father’s authority over his chil- in the rational basis of the principles of dren is not absolute, at least when they conduct, and also believed that human become adult; second, that the relation beings were rational enough to be trusted, between a king and his subjects is not with certain safeguards, to follow those genuinely analogous with that between a principles. This made it possible for him father and his children; and third, that it to rely upon some measure of enlightened would in any case be a matter of some dif- cooperation in political affairs. ficulty to trace the direct descent of patri- It may be said, in summary, that Locke’s archal authority from Adam to Charles II. real achievement was to bring together It is in the second Treatise that Locke most of the threads of the ‘advanced’ states his own case. thinking of his time. In his philosophy he Logic 211 seemed to have escaped from the mazes settlement of 1688, but he did express the of minute and insignificant subtlety into thought of those who worked for it. In this which the scholastic tradition had degen- also he was the embodiment of his age, erated; to have taken account of the new and in his good sense, sobriety and devo- stirrings of Cartesianism; and above all to tion to reason, he remains a justly admired have brought philosophy firmly into line representative of it. (G.J.W.) with the latest and best in scientific theory. The general picture of the world, Logic Logic may be defined as the against the background of which Locke theory of the conditions of valid inference pursued his epistemological inquiries, or, more shortly, as the theory of proof. was, as has been said, exactly that of the Inference is a process by which we pass seventeenth and eighteenth century from a belief in one or more statements physicist; and there is little doubt that (the premises) to a belief in a further Locke’s views owed much of their pres- statement (the conclusion) whose truth, if tige to their declared alliance with the the inference is a good one, is either guar- flourishing physical sciences. The fact anteed or at least made probable by the that those views embodied serious misun- truth of the premises. Inference is therefore derstandings was soon observed by a mental process and it might be thought philosophical critics, notably Berkeley and that this means that logic is connected in LEIBNIZ; however, they expressed so some way with psychology. But in fact exactly the spirit of the age, that they logical study of the conditions of valid easily survived such criticism. Moreover, inference does not involve studying there is merit enough in Locke’s many processes of thought, but only the formal discussions of particular problems to or structural properties of arguments. ensure that he will continue to be read 1 The Scope of Logic. In its simpler with close attention, as being at least in forms, logic may be considered as a natu- the historical mainstream of modern ral history of arguments. Just as the biol- philosophy in the English language. ogist studies the structure and working of In his political theory also – unadven- plants and animals and tries to see how turous as it may seem, and artificially pre- different species are related to each other, sented as it undoubtedly is – Locke was so the logician studies the structure and giving clear expression to the enlightened working of different types of argument opinion of his day. It is true that he pre- and tries to relate them together systemat- sented his theory as stating the conditions ically. But the logician is interested only to be satisfied by any good society at any in those features of arguments in virtue of time; but in fact – not surprisingly – its real which they are admitted to be valid. It is contribution was to the political thought of clear that we all rely on inference to pro- his own society and age. The seventeenth vide much of our knowledge and that our century in English politics was a period in inferences may be more or less reliable. which the character and role of kingship, At a common sense level, we all distin- or more generally the relations of ruler and guish between good inferences and bad subject, were topics of incessant uncer- ones, though we may not find it easy to tainty, conflict and debate; that age was, explain the rules by which we tell the dif- more than most, an age of transition. It can ference. It is one of the tasks of logic to hardly be said that Locke contributed provide an explicit and systematic way of directly to the comparatively enduring making these distinctions. 212 Logic

However logic has other tasks too. In given in Section 6; Sections 2 to 5 relate ancient and medieval times, logicians were to deductive or formal logic. interested mainly in the classification 2 Logical form. It has been a com- and working of arguments, and modern mon practice of logicians since ARISTOTLE symbolic logicians have sought to give a to use symbolic devices for the expres- detailed and complete account of the var- sion and study of arguments. This is ious kinds of valid arguments and their because logicians are interested not in the connexions. An equally important task, at subject matter of particular arguments or least since FREGE, has been the critical the linguistic expressions in which they examination of mathematical concepts are formulated, but only in the general and methods. The study of mathematical rules governing their validity. The formal proofs falls under the general heading of study of argument-structures can reduce the theory of proof; it is an important the enormous diversity of reasonings on aspect of logic, but technical and difficult. all sorts of topics and in different lan- No further reference will be made to it guages to a few standard patterns which here, but we should remember that modern can be systematically related together. developments in logic are almost entirely That the validity of a deductive argument due to the work of mathematicians. depends upon its structure (or logical Two main types of inference have form) and not its subject matter can be interested logicians, deductive and induc- seen in the following examples. tive. Well-known examples of deductive (2) If no metals are soluble in water, and inference are the geometry of Euclid or some crystalline substances are met- SYLLOGISMS such as: als, then some crystalline substances (1) If all mammals are warm blooded, are not soluble in water. and all mammals suckle their young, (3) If no Christians are pantheists, and then some warm blooded creatures some mystics are Christians, then some suckle their young. mystics are not pantheists. To say that a deductive argument is The logical form common to (2) and (3) valid means that the conclusion follows can be represented thus: rigorously from the premises, or in other (4) If no A are B, and some C are A, then words that the conclusion cannot be false some C are not B. if the premises are true. It is part of the task of logic (and a matter of some diffi- Here the terms expressing the subject culty) to give a complete and satisfactory matter of the deduction have been replaced account of the conditions under which a by variables. The use of variables may be statement can be said to be inferable familiar from the use of ‘x’, ‘y’ and so on in from, deducible from, or entailed by algebra. Variables can be defined as sym- others. bols which do not themselves refer to any- The process of inductive inference has thing, but, like pronouns, stand for (and can received a good deal of attention from be replaced by) words or phrases that do logicians, though some would argue that refer. Variables can be regarded as conven- the concepts of proof and valid inference ient devices for marking blank spaces. We should be restricted to cases that conform could (rather less conveniently) write (4) as: to the rules of deductive logic. A brief (5) If no ●●● are ---, and some *** are ●●●, account of some of its problems will be then some *** are not ---. Logic 213

Aristotle introduced the use of variables as follows: into logic, and modern logicians have (7) If, if not-p then not-q; and q; then p. added symbols other than variables, some of which will be explained later. (7) exhibits the logical form of (6); it is an Meanwhile, it is worth noting that the use argument-form which becomes a concrete of symbols has important advantages argument if the variables ‘p’ and ‘q’ are besides the exhibition of logical form and replaced by particular propositions. And the formulation of general rules. They since this form is a valid one, whatever bring a clarity and conciseness to logic propositions we substitute for ‘p’ and ‘q’ without which little progress could be will yield a valid argument. made. Consider how inconvenient it would All propositional arguments can be be to paraphrase in ordinary language conveniently symbolized by replacing even a simple algebraic expression like their constituent propositions with vari- ‘(xϩy)2 ϭ x2 ϩ 2xy ϩ y2’. The develop- ables (‘p’, ‘q’, ‘r’ etc.), and finding fur- ment of logic, like that of mathematics, ther symbols for the words and phrases depends on concise and apt symbolism. (‘if...then...’, ‘and’ and ‘not’ for exam- 3 . The simplest ple) that are used to bind one proposition branch of logic is the logic of propositions to another. These words and phrases or, as it is often called, the propositional are known as propositional connectives or calculus. It was not the first part of logic logical constants, and their symbolic to be developed: Aristotle paid little atten- equivalents in the notation of RUSSELL and tion to it, and though the Stoics and some WHITEHEAD’s are medieval logicians investigated it, its sys- as follows: tematic development was the work of not: ~ FREGE, PEIRCE and other modern logicians. and: . (alternatively, &) The propositional calculus treats argu- if...then.... : ʛ (alternatively, →) ments whose basic constituents are propo- A further commonly occurring constant is: sitions. (The defining property of a proposition for this purpose is that it must or: ␯ be either true or false and cannot be both; (‘Or’ is taken here in its inclusive sense: propositions correspond to indicative sen- ‘p ␯ q’ means ‘either p or q or both’). After tences, as opposed for example to ques- further translation, (7) thus becomes: tions or commands.) A typical example of (8) [(~ p ʛ ~q)·q] ʛ p a simple propositional argument is: (Brackets are used to show the scope (6) If smoking is not a cause of cancer, of the logical constants; without them a then statistical correlations are not a formula like (8) would be ambiguous.) reliable sign of causal connexion; but 4 Validity in propositional arguments. statistical correlations are a reliable Once we have a method of formalizing sign of causal connexion; therefore, propositional arguments, we can confront smoking is a cause of cancer. the question how to distinguish valid The logical form of this argument may be argument forms from invalid. At this level shown by replacing the proposition ‘smok- of logic, the so-called decision problem ing is a cause of cancer’ by ‘p’ and ‘statis- can be solved easily enough. One simple tical correlations are a reliable sign of decision procedure is provided by ‘truth- causal connexion’ by ‘q’ and rewriting it tables’. By this method, we first list all the 214 Logic possible combinations of truth and falsity complete a column under the logical con- (‘T’and ‘F’) for the constituent propositions stant of narrowest scope: of the argument-form in question. For an argument comprising n propositions, ~p ʛ ~q · q ʛ p there will be 2n such combinations. Argument (8) comprises 2 propositions, FTF T T p and q, so there are 22 or 4 possibilities: p FTT F T and q both true, p true and q false, p false and q true, and p and q both false. We will TFF T F therefore need to work out what the truth- TTT F F value (‘T’ or ‘F’) of the whole formula will be in each of these four cases. As a 152 3 4 preliminary, we define the four logical connectives (‘~’,‘.’, ‘ʛ’, ‘␯’), in terms of Third, observing the truth-values in truth-values, which is done in tabular columns 5 and 3 and the rules for ‘.’, we form as follows: complete the column under the logical constant of next widest scope: pq~p ~qp·qp␯ qpʛ q ~p ʛ ~q · q ʛ p TT F F T T T FTFTT T TF F T F T F FTTFF T FT T F F T T TFFFT F FF T T F F T TTTFF F (Thus, to take the bottom row, when p is 15263 4 false and q is false, then ~ p is true, ~ q is true, p·q is false, and p ʛ q is true.) Lastly, observing the truth values in Applying these rules, we can now columns 4 and 6 and the rules for ‘ʛ’, we complete a truth-table for (8) in four complete the remaining column under the stages. First, we set out the truth-values of logical constant of widest scope: the four negated and unnegated variables (~p, ~q, p, q) in columns: ~p ʛ ~q · q ʛ p ~p ʛ ~q · q ʛ p FTFTTTT FFTTFTTFFTT FTFTTFFFTTF TFTFTTTFFTF TTFF1526374 1234 It will be seen (from column 7) that Second, observing the truth-values in the argument form comes out true for all columns 1 and 2 and the rules for ‘ʛ’, we the truth-possibilities of its component Logic 215 propositions. This shows that it is a valid of propositional calculus they can be formula, since an invalid one would reduce formalized as to F for at least one assignment of truth (10) (p· q) ʛ r values to its component propositions. which is clearly not a valid form.) The But a decision procedure like this argument is valid not because of the rela- merely tells us whether or not a given tions between its constituent propositions argument-form is valid. It provides no but because of their internal structure. means of systematizing valid forms or More particularly, it is valid because of generating new ones. For this purpose, a the way in which the words ‘all’, ‘some’ standard method is to construct a system and ‘not’, and the descriptive phrases (or in which all the valid formulas of the cal- predicates) – ‘metals’, ‘soluble in water’ culus can be deduced from a small num- and ‘crystalline substances’ – link the ber of formulas (the axioms) taken as a premises with each other and with the starting point. (An imperfect but well- conclusion. To formalize such arguments known example of an axiom system is the we need, in addition to the symbols of geometry of Euclid.) Deduction consists propositional logic, three further sets in operating on the axioms and on the for- of signs: mulas derived from them in accordance with the rules of the system. These rules (i) Variables – ‘x’, ‘y’, ‘z’ etc. – standing must specify what symbols may be used for particular things, or individuals; and how they may be combined (Rules of (ii) Signs for predicates – ‘F’, ‘G’, ‘H’ Formation) and what manipulation of the etc. – standing either for monadic axioms and derived formulas is permitted predicates, like ‘blue’ or ‘square’; or (Rules of Transformation). Axioms may for dyadic predicates (predicates need- be chosen in any convenient way provided ing two individuals to complete them) that the set we select is consistent, that is like ‘larger than’ or ‘’; or triadic to say, yields only valid formulas. It should predicates, like ‘between’ or ‘lends’. also, if possible, be ‘complete’, or capable (iii) The two quantifiers: the universal of yielding all valid formulas of the sys- quantifier, ‘(x)’, meaning ‘for all xs’; tem. Proofs must be found that these con- and the existential quantifier, ‘(Ex)’, ditions of consistency and completeness meaning ‘there is an x such that...’. are satisfied – which can be done with- With the help of this apparatus, (2) can out much difficulty in the case of the now be formalized as follows: propositional calculus. (11) [(x)(Fx ʛ ~Gx)· (Ex) (Hx · Fx)] ʛ 5 Predicate Calculus. Propositional (Ex) (Hx · ~Gx) calculus is only the first level of logic, and there are many arguments which And (9) can be formalized thus: cannot be expressed in its symbolism or (12) (x) ( y) (z) (Fxy · Fyz) ʛ (Fxz) tested by its method. One example is: Having established this predicate calculus, (9) If A is larger than B, and B is larger we face the same two problems as in the than C, A is larger than C. propositional calculus: finding a decision procedure and constructing a satisfactory Another example is provided by arguments axiom system. There are axiom systems (2) and (3) or their formalization in (4): for the predicate calculus for which they are clearly valid – but not in virtue of proofs of consistency and completeness their propositional form. (In the symbolism can be given; but it has been proved 216 Logic

(by Alonzo CHURCH) that no general deci- well-founded from ones that are not. sion procedure is possible for this part of The main task of inductive logic is there- logic although decision methods can be fore the study of the critical checks which devised for important fragments of it. are necessary to discipline our proneness Propositional and predicate calculus to generalize. are comparatively elementary levels of Natural science provides us with a logic and it is easy to find sentences large body of well-established generaliza- which cannot be formalized using their tions and so offers us a model of inductive apparatus. (For example: ‘There is only reasoning. The influence of this model one god’ or ‘2ϩ2ϭ4’.) These must be has been such that the phrase ‘inductive taken care of by further developments of logic’ has come to be synonymous with logical technique which cannot be ‘the logic of science’. And it is interesting explored here. to note that the earliest important study of 6 Inductive Arguments. Broadly speak- inductive reasoning was made by Francis ing, a proof by inductive methods is one BACON at a time when the experimental which seeks to establish a general state- study of nature was beginning to play a ment by considering a sample of particu- significant role in intellectual life. The lar cases. For example, we may conclude, example of natural science also shows on the basis of observations made on a that inductive reasoning aims to produce limited number of specimens of a limited not only generalizations but explanations number of species, that all green plants as well. Indeed regularities or uniformi- form starch in the presence of light. Since ties in nature have often been established we have gone beyond our evidence, our in the course of the search for explanation conclusion may turn out to be false, and of some apparently exceptional observed in general it appears that such conclusions event. It was in this way, for example, that never follow rigorously from their prem- attempts to explain Galvani’s observation ises. Whereas a deductive argument is of a mysterious contraction in the muscle either valid or invalid, an inductive argu- of a dead frog led to the formulation of ment will give more or less support for laws about the behaviour of electric its conclusion but cannot guarantee it currents. completely. The logic of induction has had two The mere fact that we tend to make main lines of development: the study of generalizations on the basis of our past devices for eliminating irrelevancies experience does not of itself present a and the study of methods for confirming problem for logicians. All animals capa- hypotheses. MILL’s ‘methods of experi- ble of learning show in their behaviour mental inquiry’, variously criticized and an expectation that future events will improved by later writers, consist essen- resemble past ones, and that unobserved tially in a technique for eliminating irrele- instances will resemble those which have vant factors in phenomena under been observed. Our tendency to general- observation. They are embodied in a prac- ize is merely a fact of biology. But some tical way in various experimental tech- of our expectations about the future niques used in natural science. Indeed, this course of nature are justified by events part of inductive logic may be said to con- and some are not. It is clearly a matter of sist in the logical analysis of experimental great importance to have procedures for procedures. In the same way, the logic of distinguishing generalizations that are confirmation has had to take account of Logical Positivism 217 advances in statistical techniques. It has things’. Just as physical analysis reaches its sometimes been said that there are no pre- bedrock in physical atoms, or the ultimate cise rules for assessing inductive evi- constituents of matter, so (Russell argued) dence, but mathematical at least logical analysis must terminate in ‘logical allows the extent of their inexactness to be atoms’ – on the one hand universals (‘pred- be measured. icates or relations and so on’), and on the 7 The limits of logic. Having consid- other particulars (‘such things as little ered both deductive and inductive methods patches of colour or sounds, momentary of inference, the question arises whether things’). Wittgenstein developed a far more there are any other kinds of arguments. In subtle version of the doctrine (based on the ordinary sense of ‘argument’, there ‘facts’ rather than ‘things’) in the Tractatus. clearly are. There are many fields of The doctrine has not prospered. {J.R.} dispute – such as literary criticism, theo- logy, political theory, much of traditional Logical Positivism ‘Logical Positivism’ philosophy and many parts of law – where is a name given (by Blumberg and Feigl, issues cannot be decided by formalized 1931) to the philosophical movement ema- deductive methods nor rendered more or nating from the VIENNA CIRCLE. Often less probable by inductive procedures. And applied, in a vaguely opprobrious sense, to it is clear that many of these arguments, ANALYTIC PHILOSOPHY in general, it is best though indecisive, are intended to be confined to its original purpose, in which rational, so it would seem that logic ought usage it is largely synonymous with to concern itself with them. It would cer- so-called ‘logical’, ‘scientific’ or ‘consis- tainly be unwise to try to prescribe in tent’ empiricism. advance what the science of logic can The Vienna Circle originated in the achieve. Logicians at the end of the eigh- early 1920s as an informal discussion teenth century thought that logic was a group at the University of Vienna, presided completed science and would no doubt be over by . The more promi- astounded by its subsequent development. nent members included , Whether future developments will extend Otto NEURATH, Friedrich WAISMANN, Philipp the province of logic to include the Frank, Hans Hahn, , Victor ‘arguments’ of the literary critic, the the- Kraft, Felix Kaufmann and Kurt GÖDEL. ologian or the metaphysician, no one can Other associates, more or less remote in say. But it is clear in the light of the history distance, time or opinion, were Hans of logic that the prospects for making such Reichenbach, Carl Hempel, Karl Menger, arguments respectable are not promising. Richard von MISES, , Joergen (D.J.O’C.) Joergensen, C. W. MORRIS and A. J. AYER. A fair number of the original circle were Logical Atomism A doctrine first not philosophers by training, but mathe- developed by Bertrand RUSSELL in the maticians, physicists or social scientists, course of conversations with WITTGENSTEIN, sharing a common interest in the philoso- and published in 1918. Russell wanted phy of science and a common distaste above all to avoid IDEALISM and HOLISM: he for the academic metaphysics then disliked ‘the monistic logic of the people prevailing in Germany and Central who more or less follow HEGEL’ and Europe. Historically, their logic was that wished instead to endorse ‘the common- of FREGE and RUSSELL, while their ‘posi- sense belief that there are many separate tivism’ owed less to COMTE than to the 218 Logical Positivism

‘neo-positivism’ of MACH and Poincaré, by the mid-thirties logical positivism was Einstein’s , and by already diffusing into the wider and way of these, to Karl PEARSON, J. S. MILL, vaguer movement of logical empiricism. the writers of the Enlightenment and the The meetings of the Vienna Circle proper earlier British empiricists (most notably were abruptly terminated, in 1936, by the HUME). The strongest immediate influ- murder of Schlick; and its dissolution ence, however, was that of WITTGENSTEIN, was soon completed under the pressure of who though not a member of the circle events in Europe, which drove the major- was acquainted with some of its members, ity of its members into exile in Britain or and whose Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus the United States. The residual influence (1921) supplied the background to many of the movement was probably strongest of its discussions, as also did Schlick’s in the United States; elsewhere its explicit Allgemeine Erkenntnislehre (1918–25), contentions soon ceased to excite much and Carnap’s Logical Structure of the controversy, though many of its ideals are World (1928). still operative within analytic philosophy. After some years of comparatively pri- The logical positivists preached a quasi- vate and unselfconscious existence, the scientific agreement among philosophers, group was formally constituted in 1929 and at first were surprisingly close to prac- as the Vienna Circle, the name – due tising it, at least among themselves. Some to Neurath – being chosen for its agree- technical differences apart, it is therefore able associations with woods, waltzes possible, if hazardous, to credit them with and other local amenities. A manifesto- a collective point of view. Its main fea- cum- (Wissenschaftliche tures are: a thoroughgoing empiricism, Weltauffassung: Der Wiener Kreis) was backed by the resources of modern logic issued under the auspices of a cognate and tempered only by a possibly exagger- body, the ‘Verein Ernst Mach’; a confer- ated respect for the achievements and ence was held at Prague; and the journal capabilities of modern science; an equally Annalen der Philosophie, purchased in thoroughgoing rejection of metaphysics, 1930, retitled Erkenntnis, and edited by on logical grounds, as not merely false or Carnap and Reichenbach, enabled the futile, but meaningless; a restriction of circle to establish and maintain contact philosophy, therefore, to the task of elim- with an increasing body of sympathiz- inating its own problems, by clarifying ers in Britain, the United States and the language employed in framing them; Northern Europe. Further conferences, in and the more constructive aim of analysing the name of the ‘unity of science’, were and unifying the terminology of the sci- held at Königsberg (1930), Prague (1934), ences, by reduction to a common denom- Paris (1935 and 1937), Copenhagen inator in the language of physics. (1936), Cambridge, England (1938) and EMPIRICISM is the doctrine that all Cambridge, Mass. (1939). Other enter- knowledge is ultimately derived from prises included the publication of several experience. As stated by Hume, it involves series of books and monographs, the most the psychological claim that all ideas ambitious of these being Neurath’s are direct or indirect copies of sense- uncompleted project for an ‘International impressions, from which the conclusion Encyclopedia of Unified Science’. is drawn that knowledge is either of inter- This enlargement of activities was nal relations between ideas (as in mathe- accompanied by some loss of identity, and matics), or else has reference, in the last Logical Positivism 219 resort, to the content of sense-impressions case it consists either in direct correspon- (‘matter of fact and existence’); all else dence between elementary proposition and being committed to the flames as ‘sophistry sensory datum, or else, at a more complex and illusion’. Following Wittgenstein, level, in an (implicit) correspondence of logical positivism began by adopting a structure, plus the occurrence of appro- more logically orientated version of the priate sense-experiences. A proposition same view. Experience (it was held) can has meaning only if it can, in principle, be be resolved into its ultimate constituents, true or false. Hence the class of meaning- namely the immediate and incorrigible ful propositions is exhaustively divisible sensory observations of which the into those whose truth-or-falsity can be observer’s world consists. The structure so established on formal grounds (i.e. logic presented is reflected in language; more and mathematics), and those in which it precisely, it can be shown by logical is, or could be, factually confirmed by analysis that the propositions in which verification (or falsification) through knowledge is expressed are similarly sense-experience. The principle involved reducible to elementary propositions, is known as the verification principle; it corresponding one-to-one with actual or is crudely stated in the slogan that ‘the possible items of sense-experience. The meaning of a proposition is the method of relation between complex and elementary its verification’. A more judicious, if propositions is ‘truth-functional’, inas- less incisive, formulation would be that much as the truth of a complex proposi- a proposition has meaning if sense- tion depends solely on the truth or falsity experience would be sufficient to decide of its simple components. Complex pro- its truth. The ‘propositions’ of metaphysics positions do not add anything to simple and theology are plainly not formal, since ones, except a greater degree of logical they claim to report on matters transcend- complexity. Nothing is added, because ing ordinary experience. Yet metaphysi- the propositions of logic and mathematics cians have no dispute with ordinary facts, are concerned only to regulate the formal and from this it appears that no empirical relationships between symbols. In them- evidence could serve to confirm or dis- selves, they say nothing about the world, credit their conclusions. Since their state- and have no content; their function is to ments cannot be tested by experience, they state equivalences and relations of deriva- are no more factual than formal, and must tion between other propositions, and therefore be reckoned (in this somewhat although, if true at all, they are necessar- technical sense) ‘nonsensical’ or ‘mean- ily true, this is only because they are ‘tau- ingless’. Strictly speaking, indeed, they are tological’, true by definition, or, in an not propositions at all. The same applies to older terminology, ‘analytic’. From this it the ‘pseudo-propositions’ of EPISTEMOLOGY follows directly, as Hume saw, that there and ETHICS, so far, that is, as they refer can be no hope of a deductive meta- to ‘things-in-themselves’ or ‘subsistent physics; for if logic is empty, the manipu- values’, and are not reducible, on the one lation of empirical data cannot be expected hand, to factual statements about the psy- to lead beyond experience. It remains to chology, etc., of perceptual or moral judg- be shown that the propositions of meta- ment, or, on the other, to logical analysis physics are literally without meaning. of the language in which these judgments Truth, on the view mentioned earlier, is are formulated. One result of such analysis either formal or factual, and in the latter has been the claim that ethical judgments 220 Logical Positivism do not state ethical facts, but express the on a future inspection of records, etc. The emotions of the speaker, and perhaps content of such propositions is thus iden- incite others to share them. Metaphysical tified with the indirect evidence for their utterances may also be said to do this, and truth. Nor is there any means of distin- so to convey poetical emotion, or a possi- guishing a future statement of observation ble ‘attitude to life’. The objection to them from a present one, since their method of is that they do so under a misleading verification is the same. General proposi- appearance of imparting information about tions, such as natural laws, etc., are also in supersensible fact. If all formal proposi- principle unverifiable, since no finite tions belong to logic, and all factual propo- series of observations would be sufficient sitions, in a broad sense, to the empirical to guarantee their truth. Similar difficul- sciences, it is not easy to find a haven for ties attach to statements about material the propositions of philosophy, including, objects, whose verification in terms of of course, the verification principle itself. immediate sensory observations would Wittgenstein, faced with this difficulty, likewise require an infinite series of such had been ready to denounce even his own experiences to complete it. Rather than arguments to this end as ‘nonsense’, albeit discard them as meaningless, it was of an important and elucidatory character. declared that propositions of this type Unwilling to accept such a paradox, logi- were not really propositions at all, but cal positivism was prepared to grant the directions for making observations. legitimacy of analysis, which thus becomes Alternatively, they were hypotheses, capa- the whole duty of philosophers. Philosophy ble of confirmation (or, as some said, is not a theory, but an activity – the logi- falsification) by experience, and to that cal clarification of the concepts, proposi- extent legitimate for the purpose of sci- tions and theories proper to empirical ence. (Generalizations can, of course, be science. The verification principle was sim- conclusively falsified by a single observa- ilarly interpreted as a definition, recipe or tion, and by that test would rank as gen- criterion of meaning, rather than an asser- uine propositions; but the refutation of a tion which could be either true or false. particular claim that at least one X was Y, The simple identification of meaning would then require an exhaustive enumer- and method of verification has many curi- ation, as before.) ous and improbable consequences. The In order to avoid these complications, literature of logical positivism is much some writers (notably Ayer) sought to dis- preoccupied with them, and they have tinguish ‘strong’ and ‘weak’ forms of the been largely responsible for later diver- verification principle. The weak version gencies within the school. Briefly, the does not require a proposition to be con- difficulties are that the principle appears clusively verifiable, allowing that its to distort or deny the meaning of many meaningfulness may be sufficiently war- propositions acceptable in science and ranted if there are sensory observations everyday life; and that its conception of which are ‘relevant’ to its truth or falsity. meaning is in any case private, incommu- The intention of this formula was to deny nicable and variable from one observer meaning to metaphysical propositions, to another. Historical propositions, for while conceding it to empirical assertions example, are not directly verifiable in of the kind mentioned earlier. It was terms of events, and have to be interpreted soon recognized, however, that it is alto- as predictions about what would be found gether too lenient in this respect, since Logical Positivism 221 metaphysicians need not scruple to declare observer, but by publicly observable facts. that sense-observations are in some degree The mental life of the observer is of no relevant to their speculations. Later for- interest to science, and allusions thereto mulations of the principle have sought are, indeed, strictly without meaning. The to remedy this defect, only to run into observer’s reports, bodily states and gen- other and more technical difficulties; with eral behaviour are another matter, how- increasing complexity it has increasingly ever, since they can be publicly checked taken on the appearance of an ad hoc and recorded; and it is these, or rather the device for the exclusion of an already pro- records thereof, that form the ‘protocols’ scribed class of statements, rather than or elementary data of scientific theory. being in itself a reason for excluding them. This thesis, of ‘’, has a close Further problems arise from the all- resemblance to BEHAVIOURISM, but differs important role allotted to sense-experience in that it does not explicitly deny the facts in the process of verification. Since such of mental life or reduce them to facts of experience is necessarily private to the bodily behaviour. Its contention, rather, is observer, it would appear that proposi- that statements in the language of intro- tions can only have meaning for him if spective psychology are formally replace- they can be rendered in terms of what able by statements in the language of would, in principle, be accessible to physics; and that it is only in the latter for- immediate experience. Carnap’s Logical mat that they are of any use to science. As Structure of the World is an elaborate such, the thesis is certainly questionable, attempt to perform this reconstruction of but it is not refuted by the traditional scientific and empirical discourse from arguments for dualism. within the confines of an ‘egocentric’ ter- A more far-reaching claim of this sort, minology. The involved is chiefly associated with Neurath, is that all ‘methodological’ only, since the aim is to the sciences depend ultimately on proto- effect a theoretical reduction of concepts cols couched in terms of physical objects and propositions merely, and not of facts. and processes, and hence that all empiri- But doubts remain as to how, on these cal statements can be expressed in the assumptions, communication is possible, language of physics. Particular sciences or how the data of the sciences are inter- may well have laws of their own – that is subjectively verifiable. Logical positivism an empirical question; but the concepts was much divided on this question. The employed can all be defined in physical more orthodox opinion, expounded chiefly terms, which thereby form a lingua franca by Schlick, was that the ‘structure’ of of science. This was the theoretical foun- individual experience could be communi- dation of Neurath’s energetic campaign- cated and compared with that of others, ing for the ‘unity of science’. though its ‘content’ must remain ineffa- The physicalist retreat from empiricism ble, even to the observer himself. The was carried still further, for a time, by more radical party, headed by Neurath Carnap and Neurath, in proposing to dis- and Carnap, would have none of this lapse pense with the correspondence theory of into ‘metaphysics’, and preferred to secure TRUTH. The parallel between language and the objectivity of science even at the cost fact is an essential, yet suspiciously meta- of abandoning its supposed sensory basis. physical feature of Wittgenstein’s theory Scientific hypotheses, they argued, are of meaning, since, on his own showing, tested not by private sensations in the the extra-linguistic relationship involved 222 Logical Positivism is inexpressible within the resources of sentences are formally derived from one language. Schlick’s pursuit of ‘incorrigi- another. Much importance is attached to a ble’, immediately verifiable protocols threefold classification of these sentences: equally ends in the unutterable. Yet the syntactical sentences, which make refer- problem was easily disposed of: state- ence to words or other sentences, are said ments, it was insisted, are comparable only to be in the ‘formal mode of speech’; with other statements, not with external empirical or object-sentences are those facts; and knowledge must accordingly be dealing with things and states of affairs; depicted as a system of mutually support- but there is also a third class, of ‘pseudo- ing statements, to which newcomers are object sentences’, which seem to be about admitted as true if found to be consistent things (as when a table is said to be a with those already accepted. The belief thing), when in fact they really are, or can in a set of ‘basic’ propositions underlying be translated into, statements about words knowledge thereby becomes otiose; the (namely, that ‘table’ is a thing-word). ‘protocols’ required are simply a relevant These are said to be in the ‘material mode selection of propositions drawn from of speech’. The main point of these dis- the established system; and coherence tinctions, in the present context, is to becomes the test of truth. The difficulty, enable it to be argued that most, if not all, of course, is to know which system is the of the not hopelessly metaphysical propo- right one; for many are possible, and some, sitions of philosophy, which appear to be at least, must be false, since their internal alluding, for example, to the existence or consistency does not prevent them from status of abstract entities, such as univer- being inconsistent one with another. sals, are actually syntactical assertions Carnap’s declaration of trust in the system about words, misleadingly cast in the underwritten by the protocols of accred- material mode of speech. Philosophy is ited scientists was understandably viewed thereby identified with logical syntax, as an anticlimax, if not a confession of the higher-level discussion of language, defeat – an impression soon confirmed by and long-standing philosophical contro- his abandonment of this theory and return versies – such as that between IDEALISM to a qualified admission that sentences and MATERIALISM – turn out, when trans- could be ‘confronted’ with facts. lated into the formal mode, to be disputes These changes of front are less radical between alternative ‘languages’, rather than they seem, particularly when account than issues of transcendental importance. is taken of Carnap’s other views. Much of Hence the ready and even nonchalant his energy as a logician was devoted to passage of logical positivism from the ‘formalizing’ the internal structure (or phraseology of a quasi-idealist sensational- ‘syntax’) of language, very much as Hilbert ism to that of a quasi-materialist physical- and his followers formalized mathematics ism; the decision between them being a by treating its propositions as meaning- matter of methodological convenience, not less marks on paper and discussing the a substantial change of belief. Hence also rules for their combination (in a ‘meta- the urge to eliminate the ‘semantic’ ele- language’). Carnap’s ‘logical syntax’ ment – the reference to external fact – from embraces the grammatical (or ‘formation’) notions of truth and meaning, and to bring rules of language, by which sentences are the whole compass of language under one formed from its vocabulary, and the logi- syntactical roof. The collapse of this posi- cal (or ‘transformation’) rules, by which tion led Carnap to turn his attention to the Lukács, Georg 223 semantic field itself, but his contributions and indeed all that was most likely to to that subject scarcely belong to the liter- seem to the credulous to be supernaturally ature of logical positivism. caused and therefore a source of religious If logical positivism soon became terror. There is not a systematic treatment unfashionable, the reason is largely that its of the Epicurean ethical theory, but ortho- approach to language came to seem unnec- dox Epicurean views – that pleasure is the essarily rigid and doctrinaire. Its assump- sole good, that the most worthwhile form tions have turned out too simple, and its of pleasure is freedom from fear, and that methods too elaborate, to deal successfully the main reason studying nature is that we with the informality of ‘natural’ languages, will thereby liberate ourselves from and restriction to the analysis of artificial superstitious fears of the gods and life in model-languages has also limited the inter- the underworld – are presupposed est of the results (see TRANSLATION). Apart throughout. There may not be anything from some notable contributions in the rel- original in Lucretius (he himself made no atively technical fields of INDUCTION, such claim) but his poem is an accurate PROBABILITY and the methodology of sci- and passionate statement of the Epicurean ence, the main legacy of the school has position. It is also one of the greatest mas- been to concentrate attention on the prob- terpieces of Latin literature. (J.O.U.) lem of meaning, and to establish standards of logical rigour and clear, unrhetorical Lukács, Georg (1885–1971) Hungarian expression, that were widely emulated. The Marxist born in Budapest. Lukács was a attack on metaphysics, if not wholly con- student of , and his clusive, may be said to have damped the friends included Ernst BLOCH, Karl ardour, chastened the style and improved Mannheim, and Bertolt the understanding of its remaining devo- Brecht. He joined the Communist Party in tees. Nor is the influence of the controversy December 1918, and was active there- by any means exhausted; ethics and epi- after, as conditions permitted, in Party stemology have both had something to and national affairs. learn from it; and its repercussions are From his pre-Marxist Theory of the still plainly audible in philosophical theol- Novel (1916), which re-worked HEGEL’s ogy. See also A PRIORI, LOGICAL ATOMISM, critique of KANT in the context of the novel, PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE. (P.L.H.) to his last work, The Ontology of Social Being (1971), which includes chapters on Lucretius, Titus Lucretius Carus Hegel and MARX, and treats labour as a (98–55 BC) The only personal informa- model for social practice, Lukács’ theo- tion we have about the Roman poet retical work focused on problems of Lucretius is that he was driven insane by dialectic. Throughout, dialectic is con- a love potion, wrote some books (which ceived of as a mode of historical and cate- are presumably the six books of the philo- gorical thinking which transcends the sophical poem De Rerum Natura) in sane dualisms constitutive of modern philoso- intervals, and committed suicide at the phy: subject and object, freedom and neces- age of forty-four. There is no reason to sity, theory and practice, history (time) and doubt that this is true. The poem is a com- eternity. Dialectic, so conceived, is clearly of plete account of the Epicurean theory of Hegelian inspiration. the soul, sense-perception, astronomy, Lukács’ most important philosophical heredity, thunder, earthquakes, magnetism work is History and Class Consciousness 224 Lyotard, Jean-François

(1923), which introduces the idea of responsible for bringing the problems REIFICATION as a cultural generalization of of Marxism into a philosophical purview. Marx’s concept of commodity fetishism, Lukács spent the war years in Moscow. and thereby seeks to transform Marxism During this time he studied Marx’s from a reified theory of the economy into Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts a philosophy of praxis. For Lukács the of 1844. The impact of that reading problems of modern philosophy are is evident in The Young Hegel: On the historical and social problems because Relation between Dialectic and Economics the categories of philosophy are, in truth, (1948). His cultural conception of Marxism historical and social categories. Hence led him, throughout his long career, the overcoming of categorial dualisms to write numerous works on literature becomes possible in thought through and the philosophy of art. Prominent their placement within the social totality, amongst these are: The Historical Novel and in reality through the practical (1938); Goethe and his Age (1946); The transformation of the categorial structures Meaning of Contemporary Realism of modern society. Revolutionary praxis (1957); and The Specificity of the becomes, in Lukács, an ontological Aesthetic (1963). [J.M.B.] experiment. History and Class cconsciou- sness is the seminal work of ‘Western Lyotard, Jean-François (1924–98) (Hegelian) Marxism’ and is largely See POSTMODERNISM. M

McDowell, John (1942– ) Anglo- unrelated sensations; we cannot claim to American philosopher whose attempts, in find objectively in the world any basis the tradition of DAVIDSON, WITTGENSTEIN for our concepts of bodies in motion in and SELLARS, to overcome the legacy of space or of laws of nature. ‘According dualism have led him (see Mind and World, to our conception, natural laws are a 1994) into dialogue with such exotic part- product of our psychological need to feel ners as HEGEL and GADAMER. at home with nature; all concepts tran- scending sensation are to be justified as Mach, Ernst (1838–1916) Austrian helping us to understand, control and methodologist of science who served as predict our environment, and different Professor of Physics at Prague and then conceptual systems may be used to this at Vienna. His general philosophical end in different cultures and at different position was extreme POSITIVISM; he held times with equal propriety.’ that KANT’s Critique of Pure Reason But Mach does not consider that there ‘banished into the realm of shadows the is nothing to choose between any two con- sham ideas of the old metaphysics’, but ceptual schemes. A conceptual system is that metaphysical notions were still better if it is simple, comprehensive and prevalent in the philosophy of science free from internal contradictions; such a and even within science itself. His main system is more useful to us and more aim was therefore to give an account of fruitful. But we must not be misled into the nature of science which would free it saying that nature itself is simple, eco- from all metaphysical and non-empirical nomical and the like; the difference elements and to reconstruct the basic between economical and cumbersome science of mechanics in accordance conceptual systems is one of utility, not with these philosophical requirements. truth. We must not however go to the other ‘We know’, he said, ‘only one source extreme and regard our choice of scien- which directly reveals scientific facts – tific laws as purely conventional; the sys- our senses’; therefore science must be tem of concepts must be suited to the facts reconstructed so as to be manifestly an which it is used to describe and laws of account of sense-given facts. But the nature are descriptions of the world, even objects of our senses are colours, if schematic, and so must be judged true warmths, smells, sounds and the like, not and false by reference to experience. bodies and still less atoms, absolute Critics have frequently noted the difficulty space, absolute time, absolute motion of reconciling Mach’s empiricism with the and other conceptions of Newtonian more a priori elements in his view. In mechanics; therefore science must in accordance with the view of the nature of the final analysis be an account of science described earlier, Mach claimed sensations. No other statements can have that it was misleading to talk of proof in any scientific significance. Experience, science. If scientific laws are conceptual claimed Mach, provides us only with tools they cannot be inductively proved a manifold of constantly changing and from the facts, and the deduction of laws 226 Machiavelli, Niccolò from other laws is of no ultimate signifi- not least by those whose political practice cance and may give a misleading appear- implicitly endorsed it. {J.R.} ance of rigour. The only justification that MacIntyre, Alasdair (1929– ) Scots- can or should be given for accepting a sci- Irish philosopher who has worked both in entific law is, according to Mach, that it England and America. MacIntyre’s abid- survives testing in use. ing interests circle round the two of Mach was not satisfied with giving his first book, Marxism and Christianity this general picture of the nature of sci- (1954), which argued that MARX had ence; he considered that contemporary ‘humanised certain central Christian science was to some extent vitiated by not beliefs’ and that Christians ought to learn conforming to this picture. In particular ‘from both the achievements and the fail- he held that science constantly hyposta- ures of Marxism’. Since then he has tized the elements in its conceptual sys- explored a wide range of topics in the tem, ascribing to them counterparts in HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY (especially ethics) nature for which experience could give no and the philosophy of social science, with warrant and which were therefore meta- an unusual sensitivity to their social, his- physical. In The Science of Mechanics torical and political dimensions. But all (1883) Mach therefore applied his general his work is focused on a single object: the position to a criticism of the form given to need for moral philosophy to ground mechanics by NEWTON and his successors itself in history so as to provide positive and attempted to show how the scientific guidance amidst the dilemmas of content of mechanics could be retained MODERNITY. A Short History of Ethics without appeal to absolute space and (1965) was an attack on the unhistorical time, force and other non-empirical approach of writers like HARE (author of notions. the article on ETHICS in this Mach’s influence on the development Encyclopedia). The strident polemic in of EMPIRICISM on the continent of Europe Marcuse (1970) discovered élitism, intol- was very great; the VIENNA CIRCLE of log- erance and irrationalism in a thinker ical positivists acknowledged him as their whose interpretation of Marxism is actu- basic guide. His pure sensationalism was ally quite close to MacIntyre’s own. After abandoned quite early in favour of ‘phys- Virtue (1981) is a mournful analysis of icalism’, but most of the leading ideas of the ways in which moral thought and LOGICAL POSITIVISM can be traced to him. practice have been wrecked by the liberal On the other hand, LENIN attacked Mach individualism of the Enlightenment, and as an enemy of materialism. (J.O.U.) Whose Justice? Which Rationality? (1988) reinforces the argument by show- Machiavelli, Niccolò (1469–1527) ing how ‘standards of rational justifica- Florentine historian whose advice book tion themselves emerge from and are part The Prince (published posthumously in of a history’. He is the author of articles 1532) discarded the traditional assumption on Deism, and Theism in this that political and moral virtues coincide. A Encyclopedia. [J.R.] prince who clings to morality will come to grief, Machiavelli argued, and thus do Mackie, John L. (1917–81) Australian damage not only to his own interests but to philosopher with positivistic sympathies the public good as well. This is a hard doc- who taught at Oxford and propounded trine, and was vociferously condemned, the view (known as ‘error theory’) that Malebranche, Nicolas 227 moral discourse ascribes objective moral Greek sciences with the literal truth of the qualities to the world, and that in doing so ; in this task he relies greatly it makes a mistake (see Ethics: Inventing on the Arab philosophers AVICENNA, to Right and Wrong, 1977). whom he is much indebted for his doctrine of immortality, and AVERROES, from whom McTaggart, John Ellis (1866–1925) he took the notion of the identity of The Cambridge philosopher John Ellis essence and existence in God. Philosophy McTaggart was an IDEALIST, a systematic and revealed theology were treated by metaphysician, and an admirer of HEGEL. In Maimonides as quite different in nature but his great work The Nature of Existence as complementary. It is the task of philos- (1921, 1927) he set out, with the aid of two ophy to confirm rationally the truths of empirical premises to the effect that some- religion and to disprove doctrines which thing exists, to show by rigorous a priori seem to contradict revelation. (J.O.U.) argument the general nature of the universe as a whole and of its constituent parts. The Malebranche, Nicolas (1638–1715) conclusion that the universe is a society of The heterodoxy of DESCARTES divided the minds in close relation to each other is philosophers of his time into bitterly arrived at by a process of argument of great opposed factions. Those who followed ingenuity and clarity; in the course of this Descartes found their authority in AUGUS- argument occurs the celebrated proof of the TINE and those who opposed him took unreality of time. In the second part AQUINAS as their master. The French McTaggart attempts to draw by less rigor- philosopher was the ous methods various conclusions from the most celebrated of the Augustinians. He results of the first part. The formal simplic- believed individual things to be limita- ity, rigour, lack of rhetoric and candour of tions of the one material substance this work, combined with unusual audacity and individual minds limitations of an of thought and ingenuity, make it of value immaterial substance, against which was even to those who are out of sympathy with contrasted the perfect freedom of God. idealistic metaphysics in general. Among Malebranche provided an OCCASIONALISTIC his many uncommon views was his solution of the problem of the causal combination of atheism with a belief in the interaction of the two substances, for he immortality of the soul. (J.O.U.) held that there was no capacity for action Maimonides (1135–1204) Moses ben whatever in finite things, whether minds or Maimon was born in Spain, and – under bodies – a doctrine which he claimed to be the Latinized version of his name – the mark of a . These became the most eminent of the medieval considerations, coupled with the problem Jewish thinkers who attempted to synthe- of how an immaterial mind-substance size Greek philosophy and Jewish could perceive material bodies, led him to monotheistic religion. His writings a kind of neoplatonic metaphysics. We per- greatly influenced not only his orthodox ceive nothing directly, but God implants in co-religionists but such unorthodox our minds the idea of a corporeal world. philosophers as SPINOZA and such orthodox This world does in fact exist and corre- Christian philosophers as AQUINAS. His sponds to our ideas of it because the ideas most celebrated work is The Guide of the of God which are the source of our percep- Perplexed in which he attempts to tions are also the archetypes of the world reconcile Aristotelian philosophy and the of material things. (R.HALL.) 228 Manicheism

Manicheism Manicheism is the its looseness of texture and diffuseness of doctrine of an early sect of Christians who exposition, Marcel’s thought has a critical held that Satan was as real as God, or more and analytical quality, evidenced, for generally that EVIL is as real as goodness. example, in his discussion of the notion of an argument for the existence of God, in Marcel, Gabriel (1889–1973) French his laying bare of the precise content of philosopher and playwright. Marcel’s the hope of immortality, in his contribu- philosophical work was communicated tion to the pervasive debate concerning to the world principally through his the nature and possibility of metaphysics, diaries, which appeared in three parts: and through his distinction between Metaphysical Journal, 1927; Being and ‘problem’ and ‘mystery’. For all his stress Having, 1935; and Presence and on the dimension of subjectivity, he Immortality, 1959. The remains profoundly hostile to any sort of on The Mystery of Being (1950) represent radical individualism, which he would the nearest he came to a sustained exposi- judge false to the subtle actualities of the tion of his views. While his use of the human situation. (D.M.M.) diary-form makes him an impossible writer to summarize, it gives his philosoph- Marcus Aurelius (121–180) ical work a suggestive and exploratory Roman Emperor, who in his latter years quality which is peculiarly valuable to wrote the Meditations as a personal those patient enough to read it. refreshment amid the burdens of his lonely Marcel is often characterized as a office. His STOICISM is rooted in EPICTE- ‘Christian Existentialist’, and as such TUS, but he felt the natural communion of contrasted with SARTRE; but this is a humanity in the organic unity of the uni- serious misdescription. He wrote doc- verse with a deeper religious fervour than toral thesis on COLERIDGE’s relation to other Stoics. An all-beneficent provi- SCHELLING, and was initially a student of dence has placed within us a divine con- the English-speaking idealists, BRADLEY trol, reason; hence it is in our power to and ROYCE, and of BERGSON. With Royce make ourselves one with the rational pur- he shared a profound sense of the depth of pose of the universe. This is our active people’s attachment to the community to duty to ourselves as citizens of God’s which they belong. The reader will per- State. As Emperor of Rome, however, he haps learn more from Marcel’s diaries saw equally important duties to his fellow than from any other source, of the precise humans, his natural kin. Yet his love of sense of COLLINGWOOD’s distinction humanity did not blind him to depravity; between ‘proposition’ and ‘presupposi- and, convinced of the transitory nature of tion’. Marcel’s diaries also reveal his pre- temporal affairs, he found no incentive in occupation with the Cartesian problem of his Stoic principles to fashion an ideal the relation of mind and matter. In his state, only a sense of urgency to do what later years he gave serious attention to the he could in the post assigned to him by implications of para-psychological phe- God. The philosopher-king remained a nomena, especially telepathy, interpreted moral not a political ideal; Marcus is fun- as a mode of human communion. Marcel damentally concerned with his own moral was received into the Catholic Church in character functioning in relation to others; 1929, but remained aloof from the neo- his thoughts turn readily from Rome to Thomist enthusiasms of MARITAIN. For all . (I.G.K.) Maritain, Jacques 229

Marcuse, Herbert (1898–1979) communist societies. This book theorized German-American philosopher who the decline of revolutionary potential in developed his own version of ‘critical capitalist societies and the development Marxism’ in an attempt to update of new forms of social control. The book Marxian theory in response to changing was severely criticized by orthodox historical conditions from the 1920s Marxists and theorists of various political through the 1970s. Marcuse gained noto- and theoretical commitments. Despite its riety in the 1960s when he was perceived , it influenced many in the New as both an influence on and defender of Left as it articulated their dissatisfaction the so-called ‘New Left’ in the United with both capitalist societies and Soviet States and Europe. His first published communist societies. One-Dimensional article, which appeared in Weimar Man was followed by a series of books Germany in 1928, attempted a synthesis and articles on politics and capitalist soci- of PHENOMENOLOGY, EXISTENTIALISM, and eties, including ‘Repressive Tolerance’ Marxism of a kind, which was to be car- (1965), An Essay on Liberation (1969), ried out again decades later by various and Counterrevolution and Revolt (1972). ‘existential’ and ‘phenomenological’ Marcuse also dedicated much of his Marxists. Marcuse’s study of Hegel’s energy to aesthetics and his final book, Ontology and Theory of Historicity The Aesthetic Dimension (1979), is a (1932) contributed to the HEGEL renais- defence of the emancipatory potential of sance that was taking place in Europe. In aesthetic form in so-called ‘high culture’. 1933, he anticipated the tendency to His work in philosophy and social theory revise interpretations of Marxism from generated fierce controversy and the standpoint of the works of the early polemics, and many studies of his work MARX, publishing the first major review are highly tendentious and frequently sec- of Marx’s Economic and Philosophical tarian. Although much of the controversy Manuscripts of 1844. involved his critiques of contemporary In 1934, Marcuse fled from Nazism capitalist societies and defence of radical and emigrated to the United States where social change, in retrospect, Marcuse left he lived for the rest of his life. His first behind a complex and many-sided body major work in English, Reason and of work comparable to the legacies of Revolution (1941), traced the genesis of BLOCH, LUKÁCS, ADORNO, and BENJAMIN. the ideas of Hegel, Marx and modern See also ALIENATION, DIALECTICAL MATE- social theory. After service for the US RIALISM, FRANKFURT SCHOOL. [D.M.K.] government from 1941 to 1950, which Marcuse always claimed was motivated Maritain, Jacques (1882–1973) by a desire to struggle against fascism, he French Catholic philosopher. Originally returned to intellectual work and pub- a follower of BERGSON, Maritain later lished and Civilization (1955), became one of the best-known modern which attempted an audacious synthesis exponents of ; his Introduction to of Marx and Freud and sketched the out- Philosophy (1920) is orthodox scholasti- lines of a non-repressive society. In 1958 cism in traditional scholastic terms. Marcuse published Soviet Marxism, a crit- His best-known philosophical work is The ical study of the Soviet Union, and in 1964 Degrees of Knowledge (1932), in which he One-Dimensional Man, a wide-ranging distinguished natural scientific knowledge, critique of both advanced capitalist and metaphysical knowledge and mystical 230 Marx, Karl knowledge, all of which he regarded as Bonaparte (1852) and The Civil War in valid forms of knowledge, complementary France (1871). The specifically philo- to each other. (J.O.U.) sophical elements of his work were known only through his critique of Proudhon, Marx, Karl Heinrich (1818–83) Karl The Poverty of Philosophy (1847), and a Marx was born at Trier in Rhineland two-page summary of historical material- Prussia. At the University of Berlin he came ism in the Preface to the Contribution to a under the influence of the radical Young Critique of Political Economy (1859). Hegelian movement. Because of these asso- It fell to Engels to articulate the philo- ciations a University career was closed to sophical views which, after later elabora- him, so in 1842 he assumed the editorship tion, became known in vulgarized form as of the Rheinische Zeitung, a new liberal DIALECTICAL MATERIALISM. But since then paper at Cologne. The paper was suppressed the gradual appearance of unpublished in 1843, and Marx went to Paris where he works and drafts by Marx has adminis- made contact with German workers and tered a series of shocks to this doctrine, French socialists and became a communist. and promoted a stream of reinterpretations There he also met who of ‘what Marx really thought’. Important became his life-long associate. Expelled manuscripts that became available were: from Paris at the end of 1844 he stayed in Theses on Feuerbach (1845) – put out in Brussels for three years and participated in edited form by Engels in 1888; The the foundation of the Communist League. German Ideology (1845–6) – not available When the 1848 revolutions broke out he in full until the 1930s; Economic and returned to Cologne to found the Neue Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844 – Rheinische Zeitung. After its suppression published in 1932; and finally the Grund- in 1849, he took refuge in London where risse (1857–8) – of which there was no he remained for the rest of his life, often accessible edition until 1953. These in considerable poverty. In spite of all diffi- posthumous publications clarify Marx’s culties, he embarked on a massive research relation to German philosophy, and espe- programme, using the facilities of the cially the work of HEGEL and FEUERBACH. British Museum reading room. At the same The greatest shock was the publication time he was the moving spirit in the of the 1844 Manuscripts, which led to International Working Men’s Association considerable debate about the writings of (1864–72), achieving more notoriety as a the so-called ‘young Marx’ and their con- revolutionary than as a scholar in his tinuity with the later, supposedly less lifetime. philosophical, work. However, in the Marx characterized his theoretical work 1844 Manuscripts Marx already saw as materialist, dialectical and scientific, productive activity as ontologically con- and as expressing the standpoint of ‘the stitutive of human being, and the critique class that holds the future in its hands’ – of POLITICAL ECONOMY as the key task. In the proletariat. He was the founder of what these manuscripts Marx argued that in Engels called ‘scientific socialism’. At the the private property system, labour is time of his death he was known mainly for estranged from its object; that this state Capital (Vol. 1, 1867) and the Communist of estrangement is the result of the Manifesto (1848). Also available were ALIENATION of labour from itself; and that works of contemporary history such as private property must be seen as the The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis product of alienated labour. From this, Marx, Karl 231

Marx held, there flows an all-pervasive Marx begins by identifying the rela- experience of alienation in modern social tions of production, which are seen as institutions and culture. The end of corresponding to stages in the develop- alienation requires ‘the positive superses- ment of the productive forces. ‘The hand- sion of private property’, that is, the mill gives you society with the feudal re-appropriation of the human essence lord; the steam-mill, society with the presently estranged in it. Marx acknowl- industrial capitalist’, as he wrote in 1847. edged that his account of the way in And in 1859: ‘The sum total of these rela- which labour grasps its other (private tions of production constitutes the eco- property) as its estranged self, and nomic structure of society, the real negates this negation, has obvious paral- foundation, on which rises a legal and lels with Hegel’s Phenomenology of political superstructure and to which cor- Spirit; but he criticized Hegel for taking respond definite forms of social con- activity as essentially spiritual labour, and sciousness. The mode of production of equating objectivity with estrangement. material life conditions the social, politi- Although the young Marx’s theory of cal and intellectual life process in general. alienation is not (as ALTHUSSER alleges) It is not the consciousness of human simply a materialist inversion of Hegel’s, beings that determines their being, but, on it follows Hegel in treating the history the contrary, their social being that deter- of humanity as a development through mines their consciousness.’ Social revolu- self-estrangement to recovery of itself. tion arises out of class struggle rooted in HISTORICAL MATERIALISM, with its clear changes in the economic foundation. Of of history in terms of suc- course, the protagonists themselves are cessive modes of production, did not not typically aware of such changes. The emerge till one or two years later. This French Revolution, for example, was theory is documented in the first part of fought under the slogan ‘Liberty, the German Ideology, and the Preface to Equality, Fraternity’. But the develop- the 1859 Critique. ment of a market economy and the rise of Marx distanced his materialism from the bourgeois class was the real content of that of Feuerbach through the key role he the event, and its outcome cleared the gave to practice, especially to productive path for the capitalist mode of production. activity. Because we are natural beings, It is unfortunate that Marx’s architec- we have to interact with nature to secure tural metaphor of foundation and super- our material existence. Labour converts structure suggests that social consciousness the raw material provided by nature into is merely epiphenomenal. In truth, Marx goods for human use. This has to be done did not deny the reality of ideas, nor their before anything else and hence funda- effectivity in moving masses of people to mentally conditions everything else. act. He held only that reference to such Production, moreover, is always social ideas is not a ‘rock bottom’ explanation. production; and it is the guiding thread to Definite material and social precondi- history, Marx believed. History can be tions must be fulfilled if revolution is to divided into distinct periods, in each of be on the historical agenda. Human liber- which a different mode of production pre- ation depends more on such premises vails; but each system has its own laws of than on any philosophy of freedom. Thus motion and considerable empirical work socialism is based on tendencies immanent is required to discover them. in history, not on an ideal preached to 232 Material mode people in abstraction from their present For Marx, philosophy is part of the needs and interests. The historically cre- ‘ideological superstructure’. He some- ated conditions for communist revolution times spoke as if it had been superseded include the development of productive by his new science of history: ‘When real- forces adequate to sustain a society free ity is depicted, philosophy as an independ- from want, and also the emergence of a ent branch of knowledge loses its medium class that can solve its problems only by of existence’ (1846). But more significant overthrowing the existing order. is his famous verdict: ‘The philosophers Marx held that if history continually have only interpreted the world, in various generates new structures of social being, ways; the point is to change it’ (1845). and thus of individuality, then the social- Thus philosophy is to lose its independ- ist project cannot simply be dismissed as ence not so much in subjection to positive ‘against human nature’. He had no quar- science, but through changing its condi- rel with the visionary aims of Utopians tions of existence, overcoming in reality like (1772–1837) and the dualities of subject and object, real and (1771–1858); he shared ideal, duty and inclination, that bedevil it. them (as the doctrine of ‘the withering Scientific socialism conceives itself as away of the state’ shows). But he differed the theoretical expression of a revolution- from the Utopians in his conception of ary process which will put an end to political practice. Where they looked with philosophy in so far as it abolishes the disdain on the existing class struggle, alienating material relations which require Marx held that the practical reality of such compensatory speculation. Marx’s communism lay in this very struggle, and project of displacing philosophy from its that his science laid bare its motor of throne in favour of a unified science of development and revolutionary potential. humanity, nature and history thus itself This was why Marx devoted most of his speculatively prefigures such a non- life to the study of the workings of alienated society. But philosophy has capitalist society. effective social reality still. And, as long as In Capital Marx acknowledged his the revolutionary project of transforming debt to Hegel’s Logic, but unfortunately society in its totality lacks immediate his- gave no details. One could mention such torical actuality, Marxism is condemned features as: the articulation of the whole as to remain engaged with philosophy as a hierarchy of determinations and its pres- such. See also IDEOLOGY. [C.J.A.] entation at successively more concrete Material mode The ‘material mode’ of levels of mediation; the representation of utterance, as distinct from the ‘formal premises as results; the demonstration of mode’, concerns objects as opposed to capital’s tendency to assimilate, and repro- words. See LOGICAL POSITIVISM. duce, its conditions of existence; the dialectic of essence and appearance; and Materialism Philosophical material- the deployment of such categories as ‘con- ism is the view that all that exists is mate- tradiction’ and ‘negation of the negation’. rial or is wholly dependent upon matter It is also noteworthy that there are distinct for its existence. This view comprises: (a) parallels between Marx’s criticism of the the general metaphysical thesis that there ‘mystified form’ of Hegelian dialectic and is only one fundamental kind of reality his critique of the ‘fetishistic’ forms of and that this is material, and (b) the more value – commodity, money, capital. specific thesis that human beings and Materialism 233 other living creatures are not dual beings was related to the brain much as bile is composed of a material body and an related to the liver and urine to the kid- immaterial soul, but are fundamentally neys. (In fact Vogt’s utterance was an echo bodily in nature. of some phrases from Cabanis’ Relations The best-known form of materialism of the Physical and the Moral in Man is the speculative ATOMISM of DEMOCRITUS (1802) where it is suggested that the brain and EPICURUS. This view arises as an may be regarded as digesting impressions attempt to give an account of change in or secreting thoughts.) But neither Vogt terms of the ultimate elements of the nor his better known contemporary world. According to this theory, the ulti- Ludwig Büchner (1824–99) provided any mate elements are indivisible and inde- clear account of the nature of mind. Thus, structible particles moving about in although Büchner recognized that thought empty space. The things, animals and is not something that could be ‘secreted’, people of the natural world are formed by he has little positive to say about it except the coalescence of these particles. On this that it is ‘caused’ by physical processes. view, thought is a form of sensation and In the twentieth century there have sensation can be explained in physical been two main forms of materialism, terms. When the body decays or is DIALECTICAL MATERIALISM and PHYSICAL- destroyed, sensation is no longer possible ISM. Dialectical materialists describe Vogt and the soul itself disintegrates into its and Büchner as ‘vulgar materialists’, but ultimate atoms. Thus the distinction their own view, while it is clear as regards between soul and body is not a distinction the dependence of mind upon matter, is between the immaterial and the material, vague as regards the nature of mind itself. but between different sorts of material Physicalism was formulated by some wholes. Materialistic atomism was members of the LOGICAL POSITIVIST move- revived in the seventeenth century and ment. It rests upon the view that whatever became the creed of such eighteenth- can be meaningfully said must be verifi- century atheists as the Baron d’Holbach, able. The Physicalists argue, however, that who defines feeling in physical terms as a there can be no genuine verification of a way of being moved and of receiving statement about an individual’s private impulses through the body. experiences. One may say that one feels a With the growth of the physical pain, but others cannot test the statement: sciences speculative atomism was adopted they can only hear utterances or see as an explanatory principle of physics and movements. Nothing can be verified pub- chemistry and thus gave rise to scientific licly by more than one observer except materialism. This outlook gained support physical occurrences. The Physicalists from the evidences of geology and the concluded that meaningful statements theory of organic evolution, from which about minds must refer to bodily behaviour is appeared that life and mind had devel- of some sort, and that psychology was, in a oped from inanimate matter. Advances in broad sense, a part of physics. Whereas physiology reinforced this view, since it some psychologists had advocated BEHAV- was claimed that the existence and scope IOURISM as a policy of only admitting those of mental life depended upon the size and data that could be observed by more than configuration of the brain. The German one observer, the Physicalists advocated it physiologist Karl Vogt (1817–95) became on the ground that any other policy would notorious for his statement that thought have no meaning. 234 Mathematics

It is important to note that materialists technically called A PRIORI knowledge. do not deny the existence of mind or con- Consequently mathematics appears to be a sciousness; they merely deny that mind or refutation of the EMPIRICIST thesis that all consciousness are characteristics of knowledge is based on sense-experience, immaterial souls. The strength of the case a counter-example so indisputable that of materialism is a reflection of obscuri- among empiricists only J. S. MILL has been ties in the notion of a wholly incorporeal so bold as to try to deny it by claiming that existence. This is held to be non-spatial mathematical truths are really no more than and hence incapable of movement. But well-established empirical generalizations. then its mode of operation on and with But mathematics is a challenge to phi- material bodies seems inexplicable. On losophy in yet another way, for it is hard the other hand, to describe sensation in to discover what mathematics is about; terms of physical movements or chemical what is the number two, and what is it to changes is obviously to omit what is most add two to two? Two is surely not a phys- characteristic of it. The most acceptable ical thing, and ‘adding’ is not ‘putting form of materialism appears to be the with’ as two eggs can be put with two view that mind is not a thing, whether eggs? The problem arises also with regard material or immaterial, but the powers, to geometry, for if the theorem that the capacities and functioning of certain internal angles of a triangle are equal to sorts of bodies. Yet the critic of material- two right angles is understood to refer to ism is on strong ground in insisting on triangles drawn on paper it is almost cer- the gulf between experience on the one tainly false; what then are the triangles, hand and physical processes on the rectangles, lines and points of which the other. (H.B.A.) geometer speaks? When we consider these difficulties it Mathematics Mathematics has always is not surprising that PLATO, the first great been a subject of great interest to philoso- philosopher of mathematics, regarded phers not only in its own right but also as of mathematics as the supreme example of crucial importance for the problem of the knowledge of a supra-sensible world of nature and extent of the knowledge that the intelligible entities accessible to the rea- human mind can gain through pure reason- son alone and that RUSSELL, at the begin- ing and without recourse to observation or ning of his career, accepted an essentially experiment. No doubt we come to grasp similar position. Yet such a view is not such truths as ‘2ϩ2ϭ4’ only in the course one which can appeal to a robust common of experience, but it is not an experimental sense; the empiricist must find an alterna- truth comparable to the fact that if two tive to it. The most famous attempt prior drops of water are put with two drops of to the end of the nineteenth century is that water one small puddle results. of KANT, for whom the problem of mathe- Mathematical knowledge may be occa- matics was central. sioned by experience, but it is not based on Then FREGE in Germany and, inde- it; we do not need to send expeditions over- pendently, Russell in England developed seas to see if ‘2ϩ2ϭ4’ holds there also. the logistic theory. Briefly, their view was Thus mathematical knowledge seems to be that mathematical, terms – number, addi- a case of pure rational knowledge, gained tion and the like – could be defined in by thinking alone and independent of purely logical terms and that mathemati- empirical verification; it is what is cal theorems could be deduced from Mathematics 235 purely logical axioms; mathematics was project, and regard the logistical theory of therefore an extension of LOGIC. This the- mathematics as established. The whole of ory will now be briefly sketched. mathematics, it is claimed, has been In the late nineteenth century the shown to be but an elaboration of a set of Italian mathematician Peano had suc- trivial logical axioms. ceeded in showing that the arithmetic of Opponents of the logistic thesis urge finite cardinal numbers could be derived that not all the axioms required are so from five primitive propositions or trivial. Russell’s definition of number axioms and three undefined terms – zero, implies that to speak of the number three number and successor of. Now it is clear is to speak of the class comprising all that mathematics cannot be regarded as classes having three members and to continuous with logic unless all the terms speak of the number nine is to speak of of mathematics can be defined in terms of the class of classes with nine members logic; this meant that Russell and Frege, and so on; but if there were only eight basing their work on that of Peano, had to objects in the universe then the class of define zero, number and successor of in classes with nine members would be logical terms. This task they claimed to empty – it would be a null class – and have successfully performed, Frege in The similarly for all numbers greater than Foundations of Arithmetic (1884), a mas- eight; so that all numbers greater than terpiece of philosophical writing that is eight would be equal to each other and neither very long nor very difficult, and equal also to zero, which is absurd. To Russell in The Principles of Mathematics avoid ever getting to a stage in the (1903). The key terms Russell used in his sequence of finite integers when they definition are class, belonging to a class would all become equal to zero Russell and similarity; thus he defined number in and Whitehead introduced the ‘axiom of general as ‘the class of classes similar to infinity’, which in effect says that there a given class’. Definitions of the basic are an infinite number of objects in the terms of mathematics were given so that universe; but this is not obviously true any mathematical proposition could be and if true is not obviously a . rewritten so that every reference to num- Whether such difficulties can be sur- bers was replaced by reference to classes, mounted without abandoning the logistic membership of classes and relations thesis is still an open question. between classes. Of alternative theories, the best known But if mathematics is to be identified is formalism; as stated by its with logic we must not merely be able best-known exponent, HILBERT, this is the to reduce the vocabulary of mathematics view that mathematics is to be regarded as to that of logic; we must also be able to an abstract calculus of which the terms, deduce the five axioms of Peano, or what- numbers, are given no interpretation ever else we take as a set of axioms for beyond being things which satisfy the mathematics, from purely logical axioms. axioms; the essential characteristic of This gigantic task was undertaken by mathematics is self-consistency, which is a Frege in The Basic Laws of Arithmetic purely formal property. Critics of this view and by WHITEHEAD and Russell in claim that mathematical terms must be Principia Mathematica. Many philoso- given more than this purely formal mean- phers would claim that Whitehead and ing if mathematics is to be applied – as it Russell essentially succeeded in this obviously can be; even within mathematics 236 Medieval Philosophy we need to say such things as that four has anticipated by the notable mystical thinker two square roots, and here ‘two’ must be Al Gazali (1058–1111), put an end to the given more than a formal meaning. creative period of Arabic philosophy. There is no agreed answer to the cen- Jewish thinkers living in Muslim coun- tral problems of the nature of mathemat- tries, especially Spain, underwent similar ics; but in spite of disagreement it is still philosophical influences. Avencebrol probable that an account of mathematics (Solomon ibn Gabirol, 1021–58), the can be given which, while admitting its a author of The Source of Life, was thor- priori character, will not require us to oughly neoplatonic in spirit. MAIMONIDES accept a Platonic view of it as involving wrote The Guide of the Perplexed, which some rational insight into a world of eter- is the most remarkable development of nal essences. (J.O.U.) Aristotelian philosophy in harmony with Jewish monotheism and had considerable Medieval Philosophy The Middle influence on AQUINAS. But, as in Islam, a Ages are significant in the history of theological reaction stifled medieval thought as the period in which living reli- Jewish philosophical speculation. gious traditions came into full contact The earliest period of Christian phi- with Greek philosophy. This experience losophy in the Middle Ages, from the end was common to Muslims, Jews and of the eighth to the end of the eleventh Christians, and in each case the chief century, saw a gradual but by no means philosophical factor was the text of uninterrupted recovery from the bar- ARISTOTLE, accompanied by a vague cur- barism of the Dark Ages. Philosophy had rent of NEOPLATONISM which affected the no independent existence, but philosophi- interpretation of Aristotle and occasion- cal notions persisted through the study of ally showed itself independently. All three the Fathers, especially AUGUSTINE, and religions were faced with a choice through the reading of BOETHIUS. The between the primacy of theology, the pri- more elementary parts of Aristotelian macy of philosophy, and the possibility of logic were taught under the name of a harmonious synthesis of both. The dialectic among the seven liberal arts, and efforts at synthesis provided the most the remarks of Porphyry in his Isagoge interesting thinking of the period. directed attention to the question of The Muslims came into contact with the relation of universal concepts to fact. Greek philosophy as they extended their The neoplatonic system of ERIGENA in the conquests over Asia Minor towards the ninth century was an isolated product. gates of . AVICENNA suc- The twelfth century was the period of ceeded to his own satisfaction in harmo- the recovery of the text of Aristotle, but nizing the Koran with a neoplatonic already the need of more material for doctrine of the emanation of all things study was evident in the new speculative from God, worked out in Aristotelian urge of ANSELM, the originator of the terms. AVERROES was regarded throughout ONTOLOGICAL ARGUMENT. The brilliant the Middle Ages as the Commentator of speculative mind of ABELARD was partly Aristotle par excellence, but his adherence stultified by the lack of material for to the theory of the eternity of matter and reflection and criticism. In the course of his denial of personal immortality were this century however, and in the earlier incompatible with orthodox Islam. After part of the next, the writings of Aristotle his death a theological reaction, already were made available in Latin translation Meinong, Alexius 237 and came to be understood. It should be philosophy tended to decline into that borne in mind that for the Middle Ages sterile logic-chopping which a later age Aristotle was the leading source of what was to consider characteristic of scholas- we should now call science as well as ticism. The neoplatonic system of what we should now distinguish as phi- Nicholas of Cusa (1401–64) was again an losophy. The rise of universities, as at individual achievement. Paris and Oxford, was also a stimulus to The revival of scholastic philosophy systematic study. after the Renaissance, associated above The thirteenth century was the most all with Francisco Suarez (1548–1617), important in medieval philosophy because failed to last because it did not come to it was the period of the critical assimila- terms with the rise of modern science tion of Aristotle. The more conservative (see also NEO-THOMISM). The spirit of theologians (such as BONAVENTURA), medieval philosophy is sometimes sometimes described as Augustinian, summed up in the phrase which speaks of made use of the new Aristotelian knowl- philosophy as the handmaid of theology, edge and method while keeping them in but this was coined by a conservative the- strict subordination to Christian theology. ologian, (1007–72), who ALBERT THE GREAT gave himself whole- was anxious to curb the pretensions of heartedly to the new learning, and his dis- rational speculation. It is better summa- ciple AQUINAS provided the classical rized by Anselm when he speaks of faith medieval synthesis of Aristotelian philos- seeking understanding. The great ophy and Christian theology. His pacific medieval philosophers, while presuppos- manner sometimes obscures the fact that ing the truth of Christianity, sought with he was ready to suggest modifications candour and persistence for whatever new on either side whenever he thought light could be thrown on their view of the them desirable. The nearest comparable world by what they could recover of synthesis is that of SCOTUS in the next Greek philosophy. (D.J.B.H.) generation. Meanwhile the more radi- cal Aristotelians, sometimes called Meinong, Alexius (1853–1920) Averroists, arrived at philosophical con- Austrian philosopher who developed clusions which they could not square with BRENTANO’s intentional psychology. His theology. SIGER of Brabant seems to have REALISM greatly influenced RUSSELL, honestly expounded his difficulties, but MOORE and other British and American others come under theological suspicion Realists. Meinong spent most of his life of substituting philosophical conclusions as a professor at the University of Graz. for doctrines of faith. His principal works are: Hume Studies While Aquinas remains important as (1877, 1882); Psychological-ethical having tried to erect a metaphysical phi- Investigations towards Value-theory losophy on an empirical basis, that basis (1894); On Assumptions (1902); On needed further analysis. In the fourteenth Possibility and Probability (1915); On century the criticism of WILLIAM OF Emotional Presentation (1917); Ground- OCKHAM brought philosophy to a more work of the General Theory of Value completely empirical starring point. This (1923). might have been an invitation to a more Meinong’s psychology is rooted in that critical metaphysic, but there was no great of Brentano: he assumes that directedness- mind to take up the challenge. Medieval to-objects is the distinguishing property 238 Meinong, Alexius of the mental. The analysis of mental particular grouping or pattern is ‘objec- states is, however, complicated by distin- tive’ and yet is not something that we guishing two ‘elements’ in them: (a) an passively see. Such founded objects are ‘act-element’ which represents the man- said by Meinong to subsist (bestehen) or ner in which a state of mind is directed to have subsistence (Bestand), and not to its object, and (b) a ‘content-element’ exist – a usage taken over by Moore and which is defined as that which gives a Russell. Meinong further held that what state of mind its direction to one object we judge or assume is a peculiar complex rather than another. The difference object called an ‘objective’, which between thinking of dragons and believ- involves other objects as its material, and ing in dragons is a difference in ‘act’, which cannot be said to exist, and which whereas the difference between believing may or may not be a fact (tatsächlich). in dragons and believing in ghosts is a ‘Objectives’ are what Russell and Moore difference in content. By the ‘content- called ‘propositions’. They are expressed element’ Meinong does not mean a by a complete sentence or ‘that’ clause, or representation, much for example ‘that Caesar conquered less the object itself: rather he refers Gaul’, but their status as objectives does to the fact that being of a certain not depend on their being expressed or object is intrinsic to a state of mind. thought. Meinong builds on Brentano’s three- The most famous (or notorious) of fold classification of states of mind Meinong’s doctrines is concerned with into Presentations, Judgments and objects which do not exist or with objec- Affective-Desiderative attitudes. But he tives which are not facts. According to divides Presentations into those involving Meinong such objects or objectives are Passive Perception and those involving genuine objects or objectives, with a Active Production, for example, ideas of make-up which is independent of thought relations. He also places beside judg- or expression. Their very non-existence ments certain judgment-like attitudes or not-being-the-case entails this objec- which lack conviction, that is, Assumptions tive status, for the non-existence of a (Annahmen), and shows how important golden mountain is quite different from these are in art, play, pretence, fantasy, the non-existence of a round square, and hypothesis etc. And he separates the the not-being-the-case of the former dif- affective and desiderative attitudes which fers from the not-being-the-case of the Brentano confounded. latter. But Meinong did not hold, as The main interest of Meinong’s Russell for a time did, that non-existent doctrine does not, however, lie in his objects subsist, or have any sort of being psychology but in his object-theory. (Sein); he maintained only that they have According to Meinong, if we ask our- a describable nature or Sosein, which is selves exactly what our various mental unaffected by their existence or non- states bring to mind, we shall see that existence. We may say, for example, that different types of mental state correspond a round square is round and square, but not to typically different objects. Thus our that there is a round square. For Meinong, various ‘productive presentations’ intro- therefore, ‘something is F’ is not equivalent duce us to various ‘objects of higher to ‘there is an F’, as it is for Russell. order’ which are founded on the objects Meinong holds further that objects which of passive perception. For example, a cannot be said to exist play an extremely Merleau-Ponty, Maurice 239 important role in knowledge. Objects Merleau-Ponty, Maurice (1907–61) which are incompletely determined, or French phenomenologist and leading violate the law of excluded middle, are proponent of EXISTENTIALISM. Merleau- none the less the means through which Ponty also taught for many years at the the mind refers to objects which exist and Collège de France and, with SARTRE and are completely determinate. In his theory DE BEAUVOIR, co-edited the influential of knowledge Meinong makes use of journal Les temps modernes. The publica- Brentano’s concept of self-evidence tion of his monumental Phenomenology of (Evidenz), but he adds to absolute self- Perception in 1945 established his reputa- evidence the important notion of a surmise- tion as one of the foremost academic evidence (Vermutungsevidenz), with philosophers of post-war France. The which he justifies sense-perception, principal originality of this work was to memory and induction. apply HUSSERL’s phenomenology of inten- In his theory of value, Meinong holds tional consciousness to the corporeal that feelings may fuse either with the act dimensions of human existence: hence the or content element of our presentations or concept of the ‘body-subject’ which is judgments, yielding four types of-feeling: always ‘situated’ in a concrete lived (a) presentation-act-feelings in which we experience. The fact that we are bodies, sensually like or dislike something, with- pre-reflectively immersed in the ‘flesh of out caring about its reality or its charac- the world’ is in no way incompatible with ter; (b) presentation-content-feelings our status as free and creative subjects (aesthetic feelings), in which we do not intentionally related to history. Merleau- care about the reality of something but do Ponty rejects the positivistic view of care about its character; (c) judgement- the body as a mere object amongst act-feelings, in which we do care about objects. It is to be understood rather as an the reality of something but not about its expressive subject which reveals itself character (scientific feelings), and (d) through our everyday perceptions, ges- judgement-content-feelings, or valuations tures and symbols. proper, in which we care about both the Merleau-Ponty criticized his existen- reality and character of something. In tialist colleague, Sartre, for putting exces- Meinong’s earlier work no absolute or sive emphasis on the autonomy of human impersonal values are admitted: so-called consciousness, arguing that all subjectiv- absolute values are merely values for an ity is inter-subjectivity – that the freedom impartial spectator. But in his later work of consciousness is inextricably bound by he argues that feelings and desires may be with preconscious structures of collective the mental index or ‘content’ correspon- meaning. On this point, he came close ding to peculiar objective determinations. to Lévi-Strauss and STRUCTURALISM. Feelings introduce our minds to ‘dignita- His analysis of the body-subject as both a tives’ (beauty and goodness for example), producer and product of historical mean- while desires introduce them to ‘desider- ing gave rise to a philosophy of ambiguity, atives’, that is to various objective which expresses itself in the following ‘oughts’ – that a picture ought to be basic phenomena: (1) Physically, the re-hung for instance. The objects thus human hand can both touch and be introduced sometimes really subsist and touched. (2) Linguistically, we create new there can be considerable surmise-evidence meanings on the basis of a language that they do so. (J.N.F.) already acquired. (3) Politically, we are 240 both agents who transform society and without lapsing into nonsense? What recipients of the ‘sedimentations’ of our theory of meaning, communication, or social institutions and traditions. (This thought, is required to explain this possi- political ambivalence was evident in bility? A second, related, philosophical Merleau-Ponty’s controversial exchanges concern is with the truth-bearing potential with Sartre on the nature of revolutionary of metaphor. Do metaphors afford a Marxism – which they both supported special kind of cognition? in different ways – in Les Temps Philosophical attitudes have been Modernes and in his collection of politi- mixed. HOBBES and LOCKE dismissed figu- cal essays, Adventures of the Dialectic, rative usage as a superfluous distraction in 1955). (4) Ontologically, human existence intellectual discourse, a sign of sloppiness is expressed in the intertwining of the vis- or deceit. Other philosophers have argued ible and invisible dimensions of being. that metaphor is pervasive and inescapable; This last phenomenon was a central NIETZSCHE and DERRIDA draw the sceptical preoccupation of Merleau-Ponty’s two conclusion that the pervasiveness of final works, Eye and Mind and the unfin- metaphor undermines any search for fixed, ished The Visible and the Invisible, both timeless truths. A third attitude, hinted at by published posthumously in 1964. It also Shelley but refined by recent analytic recapitulates his life-long interest in philosophers associates metaphor with the ‘indirect languages’ of art and litera- unique truth-bearing, even truth-creating ture as evidenced in earlier works such possibilities. as Sense and Non-Sense (1948) and In contemporary philosophy of lan- Signs (1960). guage, the debate is initially focused on Merleau-Ponty’s preference for inter- meaning. Two general approaches are dis- preting existence aesthetically (in terms of cernible here, loosely labelled ‘semantic’ style and signification) rather than scientif- and ‘pragmatic’. Semantic theories locate ically (in terms of objects and statistics) metaphorical meaning in langue, the lan- epitomizes his conviction that truth is an guage system, seeing it as a complex ongoing project rather than a fixed posses- semantic property of phrases or sen- sion, a task of living experience rather than tences. If metaphor has cognitive poten- a fait accompli. See also MIND. [R.K.] tial then, according to this view, it resides in the embodiment of a novel thought or Metaphilosophy Metaphilosophy is proposition within this special semantic theory about the nature of philosophy. content. Pragmatic theories, in contrast, Metaphor ARISTOTLE spoke of the use locate metaphorical meaning in parole, as of metaphor as a ‘sign of genius’. His a property of specific, contextualized own definition, in the Poetics, is a useful utterances. What cognitive potential there starting point: ‘the application to one might be is thought to lie not in the lin- thing of a name belonging to another’. guistic representation of a thought but in Although it blurs the finer rhetorical dis- the evocation of a particular response, criminations (metonymy, synecdoche and imaginative or intellectual. catachresis), this definition nevertheless The simplest, most traditional, seman- highlights the central philosophical ques- tic theory identifies the semantic content tion about metaphor, namely: how is it of a metaphor with the literal meaning of possible to apply terms ‘figuratively’, a corresponding simile. Thus ‘time is a beyond their normal range of application, ’ is taken to mean the same as ‘time Metaphor 241 is like a tyrant’. However plausible for position, whereby metaphorical meanings certain examples, this account is now are deemed to be already present in literal widely regarded as inadequate. In a com- meanings and reachable by a process of plex metaphor, like WITTGENSTEIN’s selection and elimination. Such austere famous aphorism ‘a cloud of philosophy semantic accounts, however, face the condensed into a drop of grammar’, it problem of explaining the spontaneity may not be possible to construct an and novelty of certain metaphors. exactly equivalent simile. In any case, the Interaction theories like Black’s con- standard criticism remains that something front other difficulties of detail. First, integral to metaphor is lost in literal trans- there is the problem of how semantic lations of this kind. interaction could discriminate relevant A further objection to reducing from irrelevant ‘associations’. What metaphors to similes is that a metaphor semantic rule selects the connotation of and a corresponding simile ought to have fierceness for the interaction of ‘John’ different truth-conditions. and ‘gorilla’, but not the connotation of, illustrates this with the example ‘John is a say, living in or being popular in gorilla’, which would normally be taken zoos? Second, it is hard to see how the to imply, metaphorically, that John is relevant associations in some metaphors, fierce, nasty, prone to violence, and so for example ‘time is a tyrant’, could be forth. However, gorillas, as we now know, transferred in any non-metaphorical sense are shy and sensitive creatures, so quite from one constituent to another. Few, if different implications are carried by the any, properties of could be attrib- literal comparison ‘John is like a gorilla’. uted literally to time. But then the seman- Responding to the weaknesses of the tic content yielded by the interaction is simile account, other semantic theorists just a further series of metaphors. have tried to capture the features that A problem for all semantic theories make metaphor distinctive. , in lies in the initial identification of a phrase a landmark paper of 1955, argued that or sentence as metaphorical. Although the terms in a metaphor interact by invok- some metaphors, like ‘time is a tyrant’, ing and ‘filtering’ systems of associations. contain semantic clues to their metaphor- This interaction, elsewhere described as ical nature, in the form of anomalies, ‘interanimation’ (I. A. Richards) or ‘ten- mixed categories or patent falsehoods, sion’ (Monroe Beardsley), generates a other metaphors, like ‘The rats went down novel semantic content, going beyond the with the ship’, display no semantic irreg- literal meanings of the metaphor’s con- ularities and rely entirely on the context stituent elements. An important aspect of of utterance to prompt a metaphorical Black’s theory is the idea that the creation reading. of metaphorical meaning depends not only Pragmatic theorists take relativity to on the meanings of words but on the beliefs context and the dynamics of metaphorical of those involved. interpretation as their starting point. Their The introduction of non-semantic paradigm is that a speaker issues a factors, in the form of beliefs, might seem metaphorical utterance on a particular to weaken the claim that metaphor is a occasion and intends thereby to invoke a purely semantic phenomenon. Some the- certain kind of response in the hearer. orists, notably L. J. Cohen, have argued Different accounts have been offered of for a more uncompromising semantic such metaphorical communication. One 242 Metaphysics view, widely held, and expounded in detail so there is no question of ‘metaphorical by Searle, is that metaphor is an instance truth’. This ‘no-meaning’ view of of ‘speaker’s meaning’ rather than ‘sen- metaphor emphasizes the causal and psy- tence meaning’, that is, a speaker says one chological features of language use. But thing but means something else. psychological responses can be unpre- Recognizing that the speaker’s words dictable and arise under a variety of con- cannot, given the context of utterance, be ditions. To retain any distinctive concept understood in their usual, literal, mean- of metaphor the no-meaning view needs ing, the hearer invokes principles of to offer some constraints on the relevant (metaphorical) interpretation to recover responses and also on the modes of utter- the meaning intended. This account allows ance that are their causes. It also needs to that the search for a metaphorical reading account for the prominent role of might be prompted not only by semantic metaphor in cognitive discourse, includ- anomalies in the sentence, but by features ing science and philosophy, where rati- of its context too. One major criticism of onal argument, rather than causal efficacy, this view is that it demands too determi- is paramount. Finally, whereas this view nate a meaning for metaphorical utter- presupposes a secure concept of literal ances, failing to acknowledge their meaning, the boundaries between literal ‘open-endedness’. Another is that it gives and metaphorical language or even undue authority to a speaker’s . between ‘dead’ and ‘live’ metaphors are A different pragmatic approach is to in fact blurred. This encourages the postulate a distinctive associ- thought that metaphors are more perva- ated with metaphor. One suggestion is sive and more intractable than neat theo- that a metaphorical utterance is an ‘invita- ries of meaning are prepared, or able, to tion’ or ‘instruction’ to a hearer to think of acknowledge. [P.L.] one thing in terms of another. Here the speaker might have no special authority Metaphysics Metaphysics is that part over how the instruction might be carried of philosophy which has the greatest pre- out. Speech act accounts, however, face tensions and is exposed to the greatest the complication that metaphors them- suspicions. Having the avowed aim of selves can occur in different speech acts arriving at profound truths about every- and in indirect speech. Does the thing, it is sometimes held to result only metaphorical speech act override, or get in obscure nonsense about nothing. This subsumed by, the wider speech act? equivocal status is not the least of those A far more radical theory, introduced features of metaphysics which require by Donald DAVIDSON in a seminal paper of explanation. 1978, proposes that there is no such thing 1 Descriptions of Metaphysics. It will as metaphorical meaning, either semantic be well, first, to set out a number of or pragmatic: ‘Metaphors mean what the descriptions of the subject given by some words, in their most literal interpretation, who are themselves metaphysicians or mean and nothing more.’ The power and critics of metaphysics or both. From these interest of metaphorical utterance, descriptions we may gather a list of char- according to this theory, lies in its ability acteristics each of which we may expect to jolt us into new ways of thinking. A to find in some examples of metaphysics metaphor does not convey a propositional and some of which we may find in all. content, other than that of its literal sense, The task will then be to explain how these Metaphysics 243 characteristics are related; to decide, if simply piecemeal or by fragments, but possible, which of them are central; and somehow as a whole’. The mention of perhaps to distinguish different kinds of first principles, and the contrast with metaphysics. ‘piecemeal’ studies, are Aristotelian. But The name of the subject is the name the emphasis on knowledge of reality as given by scholars to a treatise of against mere appearance is an additional ARISTOTLE. Aristotle described the subject element. of his treatise in a number of different There is a more striking shift of ways which he regarded as equivalent. He emphasis when we turn to the great criti- called it the study of the first principles of cal metaphysicians, HUME and KANT. Kant things. He said it was the science of exis- emphasized above all the non-empirical tence in general, or of ‘being as such’, character both of the subject-matter and contrasting it in this respect with the var- of the method of traditional metaphysics. ious special sciences which each studied Its method was A PRIORI, the employment only one part or aspect of being. He of pure reason alone; its subject matter described it also as the study of ‘SUB- was transcendent. Neither its results nor STANCE’, a term which occupies a central its methods could be checked by experi- position in the work of most of the great ence. For it argued to conclusions about metaphysicians who came after him. things which transcended experience, in Substance he declared to be what prima- accordance with principles which experi- rily existed, and was prior to all other ence did not establish. The resulting con- things in respect not only of existence, but troversies were endless; and ‘the of explanation and of knowledge as well; battlefield of these endless controversies that is to say, the explanation of anything is called metaphysics’. Kant concluded else involved the idea of substance; that we should turn the light of reason on knowledge of anything else involved reason itself, that we should undertake the knowledge of substance; and the exis- critical examination of pure reason in tence of everything else depended on the order to determine what it is, and is not, existence of substance. Metaphysics, capable of. The first, and perhaps the then, is regarded by Aristotle as a single, only, task of metaphysics is to determine comprehensive study of what is funda- its own limits. Kant here echoes, in a mental to all existence, all knowledge and more specific form, the suggestion of all explanation. It will at once be evident Hume that we should ‘inquire seriously that different identifications of substance, into the nature of human understanding that is, of what has this fundamental char- and show, from an exact analysis of its acter, will yield different systems of powers and capacity, that it is by no metaphysics. means fitted for such remote and abstruse If we set beside Aristotle’s account of subjects’. This inquiry Hume describes his subject the words of the English meta- as ‘cultivating true metaphysics with physician BRADLEY, we notice a different some care in order to destroy the false and element in the definition. Bradley says: adulterate’. ‘we may agree, perhaps, to understand by There is a certain modern account of metaphysics an attempt to know reality as metaphysics which does not seem at all against mere appearance, or the study of obviously related to what has gone before. first principles or ultimate truths, or again John WISDOM describes a metaphysical the effort to comprehend the universe, not proposition as, characteristically, a sort of 244 Metaphysics illuminating falsehood, a pointed paradox (a), what is fundamental to existence, the which uses language in a novel way in metaphysician may reach the same order to make us aware of differences and antithesis, (b), for he may express his similarities which are concealed by our sense of the importance of what he ordinary ways of talking. And WITTGEN- regards as fundamental by saying that it STEIN compares a metaphysical sugges- alone really exists and all else is appear- tion to the invention of a new kind of ance. If this revised picture of reality is a song. The thought common to both is, radical enough revision, the distinction perhaps, that it is characteristic of the between appearance and reality may have metaphysician to propose for use, or to to be drawn between what falls within offer for contemplation, a shift in our and what lies outside experience, (c); and ideas, a revision of our concepts, a new evidently, if the concern is with what way of looking at the world. transcends experience, the method must 2 Characteristics of Metaphysics. The be non-empirical (e). It is obviously less composite picture which these descrip- easy to connect (d), the recommenda- tions yield is not a very clear one. (a) tions of Hume and Kant, with many of Metaphysics is a comprehensive study of these characteristics; but at least there is what is fundamental in the order of an easy connection between the examina- knowledge, explanation and existence; tion of the intellectual equipment of (b) it is the study of reality as opposed to human beings and part of (a), viz. the mere appearance; (c) its subject is, or has determination of what is fundamental in been, what transcends experience; (d) it the order of knowledge and explanation. is, or ought to be, a study of the intellec- 3 The History of Metaphysics. Now to tual equipment and limitations of human compare this list of characteristics with beings; (e) its method is, or has been, a actual systems of metaphysics. It is cer- priori rather than empirical; (f ) it pro- tainly true that most of the great meta- poses a revision of the set of ideas in physicians have proposed radically terms of which we think about the world, revised pictures of the world, bold, com- a change in our conceptual scheme, a new prehensive and often startling; and that way of talking. most of them have accorded a central This list of characteristics is heteroge- place in the picture to some few key con- neous, and may seem scarcely coherent. cepts, or to some specially favoured type Before we relate the list to actual exam- of entities given the title of ‘substance’. It ples of metaphysics, perhaps we can trace is also true that the choice of key concepts some general connections between some and entities, and the resultant picture of of its items. For instance, while it might the world, have varied greatly from one be possible to interpret a metaphysical metaphysician to another. Sometimes system as (f), a proposal for conceptual even ‘substance’ has been dethroned, for revision, an invitation to look at the example, in favour of ‘process’; and world in a new way, the system will not among candidates for the role of sub- generally be presented by the metaphysi- stance the choice has been wide. Besides cian as such a proposal, but rather as (b), God, the divine substance, who has a a picture of things as they really are place in most systems, DESCARTES recog- instead of as they delusively seem, a des- nized two types of substance, matter and cription of reality as opposed to appear- minds; BERKELEY one only, minds or spir- ance. Again, starting with a concern with its; LEIBNIZ a class of entities (monads) Metaphysics 245 each of which, though non-spatial and subject-matter of geometry, and hence non-temporal, was somehow a model of that, from the point of view of science in the entire universe. SPINOZA recognized general, the only important characteristics only one comprehensive substance, God of things in the physical world were the or Nature, infinite and eternal, of which spatial characteristics which geometry mind and matter were merely two aspects. studies. It is not the holding of these beliefs Kant regarded substance as belonging to which makes Descartes a metaphysician. It the world of our ordinary experience, yet is rather the dramatic expression they set Reality itself, as totally unknowable, receive in his doctrines about the essential outside that world. Hume, though nature of knowledge and existence. He inclined to deride the whole notion of offers a picture of a world in which the substance, thought that if anything only realities, apart from God, are purely deserved the title, as being capable of material substance with none but spatial independent existence and fundamental in characteristics, and pure thinking sub- the order of knowledge, it was particular stances whose being essentially consists in sense-impressions and the imagination’s the ability to grasp self-evident axioms and copies of these. It is inevitable that we their deductive consequences. Knowledge should inquire into the reasons for this is nothing but the results of exercising this diversity; and it is impossible not to ability. Whatever else ordinarily passes for decide that it reflects in part historical reality or knowledge is downgraded, given changes in the general intellectual situa- an inferior status. Such a drastic revision of tion as human thought advances or devel- our ordinary scheme of things naturally ops in different particular spheres, and in creates problems, and calls for further part individual variations in the interests, explanations and adjustments. Thus attitudes and preferences of different Descartes teaches, on the one hand, that it metaphysicians. These interests and pref- is only through confidence in God’s verac- erences, those advances and develop- ity that we can have reason to believe in the ments, are dramatized into cosmic existence of material things; and on the tableaux, expressed in the form of highly other that it is only through our wilfulness abstract myth, uncontrolled, as Hume and that we ever believe what is false. Kant remarked, by a critical examination Again and again in the history of the of the kind of reasoning employed. The subject such a preoccupation with some point may be illustrated from the case of advance, achieved or hoped for, in a par- Descartes. His main interest was in the ticular branch of thought, has found development of science, and he had very expression in some similarly bold new clear ideas about the proper direction for vision of the nature of the world. Not only this development. Mathematics, and in mathematics and the physical sciences, particular geometry, seemed to him to but history, biology and formal logic as provide the model for scientific proce- well, have all inspired metaphysics. dure. He thought that the fundamental Developments in the study of history method in science was the deductive underlay the Hegelian system; and the method of geometry, which he conceived metaphysics of LOGICAL ATOMISM can be of as rigorous reasoning from self-evident seen, in part, as the expression of a pro- axioms; and he thought that the subject- found satisfaction with advances in for- matter of all the physical sciences must mal logic at the end of the nineteenth and be fundamentally the same as the the beginning of the twentieth century. 246 Metaphysics

Nor is it only a concern with theoretical with our cognitive constitution, not of disciplines that supplies the drive to meta- things as they were in themselves. What physical revision. Religions and morali- was ultimately real was in principle ties too may seek and find metaphysical unknowable; and this unknowable reality support. Elements of diverse kinds may acquired a more positive role when Kant be fused in a single system, such as that of was concerned to secure metaphysical Spinoza, which expresses an attitude at foundations for morality: it appeared as once thoroughly scientific and pro- the authoritative source of morality’s foundly moral. commands. Hume, Kant’s predecessor in 4 Critical Metaphysics. The critical time, shared with Kant the conviction that metaphysicians, Hume and Kant, demand significant discourse was limited by the separate and special attention. Kant conditions of actual experience, and that pointed our that the metaphysician neces- much traditional metaphysics trespassed sarily employed concepts which have an beyond those limits. But Hume inherited application in our ordinary experience or from LOCKE and Berkeley a curiously lim- at least are derived from concepts so ited conception of what experience actu- employed; but that the metaphysician’s ally supplied us with. The real elements of own use of these concepts characteristi- experience, he held, were separate and cally ignored or went beyond the empiri- fleeting impressions of sense and feeling. cal conditions of their employment. Any Our ordinary picture of a world of contin- such extension of the use of these con- uously existing and interacting material cepts, so far from extending our knowl- things and persons could not be rationally edge beyond the limits of experience, was justified on this basis; but it could be quite illegitimate, and the results were explained, as the product of the associa- empty or senseless. Kant maintained that tive mechanism of the imagination set in the positive task of metaphysics was to motion by the ultimate elements of feel- show how the most general and funda- ing and sense. mental concepts we employed were inter- It will be obvious that both Hume and related to form an organizing framework Kant, while criticizing in principle the of ideas and principles, a framework revisionary schemes of other metaphysi- which supplied the necessary conditions cians, were to some extent metaphysically of the kinds of knowledge and experience revisionary themselves. Kant’s doctrine which we in fact possessed. The negative that only what is unknowable is ultimately task was to show both how inevitable was real, and Hume’s doctrine that it is imagi- the metaphysical temptation to use these nation which makes us believe in the exis- general concepts in ways which disre- tence of material bodies, are alike in garded the empirical conditions of their doing violence to the concepts of imagi- employment, and how inevitably empty nation, reality and knowledge which we were the results of succumbing to this actually employ. Nevertheless, in virtue temptation. At this point we find in Kant both of the positive and of the critical a residue of that very kind of metaphysics aspects of their work, these two great which he declared to be impossible. For philosophers exercised an influence on the framework of ideas which it was the metaphysics which may well appear deci- positive task of metaphysics to elucidate sive. This is particularly true of Kant. was thought of by Kant as the framework Both philosophers concerned themselves of things only as they appeared to beings with the general structure of our thought Metaphysics 247 about the world. Both wrote, much of the metaphysics was natural, it does not time, in an idiom more suggestive of follow that it was justified. Metaphysical empirical psychology than of an investi- excess might be no more essential to gation into concepts and the conditions of metaphysics than tyranny to government. their use. But behind the psychological To show that the repudiation was not jus- idiom of Kant we can find the outline of tified calls for some reordering of the a far more coherent account of the general facts which we already have before us. structure of our conceptual scheme than When Aristotle described the subject we can find either in Hume or in those of his treatise, he distinguished it sharply later empiricists who wrote in the spirit of from the special or departmental disci- Hume while discarding much of his psy- plines. But the distinction was not drawn chology. The criticisms made by both in a wholly clear way. It was implied that Hume and Kant of the metaphysical the ‘science of being as such’ was more employment of concepts without regard general and comprehensive than the spe- to the conditions of their empirical use cial sciences. Clearly this most general still stand. But on the critical as on the science was not to be merely a com- positive side Kant’s contribution is ulti- pendium of the others; yet when the spe- mately more effective than Hume’s. For cial sciences are put on one side, what though these criticisms were later subject for study is left? It is difficult to expressed most vociferously and in their avoid the impression that the projected most extreme form by the school of science of being, if such a study exists at Logical Positivists who were heirs of all, must have some curiously elusive yet Hume rather than of Kant, the effective- very fundamental subject-matter of its ness of this expression suffered from the own, somehow lying behind those aspects weaknesses and limitations of the associ- of reality which are studied in departmen- ated empiricist metaphysics. tal disciplines. Behind these aspects of 5 Repudiations of Metaphysics. Over reality is Reality itself, ‘being as such’, much of the philosophical world in the subject-matter of metaphysics. the twentieth century the doctrine of the Already the tendency of metaphysics impossibility of metaphysics became towards the transcendent becomes intelli- almost an orthodoxy, and the adjective gible. In default of a further clarification ‘metaphysical’ a pejorative word. Some of of the nature of the enterprise, it will the reasons for this devaluation should inevitably appear as the gropings of pure now be clear. The conceptual distortions reason in a mysterious realm to which and final incoherence of systems, the ordinary access is impossible. Another abstract myths parading as Reality, the consequence may appear equally grandiose claims and the conflicting inevitable. For in order to describe this results – these seemed to many the realm, the only materials that we have, or essence of the metaphysical enterprise can make, available must be taken, or and sufficient reason for condemning it; fashioned, from the conceptual equipment and the extravagances of metaphysics which we use for the less rarefied pur- were by some of them contrasted with the poses of daily discourse or departmental sobrieties of a method of philosophical studies. If we are to put such concepts to ANALYSIS which aims to make clear work to describe the transcendental the actual functioning of our concepts in realm, we must cut them off from the use. But though the repudiation of conditions of their ordinary employment 248 Metaphysics and deprive them of their ordinary force; discarded, but simply given a clearer yet they must seem to retain something of meaning. It is the idea of a transcendent their ordinary force, or we shall not even reality as a possible subject of inquiry seem to be saying anything significant. which is abandoned. The Aristotelian con- So transcendental metaphysics proceeds ception is not rejected, but rescued from by way of conceptual distortion to a ter- perversion. mination in uncashable METAPHOR. It might be said that the aims of meta- This is a kind of caricature of the physics, so understood, are no different rake’s progress of metaphysics. Its pur- from those of philosophical analysis in pose is to enable us to see more clearly general, which also proposes to investi- the significance of the Kantian revolu- gate the actual functioning of our con- tion. When Kant denied that knowledge cepts; or that, at most, the difference will of reality was possible, he was in effect simply be one of scope and generality. denying that metaphysics had, or could But this is an important difference, which have, any such peculiar subject-matter of entails another: a difference in method. its own. But he did not thereby deprive When the analytic philosopher proposes the metaphysician of employment. The to investigate some particular concept – positive task of the metaphysician was not say that of memory, or cause, or truth – he to think about a special world, but to think finds the surest method of procedure to about the structure of our thinking about lie in a careful examination of the actual the ordinary world; not to acquire knowl- use of the verbs, adjectives and nouns by edge of objects beyond our experience, means of which we introduce this concept but to clarify the nature and conditions of into our discourse. Such an examination knowledge of objects within our experi- has great power to reveal the complexities ence. So metaphysics is indeed a more of the concept, the multifariousness of the general and comprehensive study than phenomena which it covers, and, up to a any special science; for it aims to make point, its connexions with other concepts. clear the fundamental general structure of The results arrived at in this way may be all our ordinary and scientific thinking. perfectly adequate for the purposes of a Its method is indeed non-empirical; for it regional analysis, which legitimately inquires into the conceptual structure takes much for granted; and they provide which is presupposed by all our empirical an indispensable corrective to the concep- inquiries. tual distortions to which metaphysics is This conception of metaphysics may prone. But this method of illuminating appear to differ from the Aristotelian con- the workings of a particular part of our ception. There is no mention of ‘being as conceptual apparatus is apt to assume, such’, of what is prior in the order of rather than to reveal, the fundamental existence. But this difference is apparent structure of the apparatus as a whole; and only. If we investigate the fundamental it is precisely this general structure which categories of human thought, the connex- the metaphysician wishes to understand. ions between them, and the dependencies The connexions and dependencies which of one on another, we are thereby commit- the metaphysician has to make explicit lie ted to inquiring into the relations between below the surface of the linguistic phe- the various types of entity, or being, which nomena. They do not lie so far below we admit into our conceptual scheme. the surface that they cannot be detected The idea of ontological priority is not and recognized. But their detection and Mill, James 249 recognition require a wider-ranging form. But that does not mean it is impos- vision than is compatible with attention to sible. Some projections of the picture the surface phenomena alone. involve less distortion than others; and We have seen that many traditional even those projections which involve the metaphysicians have not been content to grossest distortions of the picture as a describe the actual structure of our whole may nevertheless represent a part thought about the world in its most gen- of it with a peculiar clarity. (P.F.S.) eral and fundamental aspects. Rather they have wished to substitute a revised Mill, James (1773–1836) James Mill structure, which somehow symbolized was born in Aberdeenshire, Scotland, and their own intellectual preoccupations and studied for the ministry at Edinburgh. But attitudes. It is almost as if, in order to religious doubts led him to give up this record their sense of the importance of a career and at twenty-nine he went to certain change of direction in thought, London, where he met BENTHAM and they had to exaggerate the extent and became his chief lieutenant. In 1819 he implications of the change; as if our entered the East India Company and even- whole view of the world had to be at least tually became its chief administrator. A temporarily altered, in order to accom- remarkable account of his character and modate a new vision of one of its aspects. opinions is given in the Autobiography of Perhaps indeed there was a certain histor- his eldest son, John Stuart MILL. ical necessity about this; and it is not sur- In his Analysis of the Phenomena of prising that to some historically minded the Human Mind (1829) Mill tries to critics this side of metaphysics has show that all knowledge is reducible to seemed to be the only side. We have seen feelings (sensations, ideas, pleasures, reason to think that this is a mistake. The pains) occurring in certain orders – some most fundamental concepts and cate- successive, some simultaneous – and the gories of human thinking are not those patterns into which they become associ- which undergo drastic changes with ated if they regularly occur together. The advances in the sciences or alterations in doctrine of association did not fulfil social living; and the investigation of this the author’s intention, which was to make central core of thought provides meta- the human mind as plain as the road from physics with a constant subject-matter. Charing Cross to St Paul’s. But it would be a mistake on the opposite Mill’s doctrine led him to think that side to suppose that the central tasks of almost anything could be accomplished metaphysics can be performed once for by education, and that human beings all, and the subject regarded as closed. (who necessarily seek only their own hap- For even though its central subject-matter piness) could be so educated as to find does not significantly change, the idiom, their own happiness in devotion to the the needs, and the emphases of meta- common good. The test of right actions physical elucidation vary from age to age lay in their consequences, and the right and even from one philosopher to was that which promotes general happi- another. Old truths have to be restated in ness, rather than the happiness of the a new idiom; different parts of the picture agent. Moral praise and blame, reward call, from time to time, for more or less and punishment were social devices for emphatic illumination. Metaphysical elu- encouraging actions useful to society and cidation can reach no final and complete discouraging harmful ones. 250 Mill, John Stuart

Mill rejected the idea of ‘natural Mill’s first original writings were on rights’ and made perhaps the first attempt economic questions (written 1830–4, to defend representative institutions on published 1844). At about the same time purely utilitarian lines. People need gov- he began work on the philosophy of logic ernment in order to defend their interests and devoted to it the ‘spare time’ of his from other people; but any government is most fruitful years. A System of Logic, made up of people who will have an inter- Ratiocinative and Inductive was pub- est in plundering and enslaving their sub- lished in 1843 and made Mill famous. jects. A power is therefore needed to act Political Economy appeared only two as a check on the ‘sinister interests’ of years later. In 1851 Harriet Taylor’s hus- government. The only effective way band died, and the two friends married of setting up such a power was through and began work together on a number of representatives, and the only way to essays and on the Autobiography. They ensure an identity of interest between both worked in the shadow of death, and community and representatives was by were attempting to complete a com- frequent . (This is not so much pendium of their views to serve as ‘a sort representative government as representa- of mental pemmican, which thinkers, tive anti-government.) Mill excluded when there are any after us, may nourish women and the young from the electorate themselves with, and then dilute for other on the ground that they had a natural people’. The partnership came to an end identity of interest with their husbands in 1858, when Harriet died in Avignon. and fathers, and confined votes to the (a ‘joint work’) was published middle class as the real leaders of society. the following year. Mill now retired, and He had unbounded confidence in repre- living in Blackheath and Avignon, sentative institutions and complete free- became a well-known public figure, a dom of discussion. (K.B.) champion of women’s rights, of the work- ing classes and of electoral reform. In Mill, John Stuart (1806–73) John 1865 he became M.P. for Westminster and Stuart Mill was born in London and edu- was able to propose votes for women as cated at home by his father James MILL. At an amendment to Disraeli’s Franchise eighteen he entered the East India Bill. He died in Avignon at the age of Company, where his father was also sixty-seven, the outstanding English radi- employed, remaining with the Company cal of his day and a main link between lib- until its extinction in 1858, by which time eral thought in England and the rest of the he had become its chief London adminis- world. trator. At the age of twenty, he suffered a 1 Ethics. At the age of fifteen, Mill ‘mental crisis’ followed by a long period of gave enthusiastic assent to the ethical depression and disillusion, during which he system of Bentham, with its total rejec- found consolation in Wordsworth’s poetry. tion of intuitive modes of reasoning On his recovery he reacted for a time in morals. In his subsequent logical against the opinions of his father, and came inquiries, and reflections on justice and under the influence of COLERIDGE, Carlyle liberty, he attempted to show that the ulti- and John Sterling. In 1831 he met Harriet mate ethical test must be an experimental Taylor and the two formed an attachment and UTILITARIAN one. He also agreed with which gradually came to be tolerated by her Bentham in holding that all our conduct is husband but not by most of their friends. determined, our deliberate acts being Mill, John Stuart 251 motivated by the belief that they will lead of morality for the multitude, and for the to our own greatest good. But decisions philosopher, until he has succeeded in rest upon character and belief as well as finding better’. The importance Mill situation, and Mill held that we can cor- attached to rules of morality marks a rect our beliefs and improve our charac- departure from Bentham: only where ters, provided we want to: this, Mill says, there was a clash of duties (where one and embodies what is really inspiriting and the same action is required by one rule ennobling in the (incorrect) doctrine of and forbidden by another) should one free will. The function of moral discus- choose simply by reference to the proba- sion is to help people decide what sort of ble consequence of the action individually person they would like to be. considered. The fundamental principles of Mill’s Mill recognized that there were many ethics are: (a) that pleasure alone is good good, noble and generous deeds which or desirable in itself; and (b) that actions went beyond the requirements of duty, are right in proportion as they tend to pro- and this left a wide front on which indi- mote the happiness of all concerned, viduals could do or become whatever they where happiness means pleasure and the wish. In On Liberty, he argued that this absence of pain. freedom is endangered by public opinion: (a) Mill was neither the first nor the society had a right to make laws govern- last to hold that there must be some inti- ing such conduct as might damage the mate connexion between goodness and interests of others, but there was ‘no room desire. He claimed that to desire a thing is for entertaining any such question where to think of it as pleasant – to hold that it a person’s conduct affects the interests of brings or would bring pleasure. But Mill no person besides himself, or need not was not prepared to treat all objects of affect them unless they like’. But when desire alike: some desires were primitive, Mill argues, for example, that censorship others the result of experience, training, could not be expedient in any civilized or self-discipline. He also postulated dif- society, utilitarian language hardly suf- ferent kinds of pleasure, suggesting that fices to state his case, that ‘it is the privi- we ought always to prefer the ‘higher’ lege and proper condition of a human pleasures, including the social and gener- being, arrived at the maturity of his facul- ous pleasures and those of the cultivated ties, to use and interpret experience in his feelings and intellect. own way.’ (b) For Mill, the rightness of actions Mill also worked to bring about a gov- depends on their tendency to promote ernment based on the working classes and happiness – not that of the agent, but that committed to socialism; but he believed of all affected. In effect he argues that we the workers should first be educated, and ought to choose the action which (at the he insisted on constitutional safeguards of time of decision) looks most likely to pro- the rights of minorities. The State was to duce most happiness, since in practice we pay for education but not provide it, and can never be completely sure. But we can- social ownership, for him, did not imply not usually stop to calculate the results of ownership by an omni-competent State. our actions, and Mill accepts that we 2 Politics. In Book VI of the Logic, should for the most part let ourselves be Mill distinguishes two types of sociologi- guided by traditional general rules: ‘the cal inquiry, one special, the other general. beliefs that have come down are the rules The first handles particular hypothetical 252 Mill, John Stuart issues, such as ‘what would be the effect premise; (e) that the assertion of a universal of repealing the corn laws in the present proposition on the basis of particular evi- state of society in England?’ We suppose dence is a genuine inference; (f) that the that ‘the state of society’ remains con- principles of mathematics are inductive stant, and make use of the deductive and rest upon observation; (g) that in method to arrive at an answer which will some cases we can properly claim to hold good in the present state of society. know universal propositions based on The second notes that societies pass induction. through different general states, and Mill’s account of mathematical knowl- makes the assumption that the causes of edge has satisfied nobody. He never prop- any such state lie in its immediate prede- erly distinguished between pure and cessor. Mill believed (with COMTE) that applied mathematics, and confused errors economic, social, and cultural conditions of counting and measurement with those mutually affect each other, the state of of calculation. But his logical doctrines knowledge being the most important fac- have proved fruitful. His approach rests tor. History, when judiciously examined, on the notion that not all words are simply will yield empirical laws of society, stat- names for things. He recognized several ing for example that an age of Faith will types of names. There were ‘singular lead to an age of Reason, and an age of names’ like ‘John’ and ‘Mary’ and – a Reason to a scientific or ‘positive’ age. many-worded name – ‘the King who suc- This general science of society tries to ceeded William I’. There were also ‘gen- explain a given type of transition by ref- eral names’ (e.g. predicates like ‘man’, erence to the laws of certain special sci- ‘old’, ‘white’), which were ‘capable of ences (geology, botany, economics, being truly affirmed, in the same sense, of psychology, genetics), in accordance with an indefinite number of things’. But there Comte’s ‘inverse deductive method’. were also ‘proper names’, which merely (Mill’s notion of a ‘law’ of the successive ‘denote’ things or places, unlike descrip- total states of society was vehemently tive names which say something which rejected by POPPER.) may be true or false. ‘The King who suc- 3 Logic. In logic as in politics, Mill ceeded William I’ denotes Rufus for any- fought a battle on two fronts: against a one who understands what the phrase priori and intuitive philosophy, and means, and sees its truth. Mill calls this against simple empiricism. He described kind of meaning ‘connotation’ as opposed his logic as ‘a logic of experience’ but to ‘’. The word ‘man’ connotes went on to show that science must be sys- certain properties, and as Mill says ‘it tematic, analytic and (at some points) denotes whatever individuals have those deductive. In the Logic, he attempted to properties’. But Mill was mistaken: gen- show: (a) that ‘necessary propositions’ eral terms are not names. A definite are merely verbal; (b) that traditional description may denote an individual immediate inferences are ‘merely appar- (Rufus) but a predicate term does not: if I ent’ and not real inferences; (c) that the state that John is not a great scientist, for SYLLOGISM, considered as an argument example, I am not referring to any great from premises to conclusions, is also scientist. But Mill at least recognizes that ‘merely apparent’ inference; (d) that the general terms have a dimension of mean- syllogism is important on account of ing which does not involve naming, and the assertion of the major or universal he also realized that words like ‘and’, Mill, John Stuart 253

‘of’, ‘in’, and ‘truly’, have ‘no title what- of uniformities – uniformities of co-exis- soever to be considered as names’. tence, such as the ‘togetherness’ of the Naming, then, is not the only kind of properties of natural kinds, and of spatial meaning – a truth not fully assimilated by and numerical properties, and uniformi- philosophers for several generations. ties of sequence, which may be loosely A proposition which does no more characterized as causal. than assert part of what its subject-term By ‘cause’ Mill means a factor which, connotes is, according to Mill, tautologi- added to the ordinary course of events, is cal or ‘merely verbal’. Moreover the sufficient to produce a given effect. We immediate inferences of traditional logic know (according to Mill) a most important are also tautological, depending for their truth about causes: that every event has truth on the meaning of the logical words one. We know it by simple observation, but employed. (Thus the validity of ‘if all men having learned it we can use it to discover are mortal then some men are mortal’ and prove particular causal laws. For the depends on the meaning of ‘all’, ‘some’, cause of any effect must lie in its immedi- and ‘if...then...’.) As for syllogisms, it is ately antecedent events and circumstances. notorious that their conclusions must be Hence if we find that X is preceded by the ‘contained in’ their premises if they are to circumstances A, B, C etc., we know that be valid. All the same I can know that all one or other of these, or some combination men are mortal without knowing that the of them, must have caused X. But that is Duke of Wellington is so: I might never insufficient: we need, first, to eliminate have heard of him. Mill sees that the ‘nov- those circumstances that do not always elty’ of the conclusion of a syllogism precede X, and second, we need to seek out arises from the fact that we can know a cases where other factors are present universal proposition without knowing all amongst the antecedents of X. Mill pro- its particular instances: when we discover poses four ‘Methods of Induction’ – a new instance we make a new application Agreement, Difference, Agreement and of the proposition. But Mill was also con- Difference, and Concomitant Variation – cerned with the question of how we can for this purpose, but he claimed too much have knowledge of factual universal when he described them as ‘a scientific propositions, which, he insisted, was by test’. In the first place, the initial identifi- inference from a set of instances – by cation of likely factors must depend on a induction. knowledge of the field gained without the 4 Induction. In Book III of the Logic help of these Methods; and second, this Mill argues that induction depends on the ‘knowledge’ is itself subject to revision. ‘assumption’ that the course of nature is (A factor initially considered irrelevant uniform – that what has happened once in might turn out to be vital.) Methods of certain circumstances, will happen again elimination cannot lead to a decisive ver- if the circumstances recur – and that we dict in favour of the candidates that remain, know from experience that ‘the assump- unless the set of possible candidates is tion is warranted’. Simple inductions pro- decisively circumscribed, which it can ceed by enumerating similar instances: thus never be in such inquiries. And repeated ‘the swans we have seen are all white – experiment, while it increases probabili- therefore all swans are white’. And it is by ties, falls short of being a decisive test. the same method that we learn that nature The Methods of Induction are sup- is uniform. Mill distinguishes two kinds posed to apply across the most basic level 254 Mind of experimental inquiry; at higher levels, defends the theoretical possibility of a Mill argues in Book VI of the Logic, dif- mind existing without a body, hence the ferent observational sciences employ possibility of immortality. He also finds strategies of their own. Mill distinguishes that the argument from design carries four of these Methods: the Geometrical, some weight: it suggests that there is a which applies where different laws do not God who desires the good of his crea- modify each other’s action; the Chemical, tures, though he evidently has many other where direct experiment is needed in order tasks in hand. At this point Mill switches to separate causes which are combined in from the question of belief to that of hope. a way that has defied analysis; the We do not need to believe in order to con- Physical, which is used when the laws of template the notion of divine perfection, different causal factors are already fairly meditate upon the gospels, and hope for well known; and finally the Historical, immortality; and such agnostic hope has which is required where phenomena are practical value. (K.B.) complicated and beyond the scope of experiment, as in the social sciences. Mind The expression ‘PHILOSOPHY OF Mill referred to his own position as ‘the MIND’ designates a certain group of prob- experience philosophy’, and his approach lems commonly recognized by English- is near to Hume’s in that he tries to account speaking philosophers, but the expression for bodies in terms of our perceptions of is hard to translate into other languages. them. He distinguishes clearly between the This is only partly due to the impossibil- uniform causal order which governs bod- ity of finding exact equivalents for the ies and the order which connects different English word ‘mind’. It is also a reflec- ideas or impressions in our minds and tion of the fact that the classification in leads us to conclude that they all apply to which this label figures is itself based on the same individual thing. The first kind of certain profound philosophical assump- order is a uniformity, the second not: uni- tions, often unexpressed. formities hold between bodies rather than The crucial assumption can perhaps be sensations. Mill attempts an analysis of tersely described as the view that a whole this order and goes on to define a body as host of rather different things belong a ‘permanent possibility of sensation’, together, and can usefully be treated as meaning that to talk of a table is to talk of members of one class. The items which an order of this type in actual or possible are gathered together under ‘mind’, or sensations. Mill makes no attempt to found under the associated adjective ‘mental’, this possibility upon an actual external include such disparate things as tickles substance, or upon God, but he recognizes and pains, feelings of nausea and discom- that there are ‘other successions of feeling fort, emotional experiences like love or besides those of which I am conscious’. anger, perceptions of the world around us, But when it comes to describing the order and thoughts of the most abstract and of experiences which constitutes an indi- exalted character. The idea of treating all vidual mind, Mill comes upon ‘a final these together is perhaps first clearly pro- inexplicability’ – the fact that a mind pounded by DESCARTES, and contrasts which is a series of feelings should be strikingly with the preceding dominant aware of itself as past and future. view, descended from ARISTOTLE, which Mill appeared to many to be atheistic, offered a highly differentiated picture of but in his essays on natural theology he our experiences and capacities and located Mind 255 sensations and thoughts, for example, in the philosophy of mind is the ‘mind-body distinct parts or faculties. problem’ itself. This is the term for a con- What all the items on the long, diverse geries of difficulties which beset any list of the ‘mental’ have in common, for attempt to make ‘mind’ and ‘body’ into a Descartes, is that they are all essentially coherent whole once they have been dis- present to first-person experience. That is, tinguished by the inner/outer sorting. there cannot be any such a thing as a Descartes’ own approach was a metaphys- thought, a perception, or a tickle, without ical DUALISM: mind and body are seen as a thinker who can experience it as his or different substances, causally related in her own; whereas this is manifestly not virtue of being brought together in a sub- true of a rock or a tree or a house. stantial union by God. But this solution Descartes’ crucial move was to deem all has very little support any more. Some such things as consisting exclusively in neurophysiologists espoused it (notably what they present to experience, and Sir John Eccles, 1903–97); but generally it hence to see them as distinct from ‘outer’ has seemed incredible for a number of rea- realities, even though causally related to sons. One is the difficulty of conceiving them. This way of sorting things into causal relations between mind and body ‘inner’ and ‘outer’ is what gives rise to the once separated in this way. This is what philosophical category of the ‘mental’, led MALEBRANCHE and BERKELEY to even and what licences the grouping together more extravagant views, respectively of all sorts of problems under the heading OCCASIONALISM and a denial of matter ‘philosophy of mind’. altogether. But beyond that, dualism has Descartes’ inner/outer sorting was seemed to many incompatible with the motivated by a number of things, of obvious dependence of mental function on which two are perhaps crucial: the essen- the physical substrate. And in addition, tial place in his method of a kind of self- one important stream of European philos- scrutiny which circumscribes inner ophy has rebelled against Descartes’ experience the better to focus on it; and downgrading, as irremediably obscure and his uncompromisingly mechanistic notion confused, of our experience of ourselves of body, which forces one to the comple- as embodied and social agents. HEIDEGGER mentary category of the mental as what is and MERLEAU-PONTY are among the most excluded from the physical and cannot be influential philosophers in the twentieth perceived in outer reality. The continuing century to have articulated this reaction. force of both these leading ideas in mod- The obvious recourse for those who ern philosophy, particularly in the Anglo- hold to mechanism is a kind of material- Saxon world, is what ensures the ist MONISM which treats mind as just a continued currency of the term ‘philoso- reflection of underlying material process. phy of mind’. By the same token, Thoughts reflect the firing of neurones the dominance in French and German in the brain, emotions our endocrinologi- philosophy of views which are highly cal state, and so on. A number of theories critical both of these notions of method of this kind have been propounded, some and of mechanistic reduction helps of them taking computer technology as explain the relative untranslatability of a source of models, and proposing the expression. to see mental functions as the inner It is also understandable in the light of reflection of highly complex programmes this background that the major problem of of computation. 256 Mind

But monism has its own problems. The actual situation in English- Quite apart from possible objections to speaking philosophy is a mixed one. The reductive mechanistic explanations of our traditional Cartesian sorting is still suffi- thought, action, language and social life, ciently acknowledged, so that the classi- there is the difficulty of placing inner fication ‘philosophy of mind’ is a ‘reflections’ themselves in a monistic recognized one, and lots of people still world-view. The analogous situation is worry over ‘the mind-body problem’. At well-understood, where a solar system in the same time, Cartesian assumptions are which the earth ‘really’ spins on its axis often challenged in some of the particu- and orbits the sun ‘looks’ to us as though lar fields which are included in the broad the sun were circling an immobile earth. category. These include the philosophy of The appearances here are external to the action, analyses of feeling and emotion, phenomena explained (the solar system) issues about the FREEDOM OF THE WILL, and can be disregarded when explaining and questions about the self and PERSONAL them. But when we come to consider IDENTITY. The philosophy of mind also ‘inner’ experience as the reflection of neu- overlaps with EPISTOMOLOGY, because ral process, it cannot be so easily sidelined. any theory of knowledge must make In this case, it is part of our brief to account some assumptions about philosophical for there being such a thing as an inner psychology in the very choice of its key reflection at all. Why is it that ordinary terms. Thus the classical Cartesian and computers made of transistors don’t have empiricist epistemologies relied on the such an inner life and we do? Or perhaps notion of an ‘idea’, impression’, or they do after all? Or at least their more ‘SENSE-DATUM’, as the immediate object sophisticated descendants will? The dis- of consciousness. cussion goes off into bizarre science fan- Cartesian, dualist assumptions have tasy at this point – a sign of deep malaise. been strongly challenged in the field of phi- The difficulty is that here the ‘appear- losophy of action, partly under the influ- ances’ themselves are part of what needs ence of the later WITTGENSTEIN. Most to be explained, and it is hard to conceive philosophers now reject a construal of how they can be accommodated in a action as an external movement caused by monistic materialist world. Either they are an inner act of will, and search for an left unexplained; or various heroic account which does not artificially separate attempts are made to subsume them under mind and body. Some attempts in this field physical reality, though they always fall also draw on European developments, like short of explaining why the problem the notion of INTENTIONALITY, as defined in should have arisen in the first place. the work of BRENTANO and HUSSERL. At the It would appear that there is a better same time, the philosophical psychology of hope of making coherent sense of our- classical epistemology is widely considered selves if we start from a perspective which outdated if not absurd. Very few thinkers (as Merleau-Ponty does) makes embodied defend sense-data, and many have become agency central. But that entails abandon- sensitive to the role of language, which in ing the inner/outer sorting altogether, and turn has led them to recast the problem hence the portmanteau categories of entirely. Since language is a social institu- ‘mind’ and ‘mental’. These approaches tion, the question arises whether we can take us outside the classification in which offer a coherent view of the origin ‘philosophy of mind’ figures as a term. and bases of knowledge confined to the Modernism 257 individual mind, as classical epistemology defined probability as the limiting value of tries to do. the frequency of an event within a collec- But alongside this, other questions, tive, where a collective is an indefinitely such as the issues about freedom and deter- large class whose members occur in ran- minism, continue to be treated very much dom order. Thus to say that the probability on the old assumptions. The conception of of heads is one half is to say that the limit- determinism, in relation to which freedom ing value of the fraction given by dividing and responsibility seem to be problemati- the number of heads by the number of cal, is itself largely inspired by a mechanis- tosses is one half. Von Mises was able to tic view of the human subject. And the show that the axioms of mathematical most widely-discussed issue in this field is probability followed tautologically from that about ‘’, that is, whether this definition, which has however been there is, after all, any conflict between a attacked, especially for its use of the notion deterministic account of human action and of limiting frequency outside pure mathe- the kind of freedom that seems to be insep- matics; others have objected that it gives no arable from moral responsibility. The thesis account of probability statements which are that there is no such conflict goes back to not of the form ‘The probability of event e HOBBES and HUME at the period of origin of within the collective K is P’. (J.O.U.) the inner/outer sorting. The self and per- sonal identity are also often discussed in Modernism According to a widely traditional terms, as though the main issue accepted but not unquestionable theory, were that of the unity of an object through the last few years of the nineteenth century time. The idea that the self may have witnessed an international upheaval in the another kind of unity has barely begun to arts which was to continue for at least 30 impinge on this debate. years. It was called modernism and it over- The whole field of the philosophy of threw ‘traditional’ forms which, it is mind offers a strange and contradictory argued, had unthinkingly presupposed an prospect, in that it is held together by cer- incontrovertible ‘real world’ which art was tain fundamental ideas which are never- expected to ‘express’ or ‘represent’. Thus theless frequently challenged in the modernist writers replaced narrative and discussion of some of the particular dialogue with ‘stream of consciousness’, issues which fall within it. [C.T.] modernist composers moved to ‘atonal- ism’, and modernist painters discovered Miracles Miracles can be defined as ‘abstraction’; in general the medium, or exceptions to the laws of nature; if they ‘language’, was treated as an object in its occur, they must either be uncaused, or own tight, rather than a stand-in for an have causes beyond the natural world; see ulterior reality. PHENOMENOLOGY and LOGI- THEISM. CAL POSITIVISM, RELATIVITY and QUANTUM Mises, Richard von (1883–1953) MECHANICS are sometimes seen as further Richard von Mises was a leading associate manifestations of modernism. In original of the LOGICAL POSITIVISTS of the VIENNA intention, modernism appears as a rejec- CIRCLE until he sought refuge from Nazism tion of the domineering epistemological in the United States. He wrote a general optimism of MODERNITY; but in a wider account of positivism in 1939, but is best perspective it can be seen as a continuation known as a theorist of probability. In of it by sophisticatedly self-conscious Probability, Statistics and Truth (1928), he means: see POSTMODERNISM. [J.R.] 258 Modernity

Modernity The idea of modernity – The old ambitions of modernity were which is common to sociology, economics occasionally reactivated in twentieth- and historiography, both in their profes- century philosophy, notably by LOGICAL sional and in their popular or ‘folk’ forms POSITIVISM and DIALECTICAL MATERIALISM; – is an attempt to grasp the peculiarity of but the barrage of criticism has been main- the present by contrasting it with a pre- tained by philosophers like HORKHEIMER ceding age. Various criteria of modernity and ADORNO (see their Dialectic of have been proposed: science, commerce, Enlightenment, 1944), MARCUSE, HABER- capitalism, police, print, surveillance, MAS and MACINTYRE. The philosophers of cheap travel, atheism, bureaucratic ration- POSTMODERNISM, however, have attempted ality, urbanism, consumerism, or democ- to trump these criticisms of modernity by racy, and above all, ALIENATION. But the accusing them of a secret complicity with underlying contrast is always epistemo- what they criticize, in that they cling to logical: the modern world is enlightened, the ‘enlightenment’ idea of a final truth scientific and disappointed, whereas its toward which, in spite of everything, we predecessor was superstitious, gullible may at least hope to draw nearer. See also and magical. Hence philosophical debates HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY. [J.R.] about the scope and limits of reason or Monads Monads are the ulitimate science touch the crux of the concept of spiritual constituents of the world accord- modernity. ing to LEIBNIZ. Within philosophy, ‘modernity’ has been used to designate various moments of Monism Monism is the doctrine that abundant epistemological optimism. In the there is only one substance, or one ‘world’, fourteenth century, NOMINALISM was the or that reality is in some sense one, that is, via moderna in contrast with the discred- unchanging or indivisible or undifferenti- ited via antiqua of realism; in the eigh- ated. For instance, the alternative claims teenth, DESCARTES was hailed as the ‘father that ‘everything is mental’ or ‘everything is of modern philosophy’ thanks to his confi- material’ are crudely expressed forms of dence in mathematics and natural science. monism, each opposed to the common ROUSSEAU initiated a reaction in which sense DUALISM of mind and matter. The reason was seen as an ailment rather than term was invented by Christian WOLFF, who an adornment of humanity; and HEGEL con- used it only of these two theories, which solidated this argument by invoking a supe- have the best right to the labels ‘IDEALISM’ rior form of knowledge – dialectical or and ‘MATERIALISM’ respectively. It later speculative reason which was supposed to came to be used also of the theory of transcend the rationalistic one-sidedness of absolute identity held by SCHELLING and the eighteenth century ‘enlightenment’. HEGEL, namely, that mind and matter are Thus it became a commonplace to blame not reducible one to the other, but both to ‘the Enlightenment’ for the calamities of one common substance of which they are modernity, and particularly for the excesses phenomenal modifications. (Compare the of the French Revolution, The same theme later ‘neutral monism’ of William JAMES was carried forward by MARX’s theory of and, at one time, RUSSELL.) Subsequently IDEOLOGY; and in NIETZSCHE (followed by the term was applied to any theory attempt- HEIDEGGER and DERRIDA) it was inflated ing to explain phenomena by some single into a blanket condemnation of the whole principle; it was opposed not merely to of Western philosophy since SOCRATES. dualism but also to pluralism, for example Moore, G. E. 259 to Russell’s Logical Atomism, which he Montesquieu, Charles-Louis de also called ‘absolute pluralism’. As a result Secondat (1689–1755) French politi- of these extended uses, the term is system- cian and author who made a name for atically ambiguous. (a) Substantial monism himself with Persian Letters (1721), is the view that the apparent plurality of purportedly a translation of a correspon- substances is due to different states or dence in which some Persian visitors to appearances of a single substance – ‘God- France express their astonishment at the or-Nature’ to SPINOZA, for example, or ‘the weird and exotic habits of the French. Absolute’ to BRADLEY. (b) Attributive His Spirit of Laws (1748), with its sys- monism, on the other hand, is the view that tematic investigation of monarchy, des- whatever the number of substances, they potism and republicanism, is credited with are of a single ultimate kind, that is, there is launching modern political theory. See only one realm of being. One could also also ENCYCLOPEDISTS. distinguish from these absolute views (c) partial monism, which states that within Moore, George Edward (1873–1958) any given realm of being (however many The English philosopher and Cambridge there may be) there is only one substance. professor G. E. Moore had an immense These varieties of monism need not all personal influence on British philosophers stand or fall together; and have, for reasons of his time. The three main topics dealt requiring lengthy argument, been held with in Moore’s writings are philosophical selectively: for example, Spinoza held (a) method, ethics and perception. and hence trivially (c), but rejected (b) in 1 Method. Moore wrote little about favour of an infinity of ultimate kinds, his method because he preferred to prac- whereas DESCARTES rejected (a) and (b), but tise it, but it appears clearly in an early accepted (c) within the material realm, and article on ‘Necessity’ (1900), in the pro- LEIBNIZ rejected (a) and (c), but accepted grammatic ‘A Defence of Common (b), all monads being souls; thus each of Sense’ (1925) and in the autobiographical these thinkers accepted monism in at least remarks in The Philosophy of G.E. Moore one sense but not in all. But in each of its (1942). As regards the things we say in forms it is the supreme expression of a will ordinary life, he was concerned neither to metaphysical tidiness. See also MIND, with their meaning nor their truth (he PHILOSOPHY OF MIND. (R.HALL.) thought they had well-known meanings, Montaigne, Michel de (1533–92) and were on the whole certainly true), French author, remembered by historians but with what he called an ANALYSIS of of philosophy for reviving the ancient their meaning. As regards philosophical SCEPTICISM of , but views – which were often analyses whose equally important for inventing a new form results denied the commonly acce- of philosophical writing. The inconclusive pted meaning and truth of what they but humorous literary experiments that analysed – he was anxious to discover proliferate through the three editions of his what they could mean and whether they Essais (1580, 1588, 1595) seek to make a were true. virtue of systematic inconstancy, even In these analytic investigations Moore inconsistency: ‘The uncertainty of my makes two independent appeals (often judgement is so evenly balanced’, he wrote, confused by critics): one to the truth ‘that I would happily submit to the decision of what we hold in common sense, the of chance and of the dice’. {J.R.} other to the propriety of what we say in 260 Moore, G. E. ordinary language. His attitude to common an expression synonymous with the sense, like that of Thomas REID, is that expression used to express it. while many of its beliefs are not provable, 2 Ethics. Taking ‘what is good?’ as there are far better reasons for accepting the central question of ethics, Moore dis- them than for accepting any philosophical tinguished the analysis of the notion of doctrines which contradict them. Unlike good from the inquiry into what things any philosophical belief, we cannot help are good or what kinds of things are good. holding them, and various kinds of incon- In (1903), he attempted sistency issue from our attempts to deny a brief answer to the question ‘What kinds them. Since the expressions whose mean- of things are good?’, claiming that there ing Moore analyses – like ‘good’, ‘know’, was an ‘immense variety’ of such kinds of ‘see’, or ‘real’ – are in common everyday things, including ‘the pleasures of human use, he felt he could assume that we under- intercourse and the enjoyment of beauti- stand them very well, and that it was legit- ful objects’. But most of his work here imate to use ordinary language to interpret and elsewhere was devoted to analysing the strange things that philosophers say, the notion of good. In accordance with and to accuse any philosopher who goes his method of inspection, he advises the against it of ‘an abuse of language’. analyst of good to ‘attentively consider In common with many philosophers what is actually before his mind’ in the since PLATO, Moore holds that the mean- hope that ‘if he will try this experiment ing of an expression is a kind of entity – with each suggested definition (i.e. analy- often called a concept, notion or proposi- sis) in succession, he may become expert tion – which the expression stands for, enough to recognize that in every case he and which is called up before the mind of has before his mind a unique object’. And anyone who understands it. Analysis of a in conformity with his method of divi- concept involves inspecting it and trying sion, he assumes that a definition ‘states to describe it; in particular it involves what are the parts which invariably com- either saying how it can be divided into a pose a certain whole’, concluding that ‘in set of constituent concepts and how these this sense the notion “good” has no defi- constituents are interrelated or saying nition because it is simple and has no how it is to be distinguished, by way of parts’. The simple concept for which the similarity and difference, from other con- expression ‘good’ stood was, he thought, cepts which are brought before the mind a ‘non-natural’ quality, and he called any by the given expression and by other attempt to identify it with another concept related expressions. The division method, the ‘naturalistic fallacy’. When, however, with its dependence on the concept theory he used the ‘distinction’ method of analy- of meaning, has a very sis, he counted it as an analysis of good if and predominates in the work of RUSSELL he could ‘distinguish this from other’ con- and the early WITTGENSTEIN, while the dis- cepts. In his later writings he held that the tinction method, in a form uncommitted word ‘good’ is not after all the ‘name of a to the concept theory, is favoured by characteristic’but that it may be used to Wittgenstein’s later work and that of his express an approval. Like the UTILITARI- followers. Moore often thought, in addi- ANS, Moore made the notion of right tion, that in order to give an analysis of a dependent on the notion of good, arguing concept one must find a concept or set of that it stands only for the causes of things concepts identical with it and, therefore, which are good in themselves. Morris, Charles 261

3 Perception. In discussing the notion greatest teacher since Jesus; he also of perception, Moore assumes that there appealed to PLATO in support of Christian is no doubt about the meaning of such spirituality, and is regarded as a leading expressions as ‘I see a book’ and ‘this, figure amongst the CAMBRIDGE PLATONISTS. which I see, is a book’, and usually no doubt about the truth of what they say. He More, Thomas (1477–1535) English then argues that whenever we see an politician, humanist, martyr, and saint, and opaque material object, such as a book, author – under the inspiration of PLATO’s we ipso facto see, in a second sense, a Republic – of Utopia (1516). particular part of it, such as the surface Morris, Charles (1901–79) American turned towards us, and also see, in a third philosopher whose main contributions sense, what he calls a SENSE-DATUM, such were to the philosophy of language. He as a particular patch of colour. His task sought to fuse the behaviouristic pragma- then is to distinguish and relate the three tism of his teacher, George H. Mead, with concepts expressed by the one word ‘see’ the logical empiricism of the VIENNA and the three concepts expressed by their CIRCLE, and to develop systematically the respective grammatical objects, namely fertile but sketchily worked out ideas of C. ‘material object’, ‘part of the surface of a S. PEIRCE on signs. However, Morris went material object’ and ‘sense-datum’. To the far beyond Peirce in taking into account question how these various concepts are non-linguistic as well as linguistic signs related to each other, he provided many (see Foundations of the Theory of Signs, answers, none of which satisfied him or 1938). His division of (or the other philosophers. This failure is, it general theory of signs) into three major seems, mainly due to two assumptions – branches, has been widely adopted. The that ‘sense-datum’ is the name of a pecu- first is syntactics, which studies the rela- liar kind of entity, present in every per- tions signs have to one another in virtue of ceptual experience, and that when I say their purely formal or structural properties. ‘this, which I see, is a book’, I must be The second is semantics, which analyses trying to identify the sense-datum with the relations of signs to what they desig- something. (A.R.W.) nate. The third, of which he may be More, Henry (1614–87) Henry More regarded as the founder, is pragmatics, was an early British enthusiast for which examines ‘the relations of signs to DESCARTES, whom he regarded as the their interpreters’. (E.N.) N

Nagel, Ernest (1901–85) Ernest Nagel super-natural; such a philosopher will nor- was born in Czechoslovakia and emi- mally hold that any reference to a deity, or grated to the United States in 1911. He is to a realm of values, or to mind as some- best known for his work on probability thing more than a natural phenomenon is and the philosophy of science (The illegitimate. With such nineteenth century Structure of Science, 1961, is acknowl- thinkers as T. H. HUXLEY, naturalism con- edged to be a classic in this field). In noted especially a belief that life and METAPHYSICS Nagel counts himself as a thought could be completely explained, in NATURALIST, holding that the world must principle, as arising by evolution from be understood in terms of efficient causa- matter. In ETHICS naturalism is the view tion and as involving no ultimate ingredi- that statements about the rightness, ents beyond matter. He is also the author wrongness, goodness and badness of of articles on Carnap, Cohen, Goodman, things are statements about the natural Lewis, Morris and Popper in this world and not about special values beyond Encyclopedia. (J.O.U.) the ken of science; thus a naturalist might maintain that to say that something is Nagel, Thomas (1937– ) American good is to say that it is likely to satisfy philosopher with anti-positivist views and desire, which is a scientifically testable a special interest in subjectivity. His writ- statement. But in Principia Ethica ings include The View from Nowhere G. E. MOORE widened the notion of natu- (1986) and ‘What is it like to be a bat?’ ralism for his special purposes so that (1974); see PHILOSOPHY OF MIND. everyone was guilty of the ‘naturalistic Natural Law Natural law comprises a fallacy’ who attempted to define ethical set of supposedly universal principles of concepts in terms of concepts which were justice that are more or less implicitly rec- not specifically ethical; thus even those ognized in all societies. It is usually taken who defined ‘good’ as meaning ‘willed by to be rooted in divine wisdom, and open to God’, a view clearly utterly opposed to nat- discovery by reasoning about human uralism as ordinarily understood, were said by Moore to have committed the naturalis- nature. See also AQUINAS, GROTIUS, HOBBES, tic fallacy. Unfortunately this usage of POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY, JURISPRUDENCE. Moore’s has become so widely known that Naturalism Like most of the words the term ‘naturalism’ may have lost what- ending in ‘ism’ that are used to name a ever utility it ever had. On the other hand, type of philosophical position, ‘natural- see also ANALYTIC PHILOSOPHY. (J.O.U.) ism’ has only a vague and imprecise Negative Theology See NEOPLATONISM. sense. More widely, a naturalist considers that the totality of things which we call Neoplatonism ‘Neoplatonism’ is a ‘nature’ and which are studied in the nat- modern term designating the last creative ural sciences is the totality of all things effort of pagan antiquity (c.250–550 AD) whatever, and denies the need of any to produce a comprehensive philosophical explanations of the natural in terms of the system which could satisfy all our spiritual Neoplatonism 263 aspirations. Its exponents, who – rightly sheer nothingness, and ‘evil’ – the ‘why’ or wrongly – regarded themselves simply of nothingness. The successive steps or as Platonists, sought to present an inclu- ‘hypostases’ of effulgence follow each sive, logically coherent image of the uni- other with some kind of necessity, and it verse and our place in it, and to explain follows that everything in the universe is how we can achieve salvation through just as it ought to be. But Neoplatonism is being restored to our original condition. keenly aware of the imperfection which Neoplatonism synthesized Platonism stems from the human soul’s remoteness with other schools of philosophical from the deity, an imperfection which thought (particularly those of ARISTOTLE, engenders a longing to undo ‘progress’ the STOICS, and the PYTHAGOREANS; only (which may also be interpreted as some EPICUREANISM was excluded). But it also kind of flaw or fall) and ‘revert’ to an assimilated many myths, rites, and cults of . Humanity shares this Greek and of Oriental polytheism, includ- longing with other beings, the path to its ing alchemy and magic (often based on satisfaction being taught in ETHICS. Thus, affinities between planets and metals etc.) whereas Neoplatonism is MONISTIC in the- and found a place for the traditional ory, its practical implications are dualistic. and semi-deities of popular religions. The concept of a deity inaccessible to Neoplatonism teaches belief in a deity reflective thought demands as its correlate (or supreme principle) as the source from a kind of knowledge that transcends which all things flow without ever rational thinking. To achieve this higher becoming separated from it, so that it is knowledge we must suppress determinate- also immanent in everything. This ‘flow’ ness and recall ourselves from our ‘disper- is not a temporal process, but a perma- sion’. Having finally become one, we are nent, involuntary effulgence or emanation able in rare moments to face the One, either whose source remains forever uncon- in rapt contemplation or in unity with it. sumed and undiminished. It is, so to speak, This condition of ecstasy is the main pur- a timeless history, above being, and no pose of moral life. As we progress, our predicates can really be applied to it. The steadfastness, self-control, fairness and best we can do is call it ‘One’, to express prudence will appear successively as civic, the fact that it is undifferentiated and purificatory and exemplary virtues. In the therefore without quality. If we think of it moment of ecstasy all our intellectual and as the source of all being, we can also moral aspirations will be satisfied. refer to it as ‘goodness’ in the sense that it One of the most striking aspects of is the ultimate ‘why’ of everything. Neoplatonism is its derivation of all sensi- The timeless process of effulgence is ble reality from a supra-sensible one, which best described as a gradual ‘dispersion’ of represents a type of causation radically the original unity. The process begins with different from causality in space and time. supra-sensible reality (first: mind, or The Neoplatonist would think of modern thought thinking itself, or spirit; next: scientific explanations as shallow; the the soul); then comes sensible reality (in scientist, on the other hand, is likely to time and space); and at the end there is consider Neoplatonism utterly fantastic. annihilation (rather as light, receding It is customary to see PLOTINUS as from its source, gradually fades into dark- the founder of Neoplatonism (though ness). Neoplatonism sees this annihila- Platonism from the time of CICERO on – tion as the effect of matter, which is both so-called – can be seen 264 Neoplatonism as the soil from which it developed). It is two Minds) and later Neoplatonists carried also customary to consider the year 529, such subdivisions still further. It is possi- in which the Emperor Justinian ordered ble that he was the institutor of the neo- the closure of Plato’s ACADEMY in platonic mysteries, a blend of Greek and Athens, as marking the end of pagan phi- Oriental mystery religions. losophy in general and Neoplatonism in The school of Pergamum, founded by particular. ’ disciple Aidesios, was particu- Two outstanding representatives of the larly interested in the practice of magic. Its early phase of the school of Plotinus are best-known representative is the Emperor Porphyry (234–c.305) and Iamblichus Julian the Apostate (born 332) who, in his (died c.330). The former edited Plotinus, attempts to stem the growth of Christianity, and showed great acumen and erudition used Neoplatonism to provide polytheism in Against the Christians, whose argu- with allegorico-philosophical interpreta- ments over chronology and the authorship tions, thus making it attractive to the edu- of parts of the Scriptures have not been cated, while permitting the rest to practise superseded. His On the Cave of the it according to tradition. Nymphs is a good example of the allego- The main representatives of the later rizing interpretation of poetry (in this case phase of the school of Plotinus were ) practised by many Neoplatonists. Proclus (410–85) and . The His aphoristic Starting Points make an former, sometimes called Neoplatonism’s excellent introduction to the main doc- schoolman, gave a particularly compre- trines, and his consolatory Letter to hensive and systematic presentation of Marcella, his wife, is very readable. His Neoplatonism in two works, Elements of Introduction to Aristotle’s Categories, a Theology and The Theology of Plato. In commentary on five fundamental concepts his writings some tensions inherent in (genus, species, difference, property and Neoplatonism come to light. Though he accident) was particularly influential. A derives everything from the One, he also passage in which he posed (but did not acknowledges two principles (ultimately answer) the question whether UNIVERSALS Pythagorean and Platonic), namely, the have an existence independent of both Limit and the Unlimited, both of which minds and particular things gave impetus he considered to be some way present to the medieval controversy between in the One. In addition, he assumes the NOMINALISM, REALISM and CONCEPTUALISM. existence of a plurality of Ones, identify- Porphyry gave much more stress than ing them with gods. And he explicitly Plotinus to will as the factor responsible derives matter from the One. He attached for the ‘fall’ of the soul. Meanwhile great importance to the ‘triadic’ principle Iamblichus expounded what he consid- according to which everything remains, ered Pythagorean doctrines in a series in one aspect, in that from which it of treatises (Exhortation to Philosophy, emanated, in another is turned away Life of , General Mathematics from it, and in a third turns back to it. His etc.), while his Egyptian Mysteries is a hymns are remarkable documents of neo- philosophico-allegorical interpretation of platonic religiosity. An unknown author Egypt’s rites and religious doctrines. He pretending to be St Paul’s disciple tended to subdivide the entities of the Dionysius the Areopagite (and therefore supra-sensible realm (e.g. he has two Ones, enjoying great authority), compiled a Neo-Thomism 265 series of writings – for example, Divine doctrines in terms of Neoplatonism. See Names and – combin- also AUGUSTINE, CAMBRIDGE PLATONISTS, ing Proclus with Christianity. They are CUDWORTH, ERIGENA. (P.M.) particularly well known as representing ‘negative theology’. As for Damascius, he Neo-Thomism The scholastic philoso- was head of the Academy when it was phy which had its origin in the Middle closed, and presents the consummation Ages gradually faded out in the course of of a latent tendency of Neoplatonism the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries by declaring all rational knowledge to on account of its failure to maintain con- be merely parabolic so that no aspect of tact with the development of the experi- reality is accessible to it. mental sciences and the new approach to The Neoplatonism of the school of the theory of knowledge. Since the later is comparatively simple – in scholastics had failed, it was assumed that some respects closer to Middle Platonism their medieval predecessors were equally than to Plotinus – and a number of its unworthy of attention. But the incapacity members accepted Christianity, whereas of modern philosophy to evolve a realistic remained to the very metaphysic eventually aroused the suspi- last one of the strongholds of polytheism. cion that it might be useful to re-examine (murdered by Christian fanatics) the thinkers of the creative period of and her pupil Bishop Synesius are among medieval philosophy, especially AQUINAS. its representatives. The pioneer of this Thomistic revival Despite the anti-Christian attitude of was an obscure seminary lecturer at many Neoplatonists, Neoplatonism always Piacenza, Vincento Buzetti (1777–1824). had a great attraction for Christian philoso- Among his students were the brothers phers and – after the Arabs discovered and Domenico and Serafino Sordi (1790–1880, assimilated Greek philosophy – for thinkers 1793–1865). Both became Jesuits and within the orbit of Islam and . This tried, at first with little success, to influ- is natural, considering Neoplatonism’s ence members of their order in the direc- sympathy for religion in general, the lofti- tion of Aquinas. In the end, however, they ness of its concept of the divine, its won over a few thinkers of some promi- assumption that the supra-sensible is more nence in Italy, d’Azeglio real than the sensible, and its asceticism. (1793–1862), Matteo Liberatore (1810–92) But it is also paradoxical: Christianity is a and Giovanni Maria Cornoldi (1822–92), strictly historical religion (as are Judaism together with the German Joseph Kleutgen and Islam): the Incarnation is an event in (1811–83). These, along with Gaetano time, and wholly contingent, whereas Sanseverino (1811–65) at Naples and the Neoplatonism, true to its Hellenic heritage, Dominican Tommaso Zigliara (1833–93), is a rational system, presenting the uni- made the movement known. Another sup- verse as a giant SYLLOGISM with one event porter was Giusepppe Pecci (1807–90), following from another in a timeless whose brother Giocchino became Pope manner. In spite of this fundamental Leo XIII and lent official support to the difference, Christian thinkers – perhaps revival of Thomism. unwilling to accept the contingent, What was required to make the revival historical character of Christianity – have effective was both an intensive study time and again tried to express Christian of medieval thought and a practical 266 Neurath, Otto demonstration that it was relevant to facts of experience. ‘There is no way of contemporary philosophical problems. making pure perceptual statements the In Italy and Spain Neo-Thomism starting point of the sciences’, he wrote in tended to remain a clerical preserve, but the positivist periodical Erkenntnis in the Institut Supérieur de Philosophie 1932–3; and ‘there is no ’. In a at Louvain, founded in 1889 under comment later adopted as a motto by Désiré Mercier (1851–1926), became the QUINE, he added: ‘we are like sailors who most powerful centre of a progressive have to repair their boat on the open sea, Thomism, followed by scholars like without any chance of taking it into dock to Martin Grabmann in Germany and MARI- dismantle it and build it again from TAIN and GILSON in France. scratch’. During the 1930s Neurath began Neo-Thomists claim that the central to devise a system of visual communication tradition of Greek thought had its legiti- known as Isotype, and the international mate development in the theism of the system of road and hotel signs established medieval Aristotelians, and that this tradi- in the second half of the twentieth century tion has not been made obsolete by mod- is only one of his lasting legacies. {J.R.} ern philosophy. They have therefore sought to produce a theory of knowledge which Newton, Isaac (1642–1727) Isaac will answer questions which have arisen Newton was still a student at Cambridge from DESCARTES onwards, and to show when his prodigious mathematical talent that Aristotelian and Thomistic meta- was noted. He became Professor of physics harmonizes with modern science. Mathematics there in 1667, and was Amongst the most notable efforts to fulfil elected to the Royal Society four years these requirements are Gilson’s Being later on the strength of his small but pow- and Some Philosophers and The Unity of erful reflecting telescope. He became Philosophical Experience; but it is evident dreamy and sociophobic, but in 1684 he that Neo-Thomism has not yet attained was persuaded to commit his main ideas the results for which its originators hoped. to paper for the benefit of posterity. (D.J.B.H.) Within 18 months he had completed the Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Neurath, Otto (1882–1945) Otto Mathematica (1687), which quickly won Neurath was a positivist philosopher, a recognition far beyond the small circle of Marxist sociologist, and an inventor. After readers who could understand its mathe- studies in Vienna and Berlin, he became a matics and its Latin. Its most splendid member of the short-lived socialist admin- achievement was the postulation of a uni- istration in Bavaria, before escaping to versal force of ‘attraction’ which Vienna where he directed a museum. He explained, with mathematical exactness, believed that the struggle for a unified, both the heaviness of earthly bodies and materialist science would promote social as the movements of the planets. well as theoretical progress, and became an Philosophers of a sceptical inclination active member of the VIENNA CIRCLE. But were quick to note, however, that attrac- he dissented from the reductive phenome- tion itself remained an mystery nalism of most of his colleagues (notably for Newton: he himself concluded the CARNAP), insisting in 1931 that scientific Principia by noting that its causes were verification appeals to ‘the totality of exist- unknown, adding enigmatically ‘I frame no ing statements’ rather than to particular hypotheses’, and insisting that the order Nietzsche, Friedrich 267 and variety of nature pointed to the music. Nietzsche had no sympathy for the inscrutable ‘counsel and dominion of an idealization of ‘the pure fool’ in Wagner’s intelligent and powerful Being’. In the Parsifal, which he considered an insin- second half of his life, Newton led the life cere obeisance to Christianity, and of a prosperous and fashionable London Wagner, a Francophobe, was so dis- gentleman, becoming President of the pleased by Nietzsche’s enlightened, anti- Royal Society in 1703 and ruling it tyran- romantic Human, All-too-Human, also nically until his death. Apart from a popu- published in 1878, with a dedication to lar work on Opticks (1704) he devoted the Voltaire, that he refused to read it. remainder of his intellectual energies to The following year, Nietzsche retired Biblical chronology and alchemy. {J.R.} from his professorship for reasons of health, and for the next ten years he devoted Nietzsche, Friedrich (1844–1900) himself entirely to writing. He lived mod- was born in Röcken, estly and in solitude in Switzerland and Prussia. Amateur psychologists have often Italy, and every book represented a hard- tried to ‘explain’ his ideas, but Sigmund won triumph over half-blind eyes, intense Freud is said to have remarked that ‘he had migraine headaches, and manifold physical a more penetrating knowledge of himself agonies. His writings were ignored until than any other man who ever lived or was Georg Brandes began to lecture on them ever likely to live’. Freud also remarked that in Copenhagen in 1888. In the following Nietzsche’s ‘premonitions and insights often decade Nietzsche attained world-wide agree in the most amazing manner with the fame, without knowing it. For he suffered a laborious results of PSYCHOANALYSIS’. mental and physical breakdown in January Nietzsche was the son of a Protestant 1889, and remained insane until his death. minister and the grandson of two. He stud- His first book, The Birth of Tragedy ied classical philology and was appointed (1872) was ill-received by German schol- to a professorship at Basel, Switzerland, ars; but by 1912 F. M. Cornford hailed it before he had completed a doctoral dis- as ‘a work of profound imaginative insight sertation. The degree, a prerequisite for which left the scholarship of a generation such a position, was conferred hurriedly, toiling in the rear’ – an estimate shared by and Nietzsche went to Basel in 1869 and most later classicists. The book broke applied to become a Swiss subject. In the with the ‘sweetness and light’ conception Franco–Prussian War of 1870–1 he served of Greek culture and called attention to briefly as a medical orderly on the Prussian the ‘Dionysian’ element and the tragic side before returning to Basel with shat- outlook. Nietzsche published four equally tered health. He formed a friendship with unacademic essays, collected as ‘Untimely Richard Wagner (born like Nietzsche’s Meditations’ (the title alludes to father in 1813) but the composer treated DESCARTES), before he changed his style Nietzsche mainly as a brilliant apostle to write books of aphorisms, studded with and errand boy. When Nietzsche showed psychological observations: Human, All- an independent mind, Wagner showed no too-Human (1878, with two sequels, 1879 interest. The inevitable break came when and 1880); Dawn (1881); and The Gay Wagner made his peace with the young Science (1882; second edition with sub- , which Nietzsche loathed, stantial additions, 1887). Nietzsche and settled in Bayreuth where his anti- thought that his aphorisms, though lack- Semitism became as influential as his ing the gravity of the German academic 268 Nietzsche, Friedrich style, were closer to the true scientific outlook ‘born of resentment and impotent spirit and to the experimental method. He vengefulness’. And he also cites Chapter 6, was struck by the apparent psychological ‘the saints shall judge the world’ and ‘we importance of the striving for power and shall judge ’. Here he finds a will to of fear, and in Dawn he tried to see how power that has run amuck. human behaviour could be explained in His critics may feel that it is Nietzsche terms of these two concepts. who ran amuck; but they have generally Eventually he came to the conclusion misunderstood him because they over- that Greek culture had been based on an looked the fact that he did not find in unsentimentally competitive spirit and that Christianity what they find in it. He asso- ‘the ’ is the most basic human ciated Christianity with resentment and drive. What every human being – and, the hope for boundless power in another according to Nietzsche’s next book, Thus world from which, according to some of Spoke Zarathustra, every living being – the greatest Christians, the blessed will wants above everything else is a higher, behold the torments of those who got the more powerful state of being in which the best things in this world. manifold frustrations of our present state are Nietzsche was not only a moralist but overcome. It is only when we fail in also a moral philosopher. His view of tra- our endeavour to perfect and recreate our- ditional ethics might be summed up in the selves that we settle for crude physical words which F. H. BRADLEY used to char- power over others. Nietzsche’s conception acterize metaphysics: ‘the finding of bad of ‘will to power’ cannot be understood reasons for what we believe on instinct’. apart from ‘sublimation’ – a word which he But Nietzsche did not believe that moral was the first to use in its modern sense. His idiosyncrasies were literally instinctive. anti-Christian polemics, which became On the contrary, he was struck by the great more and more central in his later works, variety of moral views in different times depend in part on his claim that Christianity and places; and derided the philosophers’ ‘demands not the control but the extirpation conceit ‘that they have long known what of the passions’, and that it therefore ‘made is good and evil for man’. His views on something unclean out of sexuality’. Still, this subject are best cited from Beyond Christianity too was an expression of the Good and Evil (1886), especially sections will to power – but only that of the weak and 186 and 260: ‘With a stiff seriousness that frustrated. Their resentment gave rise, he inspires laughter, all our philosophers... argues, to a pervasive antagonism to physi- wanted to supply a rational foundation for cal and intellectual excellence, a hatred of morals; and every philosopher so far has body and intellect, and a levelling predispo- believed that he had provided such a sition in favour of everything low, and of a foundation. Morality itself, however, was fictitious other world. In one of his last accepted as “given”.’ Moral philosophers works, , in which his style has had always been parochial and myopic: become shrill, and no attempt is made to ‘poorly informed, and not even very curi- offer judicious qualifications, he cites I ous about different peoples, ages, and the Corinthians I to illustrate his claims: ‘God past, they never laid eyes on the real prob- has chosen the weak things of the world to lems of morality; for these emerge only ruin what is strong, and base things of the when we compare many moralities’. world...and what is nothing, to bring to Nietzsche divides moralities into ‘two naught what is something.’ Here he finds an basic types’ – master morality and slave Nietzsche, Friedrich 269 morality – arguing that every moral code words of Zarathustra, being ‘delivered originated ‘either among a ruling group from revenge’. In one of his last works, whose consciousness of their difference Twilight of the Idols, Nietzsche leaves no from the ruled group was accompanied by doubt that he does not by any means delight, or among the ruled group, the accept master morality as whole, and in slaves’. The first type of morality is the final analysis he finds both types of rooted in self-affirmation: the noble peo- morality ‘entirely worthy of each other’. ple call themselves ‘good’ and the rest As to morality as a whole, Nietzsche ‘bad’, but they also ‘help the unfortunate, makes two points. The first is that ‘every though not...out of pity, but more from morality is...a bit of tyranny against an urge begotten by the excess of power’. ‘nature’, and against ‘reason’; but this in Nietzsche’s ‘masters’ resemble ARISTOTLE’s itself is no objection’. Some discipline and ‘great-souled man’, feeling, in Aristotle’s constraint is the prerequisite of all those words, that ‘it is vulgar to lord it over achievements that make ‘life on earth is humble people’. Indeed it was Aristotle’s worthwhile: for example, virtue, art, music, ethics that helped convince Nietzsche that dance, reason, spirituality’. The second is modern bourgeois morality is not the whole that a morality is a prescription for living of morality, and also that Christianity rep- with one’s passions. Nietzsche tries to show resented the ‘revaluation of all the values this in the cases of STOICISM, SPINOZA, of antiquity’. Our prevalent morality, Aristotle, and Goethe, and claims that though different philosophers have sought moralities are ‘baroque and unreasonable to supply it with ‘rational foundations’, is in form – because they are addressed to one of many mixed types, and profoundly “all” and generalize where generalizations inconsistent. are impermissible’. It would be folly for St The first of the three essays that Francis to try to live like Goethe, or vice comprise Nietzsche’s next book, Toward a versa. Nietzsche finds the greatest power in Genealogy of Morals (1887), bears the those who can sublimate and control their title: ‘Good and Evil versus Good and passions, employing them creatively. The Bad’. It deals at length with slave moral- libertine, who lacks self-control, has less ity, which, according to Nietzsche, is power; and the ascetic, who cannot master rooted in the contrast between good and his passions short of extirpating them, evil, and in resentment – ‘the resentment strikes Nietzsche as weaker than figures of those who are denied the real reaction like Socrates or Goethe. of the deed, and who compensate with Although religion and ethics were imaginary revenge’. The slave’s preoccu- Nietzsche’s primary interests, he also pation is not self-affirmation but the evil ventured into epistemology, making many of others – an evil ‘from which he then fruitful suggestions without ever working derives, as an after-image and counter- out any theory. He also has a twofold instance, a “good one” – himself’. Only importance for metaphysics. First, he the strong and noble can rise above resent- argued that this world is the only one, ment and really love their enemies: ‘how offering a psychological analysis of belief much respect has a noble person for his in another world and, especially in enemies! – And such respect is already a Twilight of the Idols, criticizing meta- bridge to love’. The move ‘beyond physical conceptions of mind, conscious- good and evil’ does not take us beyond ness, ego and will. Second, he offered a good and bad; it simply means, in the metaphysic of his own by suggesting, 270 Nominalism especially in Zarathustra, that ‘the will to the fact that it applies to them. But to say power’ is the ultimate reality. His psycho- this, it is argued, makes classification logical explanations can probably be rec- arbitrary and cannot explain why it is that onciled with his critique of metaphysical people have made the classifications they conceptions, but his reification and cos- have or how it is that they all make the mic projection of the will to power seems same classifications. In practice, there- clearly inconsistent with his own central fore, most nominalists follow HOBBES in intentions. It appears as a misguided holding that the things a general term attempt to outdo SCHOPENHAUER, whom the applies to are related by resemblance. young Nietzsche had admired. Nietzsche’s But this similarity theory, it is often doctrine of the eternal recurrence of the claimed, is only a disguised form of same events at gigantic intervals, finally, REALISM, since resemblance is itself has struck practically everyone as merely universal. Nominalism was one of the bizarre. But it was not intended as a meta- possibilities envisaged in the work physical theory: Nietzsche was under the which posed the problem of universals mistaken impression that modern science for medieval philosophy: PORPHYRY’s entails such a view. He thought that for celebrated commentary on ARISTOTLE’s most of us, nothing could be more depress- Categories. Roscellinus believed that ing than the prospect of , only individual sensible things were real, whereas the ‘overman’ (Übermensch) – the and took the doctrine of the Trinity to be one who has become a creator rather than an assertion of the existence of three a creature – would welcome it and say, gods, while Berengar of Tours, on similar unlike Goethe’s Faust: ‘abide, moment – grounds, rejected . Many and if you cannot abide, at least return’. analytic philosophers followed Hobbes in (W.K.) upholding the similarity theory, but RUSSELL remained faithful to realism; see Nominalism Nominalism is the theory also GOODMAN. (A.Q.) that the objects of thought are simply words and that there is no more to the meaning Nozick, Robert (1938–2002) of a general term than the set of things to American philosopher born in New York, which it applies. At its most modest, nom- and author of Anarchy, State and Utopia inalism holds that there is no independ- (1974) – a work of POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY ently accessible thing, UNIVERSAL or which argues (against RAWLS in particu- concept, which constitutes the meaning of lar) for an ‘’ of justice a word. The only way to find out the based on the primacy of individual rights. meaning of a word is to see what things it Acknowledging that this ‘libertarian’ con- is applied to. To say that the meaning is clusion is ‘apparently callous toward the this class of things, the word’s extension, needs and suffering of others’, Nozick is to go further and seems to entail that we nevertheless holds that anything more never really know the meaning of any than a ‘minimal state’ is morally wrong. general word since many words with the ‘The state’, he says, ‘may not use its coer- same extension differ in meaning (e.g. cive apparatus for the purpose of getting man and featherless biped). A more tradi- some citizens to aid others, or in order to tional version of nominalism contends prohibit activities to people for their own that there is nothing more in common to good or protection’. This minimal state – the things a general term applies to than ‘the only morally justifiable one’– is also, Nozick, Robert 271

Nozick claims, ‘the one that best realizes face of the fatal illness that dogged the utopian aspirations of untold dream- the last years of his life: see in particular ers and visionaries’. Nozick had a horror Philosophical Explanations (1981); of repeating himself, and instead of get- The Examined Life (1989). The Nature ting drawn into the controversy provoked of Rationality (1995); Socratic Puzzles by his first book, he took up a range of (1997); and Invariances: The Structure different issues in a series of works of the Objective World (2001). See also displaying great brilliance and an extra- LIBERALISM AND COMMUNITARIANISM. ordinary, lunar detachment, even in the [J.R.] O

Occasionalism For DESCARTES a the intervention of God. Since doing some- human being was the point of union of thing involves knowing how to do it, mate- material substance and immaterial sub- rial bodies, knowing nothing, cannot act at stance, and he proposed a curious mecha- all; their apparent action upon each other is nism by which these two disparate the act of God. Hence there was no prob- sub-stances could act on each other in the lem of psycho-physical causation, since the pineal gland at the base of the brain. Even occurrence of an event in the mind merely his most devoted followers found this sug- provided the Occasion for a Divine Act in gestion unacceptable, and it was in order to the body, and vice versa. (R.HAR.) provide a better explanation of this interac- tion that the theory of Occasionalism was Ockham See . developed, particularly by Arnold Geulincz (1624–69). The chains of cause and effect were supposed to be complete and inde- Ontological Argument The argument pendent in both mind and body, since it was that, since God is conceivable as a neces- clear that modifications of an immaterial sary existent, God exists. See ANSELM, substance could be neither the causes nor DESCARTES, LEIBNIZ, KANT, THEISM. the effects of modifications of material substance. The correlation between the run Ontology Ontology is theory as to of events in the one substance and the what exists, or inquiry into the nature of run of events in the other was attributed to being. P

Pantheism Pantheism, or the doctrine prologue describes Parmenides’ meeting that everything is divine, and that God and with a goddess who reveals the truth Nature are identical, is more often an outlined in the first part of the poem; of instrument of poetic expression than a the two possible paths of inquiry, It is conclusion of philosophical argument. and It is not, only the first is tenable – ‘for The great exception here is SPINOZA. you could not know what is not (for this is Spinoza’s initial definition of substance impossible), nor could you give expression inexorably leads to the conclusion that to it’. Thus Parmenides recognized the there can only be one substance, truly existential ‘is not’ as an artificial concept, so-called, and that it must be infinite. For but was then misled – by his inability to there could be nothing other than itself to distinguish the existential and predicative limit it and so constitute it finite. ‘is’ – into denying that negative predica- Spinoza’s definition of God, which fol- tion was possible. This seemed to entail lows the traditional definitions, makes that there could be no differentiation in the God the possessor of infinite attributes. real world (since if A can be distinguished But the only being of infinite attributes is from B then A is not B, which was, by the one substance, which is Nature. Hence Parmenides’ logic, impossible). Thus God and Nature must be identical. The reality, ‘that which is’, had to be single, history of Spinoza’s reputation illustrates homogeneous, indivisible, everlasting and the knife-edge along which the pantheist motionless. Being itself was spatially walks. From the standpoint of the theist, a finite, ‘like the mass of a well-rounded pantheist appears to reduce God to Nature, sphere’. Some of Parmenides’ arguments and is thus essentially an atheist. From the against not-being were perhaps directed standpoint of the Sceptic, the pantheist against PYTHAGOREAN dualism. But he takes an unwarrantedly religious view of himself, in the fragmentary second part of Nature, and appears as a covert theist. All his poem, which professedly gave ‘the metaphysical doctrines, such as IDEALISM, opinions of mortals’ and was ‘deceitful’, which assert that the Universe is a Unity outlined a cosmology in which the world tend towards pantheism. For the Universe was composed of two opposed substances is then something more than any of its or ‘forms’, fire and night. What was finite parts; and there can be no deity dis- evidently quite an elaborate account tinct from it. It may be surmised that the included explanations of thought and collapse of such metaphysical doctrines knowledge (produced by the excess of deprives intellectual pantheism of its only one opposite, the hot or the cold, in the support. (A.MACI.) limbs), and astronomy, which had points in common with ANAXIMANDER. The purpose Parmenides Greek philosopher from of this ‘Way of Seeming’ is obscure. Elea in Southern Italy, born about 515 BC. Perhaps Parmenides felt that his concep- He wrote a philosophical poem consisting tion of Being was too austere for practical of a prologue and two parts, of which life and ordinary people, and wished to considerable fragments have survived. The show that the apparent world could be 274 Pascal, Blaise accounted for on the basis of a single and authoritarian socialism, and author of pair of sensible opposites, without intro- The Grammar of Science (1892). ducing so-called reality-principles like the ‘Limit’ and ‘Unlimited’ of the Pythagoreans. (G.S.K.) Peirce, Charles Sanders (1839–1914) C. S. Peirce was born in Cambridge, Pascal, Blaise (1623–62) French Massachusetts, son of America’s leading mathematician, scientist and theologian, mathematician Benjamin Peirce. Much of and one of the earliest great French prose his early formation was scientific; he writers. His earlier years were devoted to came to philosophy through reading mathematics and the physical sciences; Friedrich SCHILLER and was later his experiments with the barometer are enthralled by KANT. He associated with famous, the ascent of the Puy de Dôme by most of the leading American thinkers of his brother at his direction being a deci- his day – including JAMES, Wright and sive confirmation of the new theory of air Holmes – but obtained little academic pressure. In 1654 Pascal underwent a pro- recognition and was never appointed to a found experience of religious conversion; permanent university post. He spent most he became a strong adherent of the of the latter part of his life almost as a Jansenists and much of his energy was recluse and died in comparative poverty henceforth devoted to theological and in 1914. He published a number of arti- religious propaganda and controversy. He cles but no book on philosophy. Much of continued however to work occasionally his best work remained unpublished until at mathematics, doing work on the theory the appearance of the Collected Papers of of the cycloid preparatory to the theory of C.S. Peirce (8 vols, 1931–58). the calculus, and laying the basis of the 1 Epistemology. The central problem mathematical theory of PROBABILITY. in modern EPISTEMOLOGY has been to rec- Pascal’s posthumously published Pensées oncile the subjective nature of thought cover a range of philosophical issues; with our claim to know things distinct most notably he argues for the reason- from thought. This had not been a prob- ableness of faith on the ground that lem for ARISTOTLE, who considered that there are no rational grounds either for the mind simply discovered an order in belief or disbelief and so belief is not less reality. But Kant inverted Aristotle’s posi- reasonable than disbelief; but this being tion and claimed that the order in our so it is wiser to gamble on the truth of knowledge came from the mind. Peirce religion since this policy involves success accepted the modern problem and offered if religion is true and no significant loss if his own solution. it is false. The section on geometry also He began by maintaining that we are has some wise and clear remarks on conscious that we have direct experience definition and the nature of deductive of the real – that is, of things that exist systems. (J.O.U.) whether we think about them or not. Peano, Giuseppe (1858–1932) Italian Moreover, if we are to avoid unpleasant mathematician who pioneered the project surprises, we must endeavour to adapt our conduct to these things. So far he agrees of reducing MATHEMATICS to LOGIC. with Aristotle. But it is clear that we Pearson, Karl (1857–36) English deal with things according to our ideas of scientist, supporter of an austere positivism them – on selective constructions which Peirce, Charles Sanders 275 are based on partial experience coloured conduct that it can lead to or regulate. It by our history, circumstances and does not have to lead to immediate sen- purposes. The selective nature of knowl- sory verification; it need only give mean- edge led Peirce to agree with Kant that ing to our conduct in some way – like the the order in knowledge is to some extent notion of truth as an ideal – limit, which constructed by the mind. He next set has no direct sensory content, but inspires about showing that if we examine what an us to keep adding to our knowledge. idea or concept is we should be able Peirce completed his theory by saying to reconcile what is true in Aristotle that each idea gives rise to a possibility of and Kant. regular conduct in regard to what it In reply to the question, ‘what is a expresses. Hence each idea is finally concept?’, Peirce formulated in 1878 his interpreted in a ‘habit’, and these habits – famous : ‘Consider the interpretants of our ideas – are ‘guides what effects, which might conceivably to action’. Our ideas find living and con- have practical bearings, we conceive the sistent expression in our habitual modes object of our conception to have. Then, of conduct. our conception of these effects is the But any inquirer’s knowledge of a whole of our conception of the object.’ He given object or situation will always be illustrates the maxim by saying that our inadequate, so it is not enough for a sin- idea of ‘wine’ means nothing ‘but what gle individual to apply the maxim. A has certain effects, direct or indirect, upon research community gathers more knowl- our senses’. So too, if we call a thing edge than any single individual and works ‘hard’, we mean that ‘it will not be to overcome mistakes in individual verifi- scratched by many other substances’. He cation. Knowledge is pooled and correc- summed up: ‘Our idea of anything is our tion is a cooperative affair. But the idea of its sensible effects.’ Peirce offers community may itself be wrong, and his maxim as an instrument for distin- every inquirer has to envisage their guishing true knowledge from false. True research within the indefinitely continu- knowledge – a correct idea of an object – ing, constantly growing company of enables us to predict what will happen inquirers. Searchers after truth are always when we come to deal with that object. In on their way towards a state of perfect fact for Peirce all our ideas are analogous knowledge; but they will never reach it. to scientific hypotheses. The need for honesty in scrutinizing Peirce’s 1878 formulation of the one’s data, integrity in cooperating with maxim contained in germ his later views. others, and a genuine love of truth, led But it was formulated for explaining our Peirce to believe that the struggle for truth ideas of material things, and seemed to is not only intellectual, but moral. The leave no place for regulative ideas such as work of forming concepts, drawing con- moral goodness. Furthermore, William sequences, and verifying them must be James and the popular pragmatists took carried out in a self-disciplined and coop- the maxim in a phenomenalist sense. In erative way within the community of later years Peirce insisted that pragmatism seekers and against the background of the (or ‘pragmaticism’ as he called his doc- social ideal-limit of truth. trine, to distinguish it from that of James 2 Categories. Like Aristotle, Peirce and others) teaches that an idea has wanted to classify the main aspects of meaning through any possible practical reality through a doctrine of CATEGORIES. 276 Peirce, Charles Sanders

But where Aristotle’s categories had been variety of the universe and the spontaneity objectivist, Peirce believed that categories that finds its highest expression in human should express aspects of the world in personality enables us to perceive an infi- terms of our direct perceptive experience. nite Spontaneity or Firstness at the source He formulated three such categories: of all instances of Firstness. (b) It is clear Firstness, Secondness, and Thirdness. (a) that an order of dynamic finality exists in Firstness is the spontaneous aspect of the world – exemplified in the manner in things, exemplified especially in the free which the human mind is adapted to inter- surge of the mind in the formation of preting and predicting the course of hypotheses: it indicates life, growth and nature through the hypotheses of science. variety in the universe. Any instance of The only explanation of this mutual Firstness, such as an act of immediate adaptation of parts of the world is that an consciousness before it is reflected on, is absolute Mind has presided over their an undifferentiated unity; but otherness creation and development. (c) When we and the struggle it leads to are also reflect on the hypothesis of God as the inescapable facts of experience – hence creative source of the universe, we are the next category. (b) Secondness points gradually impelled to accept it: an instinc- to the element of resistance and duality in tive belief in God fits every movement experience – to ‘existence’, or ‘that mode of our nature. Peirce concluded that God of being which lies in opposition to is unlimited in knowledge and power, and another’. For Peirce, ‘a thing without if we are forced to conceive him to some oppositions ipso facto does not exist’, and extent in the human image, such anthro- existence is not a predicate but something pomorphism is not so much false as that is experienced when our willing and figurative. perceiving come up against the ‘brute’ Peirce laid such stress on the connex- aspect of the world and the sheer individ- ions that each ego has with others and the uality of things. But spontaneity and rest of the universe that some passages sug- opposition do not exhaust our experience gest that he rejected the Cartesian unitary of reality–there is also continuity or regu- self. He also insisted that we have to inter- larity, or Thirdness. (c) Thirdness, accord- pret our own thoughts: they are as much ing to Peirce, is ‘Law’. We can reflect on signs to us as are the words of other people an idea like ‘wine’ or ‘hard’ and see that it and the things of the universe. But where applies to many things; this shows that other pragmatists sought to reduce human there is regularity in the real, and this is the personality to a ‘bundle of habits’, he foundation of law. ‘Law’ or ‘general prin- argued that ‘unity must be given as a cen- ciples’ are ‘active’ in things, and the uni- tre for habits’. About immortality, Peirce formities we discover in the real order have never made up his mind. Early in his meaning for us only insofar as we can act career he argued that the inability of regularly in their regard; hence we can MATERIALISM to explain much of the uni- conceive the laws of the universe as analo- verse counted in its favour, while the gous to our own habits of action. dependence of the mind on the body 3 God, self and immortality. Peirce counted against. As the years went on he accepted as a philosophical hypothesis the laid more stress on the spiritual aspects of idea of a personal and omnipotent God, the universe as evidence for personal and outlined several arguments for the immortality, but stopped short of saying reality of such a Being. (a) The living that such evidence was conclusive. Personal Identity 277

Peirce exercised little real influence to come under pressure. In the Essay during his life. William James popularized concerning human understanding (1689), a form of pragmatism derived largely from Locke insisted that complex IDEAS could a misunderstanding of Peirce’s pragmatic only be understood if they were broken principle and his insistence on moral effort down into simple elements drawn directly in the search for truth. ROYCE’s theory of the from experience, and ideas of substances social infinite owes a lot to Peirce’s teach- began to appear far more fragile, prob- ing on the community of inquirers but lematic and artificial than they had ever Peirce dismissed Royce’s logic. DEWEY took seemed before. But Locke had an implicit over some of the empirical emphases in belief in immortality, and in a God who Peirce’s methodology. But by and large would issue eternal rewards and punish- Peirce’s general philosophy made no ments adjusted to how we have conducted impact until the publication of the ourselves in this life. He realized that this Collected Papers. See also AMERICAN belief would be quite empty if our after- PHILOSOPHY. (J.O’C.) life were not in some sense a continuation of our earthly existence: otherwise we Peripatetic ‘Peripatetic’ is an ancient might just as well be annihilated on our nickname for ARISTOTLE and his follow- death and replaced with someone com- ers, based on the tradition that when they pletely different. Locke’s proposal was discussed philosophy they walked as they that the continuity that mattered for moral talked. and theological purposes depended not on Personal Identity In PLATO’s substances but on relations, specifically Symposium, the wise Diotima raises the relations of ‘sameness’ (or ‘identity’, to question how any of us can be said to con- use the scholastic word). Moreover the tinue in existence from infancy to old age, subject of these relations was essentially a when both body and soul are bound to moral agent (or ‘person’, to use another change out of all recognition. If the suc- scholastic word). That was how, in Section cessive episodes in a life are like beads, I of Book II of the Essay, the notion of what is the thread that strings them all ‘personal identity’ first saw the light of together? Her answer is that such continu- day. Locke argued that the relations that ity is guaranteed only for the Gods, and underlay it were not a matter of substantial that the rest of us can only approximate to permanence, but a combination of ‘con- it, partly by working to sustain our physi- sciousness’, or an intimate interior knowl- cal and intellectual fitness, and partly by edge of one’s own past experience, and having lots of children. Socrates is more ‘concernment’, or an intimate involve- puzzled than satisfied with Diotima’s ment with one’s future prospects: ‘for if solution, but the question was left in sus- we take wholly away all Consciousness of pense in the high philosophical tradition our Actions and Sensations, especially of for nearly two millennia; it seems to have Pleasure and Pain, and the concernment been generally assumed that the basic that accompanies it, it will be hard to subject of experience was a SUBSTANCE – know wherein to place personal Identity.’ either spiritual or material or some kind This doctrine, barely sketched in the of combination of the two, perhaps the first edition of the Essay, was elaborated ‘substantial form’ of the Aristotelians in the second (1694), where Locke (see AQUINAS). In the seventeenth century, asserted boldly that the boundaries of a however, the concept of substance began ‘personal self’ coincide with those of 278 Peter Lombard consciousness. Moral responsibility for born c.1210 in Lisbon, studied at Paris, past deeds extends ‘as far as that con- and was elected to the Papacy as John sciousness reaches, and no farther; as XXI in 1276, dying in 1277 owing to the everyone who reflects will perceive’. The collapse of a study which he had had ‘self’ in short was a product of conscious- built. His Summulae Logicales, with its ness as much as its object; and it was only new method of describing the SYLLOGISM, through consciousness that it could remained a fundamental logical text till ‘appropriate’ past deeds and make them the seventeenth century. (I.T.) its own. The doctrine that our memories define who we are is a hard one, and per- Phenomenalism Phenomenalism is haps irredeemably paradoxical: how after the doctrine that human knowledge is all can we identify our memories as ours confined to the appearances (phenomena) unless we are already able to identify our- presented to the senses or, less restric- selves as ourselves? In the Treatise of tively, that appearances are the ultimate Human Nature (1739–40) foundation of all our knowledge. It takes revelled in the difficulties, suggesting that two main forms: first a general theory of personal identity is an illusion or a ‘fic- knowledge and second a theory of per- tion’, and citing the absurdities it gives ception. rise to as a further incentive to general (1) As a general theory of knowledge, philosophical SCEPTICISM. During the phenomenalism states that we can know nineteenth century, however, the dissemi- nothing that is not given to us in sense- nation of Locke’s argument led to a experience; hence it denies, with more or change in the meaning of ‘personal iden- less thoroughness, the validity of infer- tity’, and eventually of ‘identity’ itself: ences made from things that fall within our the words no longer referred to a sup- sense-experience to things lying outside it. posed principle of permanence behind the One version, sometimes called , jumbled confusion of experience, but to asserts that, although we cannot infer the people’s subjective memories and their character of what lies outside our sense- conscious sense of who they were, or experience, we can at least infer that there indeed of which group they belonged to. is something outside it. KANT’s Thing-in- This shift in meaning gave rise to ‘iden- itself, HAMILTON’s Unconditioned and tity politics’, and obscured the historical SPENCER’s Unknowable are outcomes of and conceptual origins of the problem of this line of thought. Some philosophers, personal identity. {J.R.} understandably reluctant to suppose that we can know that there is something that lies Peter Lombard (c.1095–c.1160) beyond the bounds of possible knowledge, Author of a compilation of theological maintain that nothing at all exists beyond wisdom known as the Sentences, which the appearances presented to our senses. became one of the most popular textbooks This view, sometimes called sensational- for philosophical instruction in medieval ism, is roughly exemplified by the doc- Universities; see also BONAVENTURA, trines of HUME, J. S. MILL and RUSSELL, SCOTUS. although both Hume and Mill were dis- Peter of Spain Petrus Hispanus, also satisfied with their attempts to explain the known as Peter of Spain, lived in the observing mind that is the subject of sense- thirteenth century, and is now generally experience in terms of the appearances pre- identified with Petrus Juliani who was sented to it. To describe phenomenalism, as Phenomenalism 279 is often done, as the view that we do not regularly standing in that relation to know things as they really are but only as sense-data like our present ones. It is, of they appear to us, is misleading. By imply- course, logically impossible that we ing that there are things over and above the should have such evidence for things tran- appearances presented to us, it begs the scending sense-experience since these are question in favour of agnosticism. by definition. (2) In its usual modern form, as a the- Phenomenalists are not, however, ory of perception, phenomenalism was solipsists. They do not believe that there first clearly expounded by J. S. Mill in is nothing we can know to exist apart 1865 and his compact formula – that a from our own sense-experiences. But, material thing is a permanent possibility while not rejecting all inference from of sensation – is as good as any. Much the sense-data, they will only countenance same point is conveyed by Russell’s inference to things that could in principle remark that the thing is the class of its be experienced. The permitted variety of appearances. Later phenomenalists pre- inference is simple extrapolation to what ferred to state their doctrine in a linguis- are variously called ‘possible sensations’ tic, instead of an ontological, idiom. (Mill), ‘sensibilia’ (Russell) and ‘hypo- Material-object statements, they said, are thetical sense-data’. Our actual experi- reducible to or translatable into state- ence displays enough regularity for us to ments about SENSE-DATA, and the entire establish laws of correlation between content of our beliefs about material experiences of different kinds. When things can be expressed in terms of what some part of one of these regular patterns is immediately given in sense-experience. is presented to us we can reasonably The usual argument for this conclusion understand that the rest of the pattern is starts from the straightforward considera- available if we modify the conditions of tion that everything we know by percep- observation appropriately (e.g. by stretch- tion must be either inferred or uninferred. ing out our hands or opening our eyes). Now unless some of it is uninferred we Our experience, though fragmentary, is are landed with an infinite regress. This orderly enough to enable us to construct inescapably uninferred perceptual knowl- from it a material world that is, in Hume’s edge, it is widely agreed, is knowledge of phrase, ‘continuous and distinct’. There is appearances, that is of sense-data. So some disagreement about the way in much is common ground to many theories which this conclusion should be of perception. The characteristic phenom- expressed. Russell speaks of ‘sensibilia’, enalist contention at this point is that actual entities just like sense-data except there can be no valid inference from that no observer is aware of them. Others, appearances to the existence of transcen- feeling that there is still a faint whiff dental things – to things, in other words, of the transcendent, even of the self- that do not appear to us and of which we contradictory, about this, prefer to say that therefore have no direct knowledge. What what we infer is the truth of hypothetical reason could we have for believing that propositions. there now exists something unobserved There are three main lines of objection that stands in a certain relation, that of to this theory. First, it is argued that the being its cause for example, to what we phenomenalist translation could never, are now observing? Only that we have in even in principle, be carried out, either the past actually observed such things because we lack the verbal means to 280 Phenomenology effect it or because the appearances asso- Lockean substance called Physical ciated with a given material object are Occupants. A far more thorough and infinitely numerous and complex. unwavering phenomenalist was AYER. Second, it is said that the translation is Phenomenalist theories of mind spurious since the antecedent clauses of (which see the mind as simply a related the hypothetical statements making up the cluster of actual experiences) have been translation must themselves mention advanced with more or less conviction material objects, for example, the bodies and enthusiasm by Hume, Mill, Russell and especially the sense-organs of and Ayer. MACH and PEARSON expounded a observers, and the physical conditions of phenomenalist philosophy of science observation. Third, a lot of discomfort has which gives an attractively hard-headed been felt, even by philosophers well account of the theoretical entities of natu- disposed to phenomenalism such as ral science (electrons, viruses etc.). In H. H. PRICE, about the fact that unobserved CARNAP’s Logical Structure of the World a material things, which are only clusters of completely generalized phenomenalism is possibilities according to the theory, exert worked out in impressive formal detail in a causal influence. How can the collection which our entire conceptual apparatus is of possible sense-data, which is all the decomposed into its ultimate phenomenal water at the bottom of a well consists of, constituents. (A.Q.) manage to emit an actual noise when an unobserved, and so equally hypothetical, Phenomenology In its broadest mean- stone strikes it? A more fundamental line ing, ‘Phenomenology’ signifies a descrip- of objection starts further back by attack- tive philosophy of experience. The name ing the presumption shared by phenome- of HUSSERL is most closely associated nalists with many other theorists of with this term in twentieth century knowledge, that the only immediate thought. (C. S. PEIRCE defined a discipline objects of perception are sense-data. of ‘phaneroscopy’ or ‘phenomenology’, Phenomenalism has close affinities but without reference to Husserl.) In his with the theory of perception put forward later years, Husserl evolved a ‘philosophy by BERKELEY, who at one point, indeed, of spirit’, but he was hostile to speculative explicitly propounds phenomenalism but philosophy in his formative period, and fails to follow it up. What we infer, in his his version of phenomenology is unrelated view, is not possible experiences of our historically to Hegel’s ‘phenomenology of own but actual, and pretty transcendent- spirit’. The indebtedness of Husserl’s phe- looking, experiences of God’s. Mill could nomenology is nevertheless many-sided. be said to have derived his phenomenal- The influence of BRENTANO, JAMES, the ism from Hume’s account of perception British empiricists, DESCARTES, LEIBNIZ and by making one crucial change: what KANT is to be noted particularly. Hume regarded as an imaginative fiction Husserl developed his version of Mill saw as a legitimate intellectual con- phenomenology slowly and painstakingly, struction. With his theory of sensibilia, hoping to extend the scope of the a priori Russell was never a complete phenome- to the entire field of experience. At first he nalist, and Price was led by the argument defined phenomenology as ‘descriptive about the causal efficacy of clusters of psychology’, but he clarified that defini- mere possibilities to augment his families tion by elaborating a ‘TRANSCENDENTAL’ of sense-data with ghostly relics of phenomenology. From the beginning, Phenomenology 281 phenomenology was committed to the ideal independently real but as the correlate of of the greatest possible freedom from pre- meaningful experience – it becomes a suppositions, which ruled out speculative ‘bracketed’ world. constructions and all talk of a ‘TRANSCEN- The ‘reduction’ to the stream of inner DENT’ realm beyond possible experience. experiences means that one must begin His slogan ‘Back to the things them- with ‘transcendental egology’ – one’s own selves!’ expresses this principle very well. individual experiences; but solipsism is Kant indicated the general nature of avoided when other minds are ‘exhibited’ the ‘transcendental’ when he explained it by means of ‘empathy’, ‘appresentation’, in terms of attending to the experiencing and ‘apperception by analogy’, based of an object, rather than to the object upon the resemblance of other bodies to itself. The aim of phenomenology is to one’s own. The phenomenologist can then make this reflection as ‘radical’ as possi- speak of ‘transcendental intersubjectivity’, ble, proceeding to the sources of certainty and of the ‘constitution’ of the objective or ‘evidence’ in immediate experience, world. and ‘questioning’ everything with regard The term ‘constitution’ is used to to its evidence. To that end, a procedure of name the constructive programme of ‘reduction’ is instituted, requiring the sus- descriptive analysis which commences pension of all beliefs, and of scientific once ‘purification’ by ‘reduction’ is com- knowledge as well. Descartes’ method of pleted. The ‘constitution’ of the world doubt serves as a convenient means of within the frame of pure consciousness introducing the method of phenomenol- does not mean that it is made out of con- ogy. One could be mistaken in one’s judg- sciousness; but when all things are ments about anything ‘transcending’ viewed as objects for experience, it is experience, but ‘immanent’ experiences appropriate to speak of the synthetic and concerning the world, or concerning any ‘idealising’ processes by which complex alleged or imagined objects, could not be structures and meanings are ‘constituted’ doubted. out of the stream of experiences. Both The aim of phenomenology, then, is to meaning-giving (noetic) experiences and delimit the entire, endless realm of meant (noematic) objects fall within the experiences, in all their diverse types – scope of phenomenology. perception, phantasy, etc. All beliefs are Historically, phenomenology was cre- suspended, and we are left with the expe- ated as a means of outflanking NATURAL- riences themselves, and with the objectiv- ISM. In this respect it was in harmony with ities meant by them. These two aspects – the dominant academic philosophies of the meaning and the meant – are called its time, concerned as they were with cir- the noetic and noematic sides of experi- cumscribing the methods of the sciences, ence, and this ‘correlative’ or ‘intentional’ and defending the traditional preserve of mode of viewing experience is essential a spiritual philosophy of values. But the to the procedure of phenomenology. With abiding justification of phenomenology all beliefs placed in abeyance as a matter lies in its descriptive findings. Its studies of method, one is left with ‘pure subjec- of time-consciousness, its ‘origin-analyses’ tivity’, or ‘pure experience’. The world is of the basic concepts of LOGIC, and analy- not ‘discarded’ or denied, however: the ses of perception and other modes of ‘thesis’ of existence is simply ‘put out of experience have greatly extended the play’ and the ‘world’ is regarded not as range of our descriptive vision. 282 Philosophy of Mind

The subjective method of phenome- with no ulterior commitments to idealism nology should not be presumed to dis- or any other dogma. The phenomenologi- place the objective empirical methods of cal procedure is then regarded as one the sciences. Like many other innovators, method of inquiry alongside all the Husserl did not know when to stop, in his ‘objective’ methods – inductive, causal relentless drive towards a universal phi- and explanatory. Although its findings losophy. At times, he revealed awareness may well be valuable for all other disci- of the limits of his achievements, as when plines, it could have no subject-matter he mused that he would never set foot on without the factual ‘mother-ground’ rep- the ‘promised land’. But phenomenology resented by the natural and cultural sci- can still render an indispensable service ences. A strict phenomenology, freed by ‘clarifying’ the basic concepts of the from all pretence to metaphysics, and sciences in terms of immediate experi- from excessive claims to ‘absoluteness’, ence, and making clear the contributions would, however, be as defensible in its of the knower to experience. way as symbolic logic has always been in The impact of phenomenological find- its own. (M.F.) ings on psychology was impeded by mis- understandings on the part of some Philosophy of Mind In virtue of having psychologists, and righteous indignation minds we are able to think, to experience on the part of Husserl. His critique of the world, and act upon it: three unique psychology was intended to show the capacities which are difficult to reconcile need for a ‘rational psychology’ which with one another. In order to explain our would do for naturalistic psychology what capacity for conscious thought, DESCARTES geometry did for physical science. The postulated a special kind of substance. He influence of phenomenology has been argued that minds are essentially con- extensive, and to some extent it has borne scious, thinking, immaterial, non-spatial fruit of a type quite uncongenial to things, distinct from but related to the Husserl. The broader phenomenological essentially spatial, mechanical, matter of movement includes a prominent religious which our bodies are composed. This wing, and the ‘intuition of essences’ has explanation was unsatisfactory. In 1643 been extended to include the non-rational, Princess Elizabeth of Bohemia asked and has sometimes deteriorated to the Descartes to explain ‘how man’s soul, level of banal descriptions of familiar being only a thinking substance, can objects of experience. Attempts have been determine animal spirits so as to cause made, with varying degrees of success, to voluntary actions’; a question, Descartes develop phenomenological approaches to admitted, ‘that can be most reasonably social science, history, art, mathematics, asked’, but to which he had no satisfac- psychology, PSYCHOANALYSIS, and tory answer. For Descartes, the problem Marxism (see FRANKFURT SCHOOL), as was to explain how the mind – something well as logic and the philosophy of val- non-material, non-spatial and non- ues. Husserl denounced the ‘EXISTENTIAL- mechanical – could affect the material IST’ movement (see BEAUVOIR, HEIDEGGER, world. If the answer is, as it seems it must MERLEAU-PONTY, SARTRE), despite its be, that it could not, then Cartesian dual- debts to phenomenology. ism leads to ‘’ – the It is possible to formulate a strictly view that our mental life can exert no methodological version of phenomenology, causal influence on the material world. If Philosophy of Mind 283 our mind exerts no causal influence on of physical matter, and so avoids the the material world, then nobody ever acts ontological extravagance of Cartesian upon it. The philosophy of mind still con- dualism, but it still faces the problem of fronts a version of this problem, and mental causation. If when a mental state much work has centred on the attempt to causes a physical state that physical state explain how minds can be both conscious must be explicable in physical terms, then and affect the material world. the physical properties of the mental state The physical world is a causally self- must be the cause of the physical state, contained system, and any changes that and its mental properties become irrele- occur in it can be explained by appeal to vant again. purely physical causes. When we act we We might be able to solve this problem move our bodies and so change the physi- if we had a better understanding of the cal world; hence our actions must be com- relation between mental and physical pletely explicable in physical terms. But in properties. Assuming that the mind is, in that case our minds are causally irrelevant. some sense, physical, then what is it that When I withdraw my hand from some- makes it conscious? This was not a prob- thing hot, I would have done so whether or lem for Descartes, for whom the mind not I was conscious of feeling pain. was a non-physical and essentially con- One way to avoid this epiphenomenal- scious thing. A number of philosophers ist conclusion is to suppose that the mind (e.g. and Frank Jackson) itself is physical, that every mental state is have argued that it is impossible to identical with a physical state. On this explain why anything physical is con- view – a version of physicalism known as scious, and some of them (notably David the ‘type identity theory’ – pain is just a Chalmers) have concluded that con- physical state of the brain, and the experi- sciousness cannot be physical. Their argu- ence of pain can thus affect the physical ments, though they differ in detail, have a world because it is itself physical. Our common structure. First they argue that actions have complete physical causes, there is an ‘explanatory gap’ between the some of which are mental too. Although it kinds of explanations available to science successfully avoids epiphenomenalism, and those that are necessary for explain- this view is no longer popular. The prob- ing consciousness; and second, they argue lem is that mental states seem to be ‘mul- that this gap reflects a deep metaphysical tiply realisable’ by physical states. There difference between physical matter and could be creatures physically quite unlike consciousness. us – silicon-based Martians, say – who The arguments for the existence of an nonetheless experienced pain, and in that explanatory gap are concerned with the case pain cannot be identical with the kind of consciousness associated with physical states that occur in us when we perceptual experiences and sensations. If feel pain. you look at a vase of red flowers there is Even if mental states are not identical something that it is like for you to see the with physical states in us, they may still flowers, a particular way your experience depend on them in such a way that our is for you. Had you looked at yellow flow- physical states are sufficient to determine ers rather than red ones, your experience – them. This relation (known as the ‘super- and so what it is like for you – would have venience’ of the mental on the physical) been different. (What it is like is not used concedes that the mind is composed here in a comparative sense, but to pick 284 Philosophy of Science out how things are for you in virtue of to adopt a kind of dualism. Thus although having an experience.) Similarly (to use no one wants to revive Cartesian dualism, Nagel’s example), assuming that bats are the problems that led Descartes to it have conscious, we can never know what it is not gone away. like for the bat. We could have an excel- Empirical studies of the mind have lent understanding of both the physiology revealed a great deal that is surprising and psychology of a bat, but without any about how the mind functions. These insight into the bat’s consciousness. To studies suggest, for example, that we may gain such knowledge we should have to not notice significant changes in our per- have the bat’s (subjective) point of view ceptual experiences; that we act before we on the world, and no amount of (objec- are conscious of deciding to act; and that tive) scientific knowledge could provide we can see without being conscious of us with that. what we see. This has led some philoso- Again, imagine that Mary is a scientist phers to draw a more radical conclusion: who has grown up colour blind: she expe- that many of our everyday ways of think- riences the world in black and white. She ing about, for example, self-knowledge, has nevertheless come to know all the intentional action, and perception, are physical facts about the operation of the false. If that is so, then many of the tradi- visual system and the physics of light and tional problems of the philosophy of mind colour. Then, one day, her condition is may be illusory; and therefore, rather than cured and she sees colours for the first supposing that consciousness is elusive or time. She looks at a ripe tomato and finds adopting metaphysical dualism, we out what it is like to see something red. should change the whole way we think Since she already knows all the physical about the mind. Here science would have facts, what she has learnt cannot be such a direct impact on philosophy. In reply, it a fact. In the same way, we can conceive might be questioned whether our every- of the existence of zombies – creatures day understanding of the mind is subject physically just like us, but lacking con- to empirical revision. What exactly the sciousness. There could then be a zombie relation is between the kind of under- that was physically just like you, except standing of our minds we employ in that, since it lacks consciousness, there is everyday life and the understanding pro- nothing that it is like to be it. But if it is vided by science, and whether we should physically just like you, then the fact that revise our everyday understanding in the you are conscious but it is not cannot be light of empirical studies, is perhaps the explained by reference to physical facts. most pressing question for philosophy of The existence of an explanatory gap mind today. {M.N.} does not entail a metaphysical gap, and some philosophers (e.g. Colin McGinn) Philosophy of Science The questions have argued that it simply reflects the lim- that arise in this field fall roughly into itation of our understanding. According to three divisions: those about science in them, consciousness is a physical or natu- general, those bearing on groups of sci- ral phenomenon, but one whose nature ences, or relations between them, and con- will always elude us. Others conclude that ceptual problems in individual sciences. the reason we are unable to explain con- As far as science in general is con- sciousness in physical terms is that con- cerned, the problems fall under three heads. sciousness is not physical; they are forced (a) EPISTEMOLOGY, and, in particular, Philosophy of Science 285 questions about reasonable grounds for brainwashing, or the discovery of ever knowledge: Is scientific method the only more potent modes of destruction. rational route to knowledge and under- Many questions about groups of standing? Is it rational at all, and if so, sciences bear on the ‘unity of science’. why? Are there best ? Should the human or social sciences use a What might support a theory that cannot methodology which is fundamentally dif- be directly checked by observations? To ferent from that of the natural sciences? what extent can we assume that the future Or is there a single scientific method, will resemble the past, or that past gener- appropriate to all fields of inquiry? There alizations will hold up in the future? (The are related questions about nature itself. .) Can one measure Are all phenomena ultimately the the degree to which a hypothesis is sup- consequence of the same basic laws of ported by or made credible by evidence? nature? On one simplistic picture, socio- (Probability) And is scientific knowledge logy is reducible to psychology, which is founded upon observation independent of reducible to biology and biochemistry, theory, or are all observations ‘theory- and those in turn to chemistry, which laden’? (b) METAPHYSICS, and, in particu- reduces to physics, with an ultimate goal lar, questions about reality: Is a scientific of a ‘Grand Unified Theory’ in physics. theory a representation of the world? Is a There are logical issues here (what is theory a set of statements trying to meant by ‘reduction?’), factual ones describe, in literal terms, how things are? (has unification been proceeding apace, Or is it just an instrument for organizing or are we witnessing increasing diver- experience and experimental results, and sification?), and methodological ones for making better predictions and reveal- (does the drive towards unifying theories ing interrelations between phenomena? always tend to produce greater or deeper As for causes, are they constant regulari- knowledge?). ties in experience, or necessary connex- As regards individual sciences, there ions in nature? And what is an are at least as many questions as there are explanation? When theories postulate sciences. How are we to understand space entities that cannot be observed – for and time after RELATIVITY theory? Or example, electrons, the superego, or the causality and determinism after QUANTUM money supply – do these literally exist, or MECHANICS? What, in evolutionary biol- are they merely intellectual constructs? ogy, is a species? What is the relation (c) ETHICS: What are the responsibilities between and human of a scientist in choosing fields of thought? Some writers hold that the only research, and in communicating or using function for philosophy of science is par- discoveries that may be harmful? What ticipation in conceptual debates within are the parallel responsibilities of society, the special sciences. and of public or private patrons of sci- 1 Origins of the philosophy of science. ence? Issues range from debates about ARISTOTLE, DESCARTES and LEIBNIZ made weapons research through the use of contributions of the first rank to both sci- scarce resources (including mental ence and philosophy (as we now under- resources) to questions about whether it is stand them), and Francis BACON is widely immoral even to investigate certain areas, regarded as the first philosopher of the for example, correlations between race scientific revolution of the seventeenth and physical and intellectual abilities, or century, when EMPIRICIST and RATIONALIST 286 Philosophy of Science traditions divided on questions of metho- continuations of the disagreement dology. There were important REALIST- between Comte and Whewell. However, anti-realist controversies about, for science has changed a lot since the end of example, the ‘reality’ of gravitational the nineteenth century. At that time force, or whether it is literally true that the was able to describe earth rotates about the sun. And HUME is atoms, electrons and the like as mere ‘rep- commonly considered the originator of a resentative fictions’: nothing could be well-defined problem about induction, done to them or with them, and if one and author of the definitive ‘constant con- believed in them it was only because of junction’ analysis of causality. But it is their utility in organizing one’s under- not till the nineteenth century, with the standing of experimental results. But this emergence and ‘professionalisation’ of is no longer the case: nuclear fission and distinct sciences such as what we now call genetic engineering are dramatic exam- biology or physics, that ‘philosophy of ples of our now common ability to manip- science’ arose as a distinct family of ulate and use what were earlier regarded inquiries. Important figures in the first as mere postulates. generation are Auguste COMTE, William 2 Logical Positivism. The most influ- WHEWELL and J. S. MILL. The first two rep- ential twentieth century school of resent opposed attitudes to the sciences philosophers of science originated with that persist to this day. groups in Vienna and Berlin, meeting in Comte invented the label POSITIVISM the 1920s. Impressed by positivist doc- for his philosophy. Positivism includes trines, and by the results of symbolic the following ideas: the only significant logic, many gladly called themselves LOG- propositions of science are those that can ICAL POSITIVISTS, later preferring the term be verified or falsified in experience; ‘logical empiricist’. Major figures were there is no power of necessity in nature; Moritz SCHLICK, causality is no more than the regularities (1891–1953), Rudolf CARNAP and Karl and uniformities that we observe; theoret- POPPER. All were deeply moved by the tri- ical entities are intellectual constructs, umphs of relativity and quantum mechan- invented to enable us to organize phe- ics, and wished to produce criteria that nomena and make successful predictions. would distinguish that kind of science Many positivists have said outright that from what they regarded as pseudo- they were opposed to metaphysics. Hume science, for example, Marxist history or is often cited as a forerunner. Whewell’s Freudian PSYCHOANALYSIS. Most of them Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences insisted that scientific propositions (1840) was in contrast strongly influ- should be verifiable, but Popper – who enced by KANT. It was committed to the distanced himself from the others, and existence and possible discovery of fun- rejected the ‘positivist’ label – insisted damental but unobservable entities, and that verification and confirmation were to explanations that reveal the necessary not decisive; instead scientific assertions causes of events. The progress of science should be testable and open to refutation. was, in Whewell’s opinion, a matter of He strongly urged that all scientific pro- comprehending the reality that underlies nouncements are fallible. Carnap spent phenomena. many years attempting a theory of proba- Many discussions among today’s bility, to be called inductive logic, which philosophers of science can be seen as would explain how generalizations are Philosophy of Science 287 supported by positive instances. In con- Crisis arises when central problems trast Popper, like Hume, argued that all become intractable – for example, when such induction is invalid. Instead we learn there is no way to explain anomalous from experience by a process of conjec- results inconsistent with a theory. New ture, testing and refutation. concepts are evolved which displace old All surviving members of this group ones, so that there may be no way of sys- emigrated in the 1930s and became influ- tematically comparing the successes and ential in the English-speaking world. In failures of abandoned theories and their Germany their work has encountered con- successors. Thus the very notion of ‘the siderable opposition, as shown, for exam- facts’ is called in question, and doubt is ple, by a debate in 1961 between ADORNO cast on the most fundamental of positivist and HABERMAS on the one hand, and tenets, that theory-neutral observations Popper on the other, later published as suffice to decide between competing The Positivist Dispute in German theories. It is suggested instead that all Sociology. The main issue was whether observations are tinctured by theory. the natural and human sciences involve Kuhn’s work forced a rather radical distinct methodologies and types of reassessment of the ideas that had been knowledge. inculcated in anglophone philosophy of 3 The historical dimension. Criticism science by its German and Austrian teach- of a different sort arose in America. ers. Some wanted to preserve their ratio- Popper and the positivists were commit- nalist ideology. For example, one of the ted to a strong contrast between what more iconoclastic and polemical retorts to Reichenbach called the context of justifi- Kuhn came from Imré LAKATOS, a cation and the context of discovery. There Hungarian refugee who settled in might be an economic, historical, socio- London. His Methodology of Scientific logical or psychological explanation of Research Programmes (1970, 1978) is a why a particular discovery (or error) was revision of Popper’s philosophy, aiming at made, but such ‘external’ circumstances criteria of rationality couched in terms of had nothing to do with its correctness or the track record of an entire programme acceptability. A number of writers, of investigation. It is notable, however, notably T. S. KUHN, fundamentally chal- that for all his criticism of Kuhn’s work, lenged this confident rationalist picture of on one point he is in complete agreement. science. His Structure of Scientific Where the logical empiricists had thought Revolutions (1962) describes scientific of the logic of scientific method as being development dialectically, in terms of peri- essentially timeless, Lakatos’ philosophy ods of ‘normal’ science being followed by of science is entirely historicized. ‘crisis’, then ‘revolution’ and then new Most philosophers investigating the normal science. Kuhn is not speaking of questions about science in general men- science as a whole, or even one of the sci- tioned earlier will pay attention to this ences such as chemistry, but rather of historical dimension; but the approach is small fragments of a field in which there not strictly new, but rather a return. may be fewer than a hundred significant Whewell’s Philosophy of the Inductive workers. Normal science conducted Sciences was preceded by a three volume by these research workers is a matter of History of the Inductive Sciences, and solving puzzles or problems according to Comte’s monumental Course on Positive an established pattern, or ‘paradigm’. Philosophy is first of all an overview of 288 Philosophy of Science the history of science. In consequence of course of an ongoing process of social this return to an historical vision of scien- interaction among research workers. Thus tific activity, some Anglo-American the strong programme and its variants philosophers have found that their con- tend to be anti-rationalist in epistemology, cerns were already partially addressed by and anti-realist in metaphysics. French historian-philosophers of science 4 Pluralism. Most philosophers of such as and Georges science hold such views to be extreme CANGUILHEM. and wrong-headed. The strong pro- A more critical attitude towards gramme does, however, indicate a sub- science itself has also blossomed. It is stantial shift in philosophical interests in epitomized by ’s ques- the sciences since the days of the logical tion in Against Method (1975): ‘What’s so positivists. These days were perhaps too great about science?’ Many of Kuhn’s much dominated by a certain image of core ideas had been put forward simul- science furnished by the twin successes of taneously and independently by relativity theory and quantum mechanics. Feyerabend, who described himself as an Since then, people have become more ‘anarchist’ about science and argued, aware of the enormous diversity of scien- most specifically against Lakatos, that tific activities. Where the logical empiri- there is no peculiarly ‘scientific’ method cists and Popper wrote extensively about and that fixed canons of procedure lead to theory and said virtually nothing about stultification. Feyerabend on occasion experiment, there has recently been a urged that the modern scientific establish- good deal of work on experimental sci- ment is as effective in closing minds as ence in its own right. Sometimes this has was the religious orthodoxy challenged at been combined with the attitudes of the the time of Galileo. strong programme, with philosophically A related critique was advanced a little minded participant-observers describing later as the ‘strong programme in the what goes on in a laboratory in the course sociology of science’. We are accustomed of making a ‘discovery’. to providing sociological explanations for These tendencies towards pluralism the acceptance of patently false theories, on the part of philosophers have also for example, the preference for affected the tenor of discussions about the Lysenkoism over Western genetics under relationship between the natural and Stalinism, and the strong programme is social sciences. Anti-positivist philoso- committed to providing similar explana- phers once argued that the social sciences tions for the discovery of truths: the truth had to have their own methodology, of a proposition, the compelling character which was autonomous and independent of evidence, or the rationality of a of the methods of the natural sciences. method, it is maintained, can never But as scientific methodology has explain their acceptance. Moreover the increasingly come to seem very piece- notion of a ‘discovery’ is held to be disin- meal and fragmented, this debate has genuous: it suggests an analogy to discov- appeared less pressing. ering a continent or an island, which we This summary has concerned only the think of as being there in the ocean most general of the philosophical issues whether people get to it or not. One mentioned at the outset. These are should think not of discovering scientific undoubtedly the ones that have attracted facts, but of constructing them in the the attention of philosophers with little Plato 289 interest in science for its own sake, and the first university. He gathered about also of the reading public at large. But him a number of pupils and fellow stu- there is increasing interest in the sorts of dents, who united themselves in a question that have arisen within individ- ‘museum’, or society dedicating itself to ual sciences. [I.H.] the patrons of letters and music, the Muses. The members might stay there for Physicalism Physicalism is a version twenty years or even for life, taking part of reductive materialism about the mind in common studies, religious exercises favoured by LOGICAL POSITIVISM. and meals. The ultimate practical purpose of the society was the restoration of Plato (c.427–347 BC) Plato was born decent government to the Greek cities. in Athens and lived there for most of his Some of the members left after a time and eighty years. Though at first marked out went into practical politics. Some, includ- for politics, both by his lineage and by his ing Plato himself, wrote political advice interests, he devoted himself almost to their friends elsewhere. But the studies wholly to study, theory and teaching. One were far from wholly practical. Plato held cause of this was the disgust he came to the restoration of decent government to feel at the low level of politics in his time; require a complete foundation of theoret- he found that bad faith and injustice and ical knowledge; and he sought to lay such cynical selfishness were widespread, and a foundation, as deep and as firm as pos- that ingenuous good faith could not stand sible. The studies which he encouraged against them. The only hope for politics, hence came to appear to the general pub- it seemed to him, was to found a school lic as obscure, fine-drawn, and impracti- and create therein a new kind of political cal; and there is a story that, when he character. advertised a lecture on ‘The Good’, peo- The main cause of his renouncing ple came hoping to learn how to be political practice was probably SOCRATES. happy, but heard only what seemed to He fell deeply under the spell of Socrates’ them to be higher mathematics. magnetic and searching thought, and was Mathematics certainly became, after phi- profoundly shocked when, at the age of losophy, the study most pursued by the about 27, he saw Socrates condemned to society. death on the absurd charge of corrupting Plato devoted himself to his school for the young and not believing in the city’s most of the remaining forty years of his gods. He has left us unhistorical but mag- long life. He had, however, two very nificent pictures of Socrates’ defence, important relations with the outside imprisonment, and execution, in his world; his interventions in the politics of Apology, Crito and . Syracuse and his published writings. After this disaster, most of Socrates’ During his travels Plato had made a friends left Athens for a time. Plato vis- friend of Dion at the court of Syracuse. In ited the Greek cities of Sicily and south- 367 Dion urged Plato to come to Syracuse ern Italy, and made political and scholarly and instruct the new ruler, Dionysius II, friends there. By about 385 at the latest, who being young and well-intentioned he was back in Athens, and was founding, might be made into the new kind of states- near the grove of the hero Academus, man desired by Plato. Plato went; but he what has come to be called the had little hope of realizing his ideal in ‘Academy’, which may loosely be called Dionysius, and by this time had probably 290 Plato lost most of his original eagerness for major work by Plato is self-contradictory; political practice. The matter turned out or it expresses an arbitrary change in the very badly. This was not because the royal meaning of the word. The so-called pupil had no relish for Plato or philosophy. PRE-SOCRATIC philosophers, and even On the contrary, he became very attached Socrates, were not philosophers in the full to his teacher and to the subject. But Plato sense of the word, though they were had not been at Syracuse six months certainly Plato’s inspirers. before Dionysius expelled Dion on the 1 The Early Dialogues. Plato’s works ground that he was plotting against him. can for the most part be confidently Loyalty compelled Plato to support Dion assigned to one of three periods: early, and demand his recall, while jealousy and middle and late. The early works consti- suspicion drove Dionysius to try to sepa- tute an extremely striking presentation of rate Plato from Dion. Dionysius never let the figure of Socrates. Dion return, and for some time he did not All but one of these works are dia- let Plato leave. logues; and this is part of Plato’s concep- Six years later, in 361, Dionysius sent tion of philosophy as well as of his for Plato again, and ensured Plato’s com- literary originality. Philosophy is essen- pliance by making it a condition of the tially a kind of logos; and Plato’s notion of restoration of Dion. Once he had Plato, logos may be analysed in modern terms as however, he did not recall Dion but on the ‘the reasonable use of words in thinking’. contrary confiscated Dion’s property in The reasonable use of words involves Syracuse. Plato had to use the influence submitting them to criticism by others of a neighbouring ruler in order to be and testing their implications; and this allowed to return to Athens. involves dialogue. The typical early Jealousy begins with false beliefs, but Platonic dialogue draws out the implica- by acting on them makes them true. Dion tions of a statement, in order to test it for now became the irreconcilable enemy of consistency with itself and other state- Dionysius. He invaded Syracuse and ments. The question whether to adopt a drove Dionysius from it in 357, ruled it statement must not be answered until we himself for four years, and was then have discovered its implications and con- assassinated. The assassin had apparently nexions. Since more implications may had relations with Plato and was consid- become visible to us in the future, it is ered a member of the Academy. This was usually better to adopt a view provision- a terrible blow to Plato. ally and until someone persuades us Plato’s publications are all preserved, otherwise with a better argument. and make five large modern volumes. 2 The Middle Dialogues. In the They constitute not merely the greatest middle dialogues Plato shows some philosophical work there is, but also one dissatisfaction with the hypothetical and of the greatest pieces of literature in the negative procedure of the Socrates of his world. If anyone asks what philosophy is, early dialogues, and some hope of the best answer is: ‘read Plato’. For it was finding an unhypothetical starting-point Plato who brought the word ‘philosophy’ on which to base intuitive certainty and into use; and it was he who mainly good politics. He thinks that such a start- invented and first practised the sort of ing-point can be found, if at all, only in study for which ‘philosophy’ is the name. the region suggested by the following To say that there is little philosophy in a statements. Plato 291

Through all the multiplicity and vari- which is not that of collecting examples. ety of just and unjust acts, persons, and The Socratic search for ‘Definitions’ situations in this world, there evidently is was in fact the search for one or other of in some way only one Justice and one these elusive but necessary Ones in Injustice. And so with every other collec- Themselves. They must be there, to make tion of things to which we apply the same sense of our world and our speech; but name, as ‘beautiful’ or ‘couch’. Various their forms are to be discerned only by the and divergent as beautiful things are, eye of the mind. There is an intelligible there is only one Beauty. We can distin- world of ‘Forms’ or ‘Ideas’. guish from each and all of the many beau- To Plato the word ‘idea’ meant first tiful things the one Beauty itself, what visible form and then form in general. Beauty itself is, which must be there Thus it meant something objective. It because otherwise there would be no never carried the subjective meaning it sense in calling anything beautiful. The has today. In any case it is hardly more one Beauty itself is not merely distinct than a label to him, a label for ‘that one from each and all of the beautiful things. thing itself which (something) in itself is, It is also separate from them. For it must complete, pure, and eternal’; and this be completely beautiful, purely beautiful, phrase in turn is Plato’s distillation from unchangingly beautiful; and no beautiful the fact of common names and from thing is such. This comes out very clearly Socrates’ search for definitions. when we consider the one Equality itself; These Forms, then – so unexpectedly for probably no two sticks in this world but so simply discovered – are the ever are exactly equal; and if they were required starting-point, both for good our measurements would never be able to practice and for good theory and indeed tell us that they were. Thus we arrive at an for religion of a kind (Plato called them astounding and thrilling conclusion: there divine). To believe in them and pursue is a second world, other than our world of them is to be a philosopher; that is the visible things, consisting of the Ones deeper definition of what philosophy or Themselves, each of which is perfectly, the pursuit of wisdom is. To be ignorant purely and eternally what it is, visible of them, or disbelieve in them when they only to the mind itself, or rather not visi- are pointed out (which unfortunately is ble but intelligible, grasped only by the the usual human state), is to be essentially pure intellect using bare words. not a philosopher. Knowledge of them is Can this be right? Let us go back and the first possible kind of knowledge. approach by a slightly different way. Indeed strictly speaking it is the only kind Socrates has made us familiar with the of knowledge; for strictly speaking only enterprise of asking what a thing is. He the unchangeable can be known, and only has asked what courage is, what virtue is, the Forms are unchangeable. If you say what knowledge is. And he has rejected that the is full, and the moon then such answers as: ‘look at Laches if you wanes, you cannot, strictly speaking, have want to know what courage is; he is a known that the moon was full. Only what courageous man’. Socrates has replied completely is can be completely known. that he seeks, not this or that courageous There is a difference of kind between person or act, but courage itself. And knowledge which has the Forms for its surely he was right. The question ‘What is object, and opinion, which has for its courage?’ expresses a possible enterprise object this transitory and confused world. 292 Plato

The Forms are, however, the explana- from the common people. The same kind tion of the visible world, so far as it has of impartial search for the best, overrid- one. This cosmos is the mixed result of ing all useless customs however dear, Mind and Necessity, and hence our would give us women as well as men account of it cannot be better than a likely rulers, would make these women exercise story. But whatever reality there is in vis- naked as well as the men, and would abol- ible things comes to them from the Forms ish family life among the rulers in favour after which they are called. A visible of a conventional system of common par- couch shares in, or perhaps imitates, ents and common children, which, couch itself, and derives its half-reality together with communion of property, therefrom. We may also suppose that, would fuse the whole ruling class into a beside the Forms and the visibles, there is united and selfless whole whose ascen- a Third Thing, a receptacle of all becom- dancy would never be in doubt. ing, which like gold takes any shape, and The primary education of these rulers is to the Forms as mother is to father, a would not be very different from what sort of room or seat of becoming, to be Plato had himself received. It would, how- grasped imperceptibly by a kind of bas- ever, be publicly organized and intense; tard reasoning. and the physical or gymnastic part would 3 Politics and Philosophy. All opinion be more military in character. The two is defective; but it is not all equally defec- greatest differences would be, first, an tive. On the contrary, those who know the ever present risk of failure in the next Forms will have far better opinions about examination and consequent relegation to this world than those who do not. And that the masses, and, second, the complete is the key fact for good politics, since it absence from their music and poetry of all implies that kings should be philosophers. corrupting or degrading suggestions, such The only good government is by those as frenzied music and Homer’s assertion who know, and this means those who that the gods could not restrain their know the Forms. The ideal city would be laughter on a certain occasion. For what- a philosophocracy. ever is read in literature in early years Whether such a city could ever come goes deep into the soul, especially any into existence is very doubtful; but how it suggestion of self-abandonment. would maintain itself if it did come into Those who passed all tests up to the existence is clear. The ruling philosophers age of twenty would be guaranteed some would see to it that their rule was absolute sort of place in the ruling class for life; and not limited by unchangeable laws or but whether this was to be higher than that by popular votes, that they handed it over of a private in the army would depend on only to other equally adept and right- their success in their studies and exercises minded philosophers, and that the supply and examinations in the following fifteen of suitable successors was assured by years. Here Plato is strange indeed; for appropriate education of the best persons. what he proposes as a suitable training Education would be in fact by far the for the higher ranks of the army and for most important part of practice. Those administrators and rulers, is advanced chosen to receive it would be primarily MATHEMATICS followed by abstract study the children of the rulers; but impartial of the Forms and finally of the Form of selection would reject some of these as the Good. Nothing is said about history or inferior, and add some superior children politics or economics. His reason is that Plato 293 those who are to keep a city as good living is best. But he seems to think now as possible must above all know what that knowledge and communal living are pure and absolute Goodness Itself is. To hardly ever practical possibilities, and this end they must previously know therefore we had better spend our efforts about the other pure and absolute Forms in finding what is best to do in their Themselves, to which end in turn absence. He has no doubt that in their they must first know mathematics. absence we should have recourse to the Mathematics provides a bridge from the reign of law. Law, while much inferior to sensible to the intelligible world. For in the man who knows the Good, is much the mathematics we draw sensible squares best ruler for us ignorant and ill-tempered and triangles, and yet are interested in persons; and should be sacred among us. intelligible triangles and squares. We use So when in his old age he plans another the visible as a suggestion of the intelligi- ideal city, which he calls Magnesia, his ble, and are thus gradually brought to account consists mainly in a mass of legal the desire and power to study the intelli- details, and the dialogue is named Laws gible itself, by mere words without accom- (see POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY). panying visible images, as the adept 4 The Later Dialogues. Philosophy in philosopher does. the narrow sense is the analysis of con- Only those who can and will persevere ceptions; and this is mainly the invention the whole way up this path will be gover- of Plato’s later dialogues. However, Plato nors of our ideal city. They will by then be himself continued to think of his theoret- at least fifty years old. One curious con- ical philosophy as a study of the world sequence of this education will be that the rather than humanity, as metaphysics rulers will dislike ruling. They will have a rather than logic and epistemology. And passion for the Forms and wish to be left his results were often not of great value; alone with them. But this is no disadvan- there are weary wastes of logical and tage. On the contrary, the love of power metaphysical oddities, tiresome enough makes bad rulers; and our reluctant rulers in Plato himself, intolerable when will nevertheless rule willingly enough, expounded by devoted interpreters. Yet it because they are just and they recognize is never to be forgotten that these late dia- the justice of recompensing the city for logues, or rather that activity in the the supreme education it has given them. Academy of which these dialogues are an Besides, they will have plenty of leisure expression, formed the best analytical to devote to abstract philosophizing. thinker there has yet been, ARISTOTLE. This ideal city of Callipolis, the first The best of the late dialogues are the surviving Utopia and by far the most first two, Parmenides and Theaetetus. interesting one, is constructed in Plato’s The conflict of opposed views natural to a splendid dialogue Republic, which is one good dialogue is at its greatest in the of the ten best books there are. It is a work Parmenides, which consists of two parts. of his maturity, and the high point of his The first appears to destroy Plato’s own powers. Later in life he published two with well-founded and more dialogues on politics, and they show unanswerable arguments. The second a change of interest. Here he still affirms appears to be a formidably long and bor- that knowledge is the only right basis for ing kind of metaphysical nonsense; it is government, that it may and should dis- described by the main speaker as ‘a labo- pense with laws, and that communal rious game’, and ends with the following 294 Plato words: ‘Let this be said, then; and also angler in acquisitive craft. We can then that, as it seems, whether one is or not, subdivide acquisitive craft into acquisi- both itself and the others, both to them- tion by consent and acquisition by subju- selves and to each other, all in every way gation, and again place the angler in the both are and are not and appear and do half to which he belongs. If we continue not appear. – Very true.’ Whatever this long enough, we should come to a class be – a joke, or ultimate truth, or something that is co-extensive with the angler and between – it is a remarkable achievement constitutes a definition of him. This and has a queer value of its own. The dis- process of definition by division is promi- cussion of the Ideas in the first part does nent in the late dialogues. Plato appears to in fact amount to a pretty clear revelation have hoped that it would supply a sure of the reasons that make the theory way of constructing definitions, as impossible, and is therefore a fine exam- opposed to merely destroying definitions ple of candid self-criticism. It is very as Socrates’ technique had done. strange that the Parmenides thus contains Aristotle, however, showed that there is both an extreme example of frankness nothing sure about the procedure; every and an extreme example of mystification. step in it is merely an unsupported asser- The Theaetetus is Plato’s most suc- tion. And its prominence in the late dia- cessful work in purely analytical philoso- logues is a large cause of their relative phy. The conceptions analysed are unfruitfulness. perception, knowledge, subjectivity, The Sophist fortunately contains, truth, change, error, logos, simplicity and besides six long divisions, a long passage (by implication) definition. Plato intro- of much more value. Here Plato resumes duces there the classical comparisons of some puzzles about not-being, error, and the mind to a wax tablet and to a dove- falsehood from the Theaetetus. He then cote, and the classical comparison of discovers as many puzzles in the notion of Socrates’ conversation to midwifery. The being, finding difficulties both in the conclusions are mostly negative and notion of being as many and in the notion valueless by themselves: ‘Knowledge is of it as one only. He finds that in the bat- not perception: it is not true opinion; it tle of giants between materialists and ide- is not even true opinion with logos. Error is alists neither side can defend itself. If we not thinking one thing instead of another, say that the real is what we can grasp with or misrelating what I see to what I know, our hands, we deny the obvious facts of or misusing the knowledge that I have; it justice and wisdom and soul. On the other is hard to see how it can occur at all.’ side, if we say that only the Ideas are real, Nevertheless, anyone who studies and we deny that the real can live or move or absorbs this dialogue will be greatly think. enlightened. Plato believes that he now has a solu- After the Theaetetus and the tion to these difficulties. It consists in Parmenides, the Sophist is the greatest of analysing the way in which we apply Plato’s late works. In outline it is a series many names to the same thing (whereas of attempts to define the sophist by suc- the theory of Ideas was reached by con- cessive divisions of a genus, as when we sidering that we apply one name to many define the angler by dividing the genus things). From the fact that we may call the craft, to which he belongs, into acquisi- same man both white and squat and short tive and constructive craft, and place the and brave he develops the doctrine that Plato 295 some pairs of things communicate with namely, what is the Good? The Good each other and others do not, and that must be perfect, adequate, and desired by some things communicate with every- all who know it. The main contenders for thing but most do not. Among the things the place are pleasure and knowledge. No that communicate with everything are one would choose either alone if he could Same and Other; for everything is the have both; but which is the better? same as itself and other than everything Socrates develops a strange classification else. But to be other than another thing is of things into the definite, the indefinite, not to be that other thing. Thus otherness the mixture of these two, and the cause of is a kind of not-being; and this kind of not- their mixture; and decides that pleasure being is omnipresent, since everything is falls into the indefinite class but mind other than every other thing. Now this is a falls into that of cause. He then goes into perfectly respectable kind of not-being, a long and close analysis of pleasure. It is unlike the not-being that has puzzled us; caused by the restoration of living sub- for there is nothing queer about being stance. But there are also mental pleas- other than something else. This kind of ures of expectation. Pleasures are often not-being is not opposite to being but accompanied by false opinions, and can merely other than it. Not-being therefore themselves be false. There is a neutral firmly exists and has its own nature, even state of neither pain nor pleasure; and though PARMENIDES forbade us to say so. pleasure itself is not the mere absence of Not merely does not-being exist; it is pain. The greatest pleasures and pains also shared in by thought and statement, occur in bad states of the body or soul. which therefore admit of being false. That States of pleasure mixed with pain can appears as follows. A simple statement occur in several ways. But there are also consists of a name followed by a verb, true and absolute pleasures. Pleasure can- such as ‘man learns’; it cannot consist of not be the Good, because it is a genesis, anything less complicated. It necessarily and therefore exists for the sake of some- has a subject and is either true or false – thing other than itself. In the course of false if what it says about its subject is this long psychological analysis of pleas- other than what is true about it. As it ure, Plato has some useful remarks on really can say, about a really existing sub- perception, memory, desire, imagination, ject, something that is really not so as if it envy, comedy and laughter. were so, it really can be false. False state- He then gives a much shorter analysis ment is possible. But then false thought is of knowledge, observing that some arts possible; for thought is the same as silent are more exact and mathematical than internal statement. others, distinguishing between popular In his old age Plato returned to the and philosophical arithmetic, and praising ethical topics of Socrates and made dialectic as the most accurate of all the Socrates his main speaker again. This was arts, though perhaps not the most useful. in the , an ugly and disappointing Finally the dialogue returns to the Good. but acute and still useful dialogue. It The Good cannot be either knowledge or begins with a last statement of the method pleasure alone, for neither of them is per- of division – the most puzzling and least fect. It must be a mixture of the best of rewarding of them all. It then devotes each of them, including all the sciences, itself to what appears to be a solution of and those pleasures that are pure and nec- the problem left open in the Republic, essary. In this mixture the most valuable 296 Plotinus part is beauty and symmetry and truth, eleven years. Ammonius was a self- and that is the cause of its goodness. Each taught, non-writing philosopher and we of these three is more akin to knowledge know next to nothing of his teaching, but than to pleasure. Knowledge therefore his influence on Plotinus and his other stands nearer than pleasure to the Good. pupils – probably including the Christian And we may finally announce the follow- theologian (185–254) – was very ing order of value: measure, beauty, mind, considerable. In 243 Plotinus set off with science, pure pleasure. Emperor Gordian’s expedition to the East, Another dialogue of Plato’s old age, in the hope of learning some Persian and the , is devoted to the physical ; but Gordian was mur- world, and offers an elaborate cosmogony, dered in Mesopotamia in 244 and cosmology, physics, chemistry, and Plotinus escaped with some difficulty to human physiology, pathology, and medi- , and went from there to Rome. cine, while at the same time declaring in There is no evidence that at this or any the manner of the middle dialogues that other period in his life he acquired any there can be no science of such matters. knowledge of Indian thought. For a long time the read Plotinus spent the rest of his life in only this dialogue of Plato’s, thus obtain- Rome teaching philosophy, and after ten ing a very inaccurate impression of him. years began to write the treatises which At all times, however, most of Plato’s were gathered by his disciple and editor, readers have tended to take his second- Porphyry, into the collection we know as best and leave two-thirds of his best. They (composed of six sets of nine have tended to take his authoritarian poli- treatises). Porphyry also wrote a life of tics and his mystical religion of the Ideas his master, which is our main source of with its inclination to unreason. But of his information about him, giving a vivid and best they have taken only his literary detailed picture of his life and work in beauty. They have ignored his great lead Rome. His method of teaching was infor- in the analysis of conceptions, that is, his mal, based on reading of PLATO and ARIS- invention of philosophy in the narrow TOTLE and their commentators, and sense; and they have ignored his magnifi- including a great deal of free and vigor- cent ideal of reasonable thinking and act- ous discussion of difficulties raised by ing. This ideal is presented to us in the members of his audience; traces of these person of Socrates; but it is presented discussions are to be found in the only by the writings of Plato. (R.R.) published treatises. The philosophy of Plotinus – though Plotinus (205–70) Plotinus stands at professing to be an exposition of the real the origin of the philosophy known in thought of Plato and owing a great deal to modern times as NEOPLATONISM. The not close and critical study of Aristotle and of very reliable fourth century writer, the Platonists, Pythagoreans and Eunapius, says he came from Upper Aristotelians of the century or so before Egypt, but his education and cultural his own time – is in many ways thor- background were completely Greek. In oughly original. The primary purpose of 232 he came to Alexandria to study phi- his teaching was to lead people – those losophy. He could find no teacher to sat- few who were capable of it – back to the isfy him until he encountered Ammonius source from which they and all things Saccas, with whom he remained for came, the One or Good, which in giving Plotinus 297 them being also gave them an impulse to The One is beyond being, and the return. This journey required perfect source of being. In the Platonic language moral purity and the utmost intellectual of Plotinus, ‘being’ denotes the totality of effort. beings, and there is no such thing as inde- The One or Good himself (Plotinus terminate or unlimited being. True being uses the masculine pronoun in speaking for Plotinus is the first level of reality pro- of his ) is held to be beyond ceeding from the One – from the Divine all determination or limitation and so Intellect in which thought and its content beyond description or definition. are one, and whose Ideas are themselves Language can point towards him but living , each of which thinks never reach him. Even the names ‘One’ and so is the whole. Intellect is also the and ‘Good’ are inadequate. But though he highest level of our consciousness, and its is beyond the reach of language he is by Forms are, as in Plato, the archetypes of no means mere negation or abstraction. It the world of the senses. They are finite in is because he is more, not less, than any number, though infinite in productive conception we can form of him that he is power. Plotinus, in the writings where he beyond thought and language. He is pres- considers the question most carefully, ent to all according to their capacity to makes an important departure from Plato receive him. in admitting individual as well as univer- Reality proceeds from the One or sal Forms – a Form of Socrates as well as Good in a series of stages of steadily a Form of Man – an admission which he increasing multiplicity, limitation and reconciles with the traditional doctrine separation. Its generation from the One is that the Forms are finite in number by both free, in the sense of being perfectly adopting the Stoic idea of cyclic world spontaneous and unconstrained, and nec- periods, repeating themselves endlessly in essary, in the sense that it is inconceivable every detail. that it should not happen. Like the radiant From Intellect proceeds Soul, the sun, the Good cannot but be self-diffusive active principle which forms and orders or self-communicative. The process of the visible universe. Its characteristic generation is timeless, and all the stages intellectual activity is discursive thought, of reality are eternal. Even the last and and time is the life of the soul in this dis- lowest, the physical universe, is eternal as cursive motion. But Soul in Plotinus has a a whole, though individual parts of the very wide range: at its highest it is fully sublunary world are continually perishing illuminated and formed by Intellect, but it and being replaced by others. But in the also has a lower phase (‘Nature’) which is timeless process of generation, at each the immanent animating principle of the stage, two elements can be distinguished entire material universe. From Nature in thought, one in which the product pro- come the forms of bodies, the lowest and ceeds from the producer as an unformed weakest of realities, incapable of further potentiality, the other in which it returns production. All levels of soul from the upon its source in contemplation, is lowest to the highest are permanently formed and actualized by it, and gains in present in us and we have to choose its turn (except at the last and lowest whether we will remain on the level of the stage) the power to produce. This double lower soul, immersed in the concerns of rhythm of outgoing and return runs body, or whether we wake to the higher through the whole of Plotinus’ universe. realities present in us. 298 Political Economy

For Plotinus the material universe is a abstract thought about law, politics, and living organic whole, bound together by a society, particularly if it addresses norma- force of universal sympathy. Plotinus tive questions about the way in which himself believed in the reality of magic, political power should be used or the way but since it could not affect the higher life citizens should behave. Thus, democratic of the soul, it was of no importance to theory, jurisprudence, political morality, him. Matter itself, though like all else it APPLIED ETHICS, social theory, and POLITI- proceeds from the Good, is the principle CAL ECONOMY have all been thought of as of EVIL because it is the utter deficiency parts of political philosophy. A political of being and marks the end of the descent philosopher might study subjects as from the Good. But Plotinus’ attitude to diverse as punishment, representation, the material universe – unlike that of the feminism, private property, judicial review, Gnostics, whom he detested – was by no economic inequality, , means merely negative or pessimistic: rational choice and the morality of abor- though affected by the evil of its material- tion. In these and similar areas, people who ity, it was also good and beautiful as a liv- think of themselves primarily as philoso- ing structure of forms and the best phers have become immersed in recent possible work of soul. times in the study of what we may call Plotinus had a considerable influence ‘public affairs’, and they have contributed on early Christian theologians and on the to a large body of literature in which the philosophy of Islam, and the publication issues and controversies of public life are of Ficino’s Latin translation of the debated and discussed. Enneads in 1492, and of the Greek text in Behind this concern with public 1580, made Plotinian Neoplatonism an issues, however, there is a deeper and important current in Renaissance more abstract agenda which defines polit- thought; but the last group of philoso- ical philosophy as a branch of philosophy phers deeply influenced by his thought proper. That agenda consists in the tradi- were the CAMBRIDGE PLATONISTS. (A.H.A.) tional questions that have dominated the subject since PLATO’s time. What is the Political Economy Political Economy state? What is society? What is the human is a school of social theory created in the individual? How are they related to one eighteenth century by James Steuart and another? Is a society greater than the sum . It describes how the mecha- of its individual parts? Is the state just a nisms of a modern commercial society social construction or a construction of ought to ensure that the uncoordinated individuals, or does it have an irreducible activities of individuals pursuing their pri- reality of its own? Unless these questions vate interests will automatically maximize are addressed, the study of ‘public affairs’ the wealth of a nation, without any need is bound to remain superficial. Apart for political intervention. Ruskin and other from anything else, we need to be able to romantic anti-capitalists denounced politi- answer these questions before we can say cal economy as ‘a lie’; but MARX respected with any confidence what makes an issue it enough to devote his theoretical energies ‘public’ or ‘political’, what it is for some- to providing a ‘critique’ of it. [J.R.] thing to be an issue or a concern for a whole society as opposed to an issue or Political Philosophy The words ‘politi- concern for some of the individuals who cal philosophy’ can cover almost any make it up. Political Philosophy 299

Philosophical questions about the better conceived as moral beings, relation between society and the individ- autonomously pursuing goodness as we ual spring from a deep paradox in our happen to conceive it. Such beings still thinking. On the one hand, it is beyond have needs which must be fulfilled and question that each of us is the product of ideals which may be better pursued a particular society: I do not make myself; depending on the resources at their dis- I owe everything I have, including my posal. But they aim to make something of sense of self, to the community and cul- their lives, not simply engage in accumu- ture in which I live. On the other hand, as lation and consumption for their own soon as I start thinking or reflecting on sake. It is arguable that principles of indi- society and the way it has constituted me, vidual liberty and rights are much easier I appear to be doing so as an individual, to defend from this second perspective and my own thoughts, preferences and than from the first, for there seems noth- purposes seem more real to me than the ing intrinsically important about the community in which they were fashioned. unimpeded motion of a utility-seeker. Society may have made me, but what it Still, philosophers in the individualist tra- has made is something that can regard dition have been wary of tying the value society as separate from itself. of freedom too closely to the idea of striv- The two sides of this paradox mark a ing after goodness. That may lead to fundamental division in political thought the illiberal conclusion – sometimes (see LIBERALISM AND COMMUNITARIAN- described as ‘’ – that free- ISM). If we take society as our point of dom to do wrong is not worth having or reference and regard the individual as not worth fighting for. And it would move derivative, then our values and ideals will them uncomfortably close to the commu- be defined in terms of forms of commu- nitarian version of that idea – that true nal life. We will not, of course, be uncon- freedom involves submerging oneself in cerned with individual men and women, the life of a well-ordered society. but we will value their aspirations and ful- It is perhaps easier to maintain that we filments strictly as part of an overall com- are essentially social animals than that we munal ideal. However, if we take the are political animals, for law, politics, and individual as our fundamental point of the state seem to be artificial construc- reference, then community will appear tions in a way that basic human sociability valuable only as a means to the goals and is not. When we talk about politics, we ideals that individuals have adopted as seem to be talking about the way people their own. We may still think it desirable come together deliberately to express their that one person’s behaviour should be sense of how society should be run and to constrained by respect for others. But it articulate their differences; and we are will be respect for the interests of the talking about the relatively formal prac- other individuals, rather than a respect for tices and institutions of debate and con- social life as such. flict that make this expression possible. Individualists differ about the nature Because it has this formal and artificial and importance of individuality. For character, both individualists and commu- HOBBES, individuals are voracious con- nitarians may view the realm of politics as sumers of utilities, driven inevitably into something derivative, to be judged in deadly competition with their fellows. For terms of more fundamental values and others, in the tradition of KANT, we are ideas that are not themselves political. 300 Political Philosophy

One way of approaching the matter is view. First, though everyone gains from to think of the social and political structure cooperation, an individual may do even of a society as something which people better for himself if he defects from a design, as an architect designs a building, cooperative arrangement while others do and hence as answerable to the ‘specifica- not. The contractarian, like every other tions’ that such a designer might have in political philosopher, has to find some mind. The earliest example of this type of response to the question posed by Plato in thinking is found in Books II and Ill of the Republic: ‘What advantage is there in Plato’s Republic, where justice is thought being just?’ Second, even if it can be of as the idea of order and harmony that shown to be rational to keep one’s agree- would guide the founding of a new colony ments, it is implausible to claim that any or the institution of a new society. of us has ever actually agreed to abide by In Plato’s approach, both the social the principles of the state. In fact, most of designer and the specifications he is us were never given the opportunity; the guided by are thought of as external to the social contract seems to be an elaborate society he is constructing. That approach fantasy. And if it is just a fantasy, it is hard can be contrasted with the more individu- to see how it can provide any actual basis alistic view of politics as artifice for political obligation. expressed in the theory of the SOCIAL These worries have led people to try CONTRACT propounded by thinkers like and express the individualist approach in Hobbes and LOCKE. Here political society other ways. If we take individual values as is taken to be designed by the very people the basis of political evaluation, surely we who are to live in it, and the specifications can simply ask how well a given set of for the design are not derived from any institutions serves those values now. We transcendent ideal but are simply their don’t have to assume that it was set up for individual needs and purposes. The state that purpose; the question is whether we is thought of as the product of an agree- should alter or abolish it. Of course, that ment among individuals to remedy cer- is not a straightforward question, for a tain problems that arise for them when given set of institutions may serve some large numbers, each with their own inter- individuals better than others. UTILITARI- ests and concerns, try to make lives for ANISM is the theory that we should maxi- themselves in circumstances of moderate mize the existence of whatever we take to scarcity. On this account, government and be valuable: if individual satisfaction is law do not come naturally to us, but we valuable, we should seek to promote a set agree to set them up so that each of us can of social arrangements that satisfy as realize gains from cooperation and many individual preferences as possible. mutual forbearance that would otherwise Other theories take equality as their basic be unobtainable. This agreement then value, or stress that certain interests – in provides an artificial basis for political liberty or basic well-being – should have authority: it legitimizes institutions like priority as matters of right over ordinary and courts, obligates each utility. contracting party to respect the decisions For much of the century, it seemed of those institutions, and places limits on that this more direct approach to social what can be done with state power. and political evaluation was preferred to There are, however, a couple of well- the social contract approach. The publi- known difficulties with the social contract cation in 1971 of John RAWLS’s book, Political Philosophy 301

A Theory of Justice, however, heralded Other philosophers have taken an even a revival of interest in contractarianism. more jaundiced view of the state. In the Rawls argued that one could use the anarchist tradition, the institutions of state image of the social contract as a theoreti- and law have always been thought disrup- cal or intellectual device for expressing tive of social and moral life. Either the the force of certain individualist values, state is seen as a coercive order superim- particularly non-utilitarian ones. As much posed on what would otherwise be a well- as any critic of the contract idea, he con- functioning social organism. Or it is seen ceded that society was not actually a vol- as an order which, in the force it uses and untary arrangement. Nevertheless, he in the obsessive sense of obligation it thought that by asking, ‘What basis for evokes, precludes and interferes with the institution-building would people have exercise of autonomous moral judgment agreed to, if (contrary to fact) they had by the individual. Either way, it is seen as come together to settle terms for coopera- a structure of force, representing an tion instead of having institutions thrust attempt by some faction in society or upon them?’, we could come up with some gang of individuals to gain the answers that were, in some sense, impar- upper hand over others. tial between individuals, while retaining So far we have discussed those the image of the consent of each and approaches which seek to explain the every individual as our fundamental point state in terms of something else – as the of orientation. Rawls’ answer to this embodiment of some ideal, as an instru- question – his principles of liberty and ment for the fulfilment of individual economic equality – have not been interests, as a crystallization of class con- universally accepted, but his book has had flict, or as an excrescence of power. On an enormous influence in setting the the other side are those philosophies modern agenda for political philosophy in which accord the state and politics reality the English-speaking world. It has initi- and moral significance in their own right, ated an intense discussion of the basis of and which use this as their point of refer- , liberty, equality, rights and – ence for thinking about justice and political most recently – community, which has obligation. dominated the subject ever since. In modern times, the most striking Among those who regard the state as theory of this kind has been that of HEGEL an artificial construction, not all view it in and the English idealists who followed individualist terms. MARX, for example, him like GREEN. According to Hegel, the maintained that though man is naturally institutions of the state embody the reality social there is nothing natural about polit- of human consciousness. In the life of an ical life. Rather, politics is the institu- individual, consciousness is something tional expression of class struggle, the incomplete, but in the life of the state it state serving to maintain the conditions attains ‘final unity’ and ‘universality’, as for the economic dominance of one class Hegel put it. ‘Since the state is mind and the orderly exploitation of others. objectified, it is only as one of its mem- Many Marxists maintain that, with the bers that the individual himself has objec- overcoming of class struggle, the need for tivity, genuine individuality, and an a specially organized apparatus of power, ethical life.’ From this perspective, patri- superimposed on the forms of society, otism, legality, and the performance of will gradually ‘wither away’. social duty take on aspects quite different 302 Popper, Karl from what they have in an instrumental, possible basis, but it has to be one that can individualist tradition. defend itself against the rival claims of Between the individualism of the Aristotelian, communitarian, and collec- social contract and the collectivism of tivist approaches to politics. [J.J.W.] Hegel are theories like those of ARISTOTLE and ROUSSEAU which see in political life a Popper, Karl R. (1902–94) Born and possibility of transforming man from an educated in Vienna, Popper taught in New animal dominated by its natural desires Zealand 1937–45 and then at the London into a genuinely moral being. Rousseau, School of Economics. His major contri- like the anarchists, was profoundly scep- butions have been to the PHILOSOPHY OF tical about existing political forms. But he SCIENCE. Although he never subscribed to held open the prospect that active partici- the early PHENOMENALIST tendencies of pation in the democratic life of a small- the VIENNA CIRCLE or to the instrumentalist scale polity might still ‘enlarge’ and interpretation of scientific theory pro- ‘ennoble’ the human spirit. fessed by some adherents of logical Aristotle’s theory was expressed empiricism, the general orientation of his slightly differently. ‘Man is by nature a thought is similar to that associated with political animal’, he said: ‘it is his nature this philosophical movement. to live in a state’. He argued that man was In his first book, The Logic of naturally fitted for political life by his Scientific Discovery (1935), Popper ability to engage in discourse about the defined scientific statements as ones good, to reach conclusions in ethics that which deny that something logically con- would be impossible for individuals to ceivable is actually realized. Accordingly, reach on their own, and to live in a soci- for a statement to be counted as scientific ety with others on the basis of a shared it was not sufficient that there should be and articulate view of right and wrong, confirmatory observational evidence for just and unjust. it; it was essential that such a statement This Aristotelian view of society as should be capable of being disproved by essentially a moral community has always some conceivable spatio-temporally been worrying to liberal individualists, who located event exemplifying a possibility stress the diversity of moral conceptions which the statement excludes. It is this and argue for political structures which are, feature of its statements that Popper thinks as far as possible, neutral between rival demarcates science from non-science. He accounts of what makes life worth living. therefore proposes an amended version of Liberalism is in part the product of an the relative frequency notion of PROBABIL- attempt to disengage the state from the ITY, in order to make such probability enforcement of virtue (not to mention reli- statements refutable and so scientific; but gious belief). It should be clear, neverthe- he also outlines a conception of logical less, that liberal arguments, however probability which, unlike the frequency well-founded, are not themselves ‘neutral’ notion, he believes to be relevant to between different views of political moral- assessing evidence for a hypothesis (see ity. We have seen that political philosophy CARNAP). In addition, the book contains a is still largely a debate about the basis on vigorous critique of BACON’S view of which judgments and evaluations are to be scientific procedure (which he calls made in the political realm. Respect for the ‘inductionism’), and argues that it is the moral autonomy of the individual is one ‘hypothetico-deductive method’ which is Positivism 303 distinctive of modern science. These They often argue that as soon as means themes are developed further in the essays have been found for advancing knowl- comprising Conjectures and Refutations edge of a subject, it ceases to belong (1963). to philosophy and becomes a separate Popper is perhaps better known as the science, or a part of one. author of The Open Society and Its Francis BACON, who considered Enemies (1945). Although it contains himself the ‘trumpeter’ of the new sci- many reflections on the logic of science, ences which were becoming detached the book is primarily a thorough-going from philosophy in the sixteenth and criticism of social philosophies (in partic- seventeenth centuries, may be regarded ular, those of PLATO, HEGEL and MARX) as the source both of positivism and of which minimize the efficacy of individual the name that was given to it in the nine- human effort and subscribe to a belief in teenth century. In his On Principles and laws of inevitable historical development. Origins (1621–4) he refers to an ancient In opposition to such philosophies, legend according to which Cupid was the Popper advocates piecemeal social engi- oldest of the gods and existed at the neering as the sound scientific approach beginning of things alone with . to social problems. Popper pursued this Cupid, according to this myth, had no par- argument further in The Poverty of ents, and Chaos no beginning. Bacon Historicism (1957). See also PHILOSOPHY interprets the absence of parents to mean OF SCIENCE, RELATIVISM. (E.N.) the absence of any cause, and surmised that ‘Chaos’ meant the ultimate matter Porphyry (c.232–c.305) Greek NEO- from which all material things are PLATONIST, editor of PLOTINUS, and author formed. This ultimate matter, he writes, of the Isagoge, an introduction to ARISTO- ‘is a thing positive and inexplicable and TLE’s logic that which was to be a standard must be taken absolutely as it is found, text for a millennium. and not to be judged by any previous con- Positivism The name ‘positivism’ is ception’. It is improper, he says, ‘to given (a) to the doctrine and movement require or imagine a cause when we come founded by the nineteenth century French to the ultimate force and positive law of philosopher Auguste COMTE; and (b) to a nature...for nothing has corrupted phi- general philosophical view of which losophy so much as this seeking after the Comte’s is only one instance. Positivism parents of Cupid; that is, that philoso- in the broader sense (referred to here with phers have not taken the principles of a small p) is the view that since all genuine things as they are found in nature, and knowledge is based on sense experience accepted them as a positive doctrine rest- and can only be advanced by means of ing on the faith of experiences; but they observation and experiment, metaphysical have rather deduced them from the laws or speculative attempts to gain knowledge of disputation, the petty conclusions of by reason unchecked by experience logic and mathematics, common notions, should be abandoned in favour of the and such wanderings of the mind beyond special sciences. All positivists hold the limits of nature’. that the task of philosophy is to under- Bacon here gives expression to a num- stand the methods by which the sciences ber of important items of the positivist are advanced but not to seek for any doctrine. He rejects the idea of ‘deducing’ independent knowledge of the world. the ultimate facts of nature. He believes 304 Positivism that philosophers should not attempt to to emphasize that the function of theories wander beyond ‘the limits of nature’. He is to co-ordinate observed facts rather thinks that there are ultimate facts that than explain them in terms of causes. It is should be approached without any ‘previ- Comte’s ‘Positive Philosophy’ which later ous conception’. He warns against a too came to be called ‘Positivism’, a name enthusiastic search for causes. He says which Comte welcomed but did not that there are ultimate facts that should be himself invent. accepted ‘on the faith of experience’. Comte’s Positivism can best be under- When he applies the adjective ‘positive’ stood in terms of his famous Law of the to these ‘inexplicable’ facts and to the Three Stages, according to which the doctrines based on them, he is not using human mind advances from a theological the word in the sense in which it is stage through a metaphysical stage to the opposed to ‘negative’, but in the sense in final positive stage. At the theological which positive religion (consisting of stage the attempt is made to penetrate to revealed doctrines, accepted by faith, and the inner nature of things and explain not provable by reason) is opposed to nat- their behaviour in terms of supernatural ural religion (the doctrines of which are beings. At the metaphysical stage, which established by rational proof), or in which is really only a sophisticated modification positive law (laid down by specific of the earlier one, explanations are given authorities for particular ) is in terms of abstractions, essences or opposed to natural law (held to be ration- forces, which, on Comte’s view, are noth- ally apprehended and independent of the ing but depersonalized deities. As exam- will of legislators). Probably as a result of ples of this mode of thought Comte cites Bacon’s usage – Bacon was much the physical doctrine of the ether, the admired by the eighteenth century empiri- chemical doctrine of affinities, and cist philosophers both in England and in the biological doctrine of vital spirits. At France – the adjective ‘positive’ came to the final, positive stage the attempt to be applied to the methods of the natural penetrate to the inner nature of things and sciences in respect of their reliance on to discover the origin and destination of the observation and use of experiment. Saint- universe is abandoned. Instead, the posi- Simon, whom Comte later served as sec- tive thinker tries to establish, by means of retary, in his Essay on the Sciences of reasonings based on observations, the Man (1813) applies the word ‘positive’ to invariable co-existences and sequences of the sciences which are based on ‘facts phenomena. It was Comte’s view that all which have been observed and analysed’. the sciences pass through these stages, as The sciences which are not so based for example, astronomy in its develop- Saint-Simon calls ‘conjectural’. Comte ment from sun-worship and astrology, and himself uses the word in this sense in an chemistry in its development from article entitled Plan of the Scientific alchemy. Like Bacon, Comte emphasized Works necessary for the Reorganisation the enhanced power over nature that the of Society which was published under advance of science brings with it. Saint-Simon’s auspices in 1822. He later Comte’s Positivism, however, was brought it to full prominence in the title much more than a philosophy of science of his major work, Course on the and an account of intellectual history. Positive Philosophy (1830–42), where he Comte held that the time will come when explains that he used the word ‘positive’ human society itself is studied by positive Positivism 305 methods. He called this positive science called Humanity, was published from ‘sociology’ and sought to lay its founda- 1893 until 1925. tions in the Course on Positive Both the theoretical side of Comte’s Philosophy and later writings. It was his Positivism and positivism in the more gen- view that to each of the three stages of eral sense are natural developments in an intellectual development there corre- age of scientific advance. Bacon may be sponded forms of society and social out- regarded not only as the first positivist, look. The theological social outlook but also as the forerunner of Comte’s cer- displays respect for tradition and authority emonial Positivism, since in The New upheld by priestly learning; metaphys- Atlantis he writes in some detail of a cult ical criticisms of the traditional doctr- of great men. And positivism has always ines bring with them an era of social formed a part of the empiricist tradition in criticism – in Europe, the Reformation philosophy: HUME argued that all genuine and the French Revolution – based on such human knowledge is concerned either unverifiable doctrines as belief in natural with matters of fact or with ‘relations of rights and the sovereignty of the people; ideas’, especially logic and mathematics. but with the advance of positive social sci- The latter kind of knowledge is certain – it ence, the negative and sterile disputations has that character which philosophers call of the revolutionary era would be ‘necessity’. But no mathematical or logi- replaced by a stable society based on cal reasoning, can, on its own, tell us any- incontrovertible social knowledge. A new thing about the nature of the world. Its form of authority would then reside in a conclusions are as Bacon said, ‘petty’. new spiritual power consisting of scien- Knowledge of matters of fact, on the other tists whose knowledge would enable hand, is knowledge about the world: it is humanity to achieve a peaceful unity of not ‘petty’, but can never have the cer- thought and action. In his later years tainty and necessity of logic and mathe- Comte elaborated this part of his doctrine matics. We can always conceive of the into a Religion of Humanity. Some of the facts of the world as different from what most eminent of his early supporters such they actually are, and there is no way of as Littré in France and George Eliot and proving that the world must be as it is. But J. S. MILL in England refused to follow this is just what metaphysical philoso- him in this. Nevertheless, Positivist phers have tried to prove. They have Societies were established in various parts claimed to provide knowledge of the of the world on the model of that world which has all the necessity of math- which Comte himself founded in 1848. ematics. But this is confusion. Knowledge In these, Humanity was the object of is either of matters of fact in the world, or ceremonial worship, and sociology was it is logical and mathematical, and hence taken as the warrant for sociolatry. The not about the world at all. Any book which movement was particularly strong in falls into neither of these categories must Latin America, but flourished for many be filled with ‘sophistry and illusion’. years in England, mainly in London and This view was very widely held in the Liverpool. Leaders of the movement here nineteenth century, but was not strongly were Richard Congreve, who resigned his represented in the universities, where var- fellowship at Oxford in order to devote ious forms of Idealist metaphysics pre- himself to its promotion, and Frederick vailed. In the 1920s, however, Hume’s Harrison. The Positivist Review, later positivist arguments were revived and 306 Postmodernism strengthened. It was now argued that a criticism in the 1950s and 1960s, where it form of words that expressed neither a designated a movement away from the verifiable matter of fact nor a truth of shiny machine-like austerity of the logic or mathematics was meaningless. ‘International Style’; soon it was extended The field of what is meaningful contains to apply to reactions against MODERNISM in only what is in principle verifiable or other branches of art as well. what is a mere matter of logic. This crite- In the 1970s the term was adopted rion excludes most of the things said in within philosophy as a rough synonym for books on metaphysics which are therefore deconstruction (see DERRIDA) and post- not false but without sense. This view is structuralism (see STRUCTURALISM). known as LOGICAL POSITIVISM. Philosophical postmodernism has two Positivism gets much of its strength aspects: it is a reaction against both MOD- from the contrast between the continuous ERNISM and MODERNITY. According to its and agreed progress which has been most prominent advocate, Jean-François achieved in the natural sciences since the Lyotard, the essence of post modernism is time of Galileo, and the situation of dead- a carefree scepticism about every possible lock and disagreement that has at all attempt to make sense of history. It anar- times obtained in metaphysical philoso- chically rejects all the ‘meta-narratives’ of phy. This seems to suggest that in the spe- progress – whether Marxist or liberal – by cial sciences a fruitful method has been reference to which modernity and mod- employed, whereas metaphysical philoso- ernism have identified themselves (see phers have got lost in an intellectual The Post-modern Condition, 1979). impasse. Comte and the earlier positivists However, the fact that modernism is argued that metaphysical problems are itself acutely critical of modernity beyond human powers, whereas the logi- threatens the coherence of the whole proj- cal positivists argued that when verifiabil- ect of philosophical postmodernism. ity is taken as a criterion of meaning, the Moreover, the postmodernist desire to problems of metaphysics are revealed as escape the superstitions of a preceding mere pseudo-problems, which remain epoch is not so much a break with tradi- unsolved not because they are difficult tional modernity, as a repetition of its but because they have no sense. The oldest refrain. Postmodernism encoun- weakness of all types of positivism is the tered formidable criticism in HABERMAS’ assumption that there are facts, each dis- Philosophical Discourse of Modernity tinct from every other, which observation (1985). [J.R.] and experiment can reveal and correlate. When they attempt to explain what these Post-structuralism See STRUCTURALISM. facts are, however, positivists cannot agree, and Bacon’s ‘simple natures’, Pragmatism The term ‘pragmatism’ was Hume’s ‘impressions’, and the ‘atomic introduced into philosophy by the American facts’ of twentieth century positivists philosopher C. S. PEIRCE in 1878 to describe raise theoretical problems which are as the theory that the meaning of a word ‘lies elusive as those of self-confessed meta- exclusively in its conceivable bearing upon physicians. (H.B.A.) the conduct of life; so that, since obviously nothing that might not result from experi- Postmodernism The word ‘post- ment can have any direct bearing upon modern’ gained currency in architectural conduct, if one can define accurately all Predestination 307 the conceivable experimental phenomena down to the question ‘what concrete which the affirmation or denial of a con- difference will its being true make in one’s cept could imply, one will have therein a actual life? How will the truth be realized? complete definition of the concept, and What experiences will be different from there is absolutely nothing more in it’. those which would obtain if the belief were This doctrine undoubtedly has, as Peirce false? What, in short, is the truth’s cash- intended, important consequences, such value in experiential terms?’ But the simi- as that ‘almost every proposition of onto- larity to Peirce is superficial: his doctrine logical metaphysics is either meaningless that the meaning of an hypothesis can be gibberish...or else downright absurd’. determined by considering its experimen- But Peirce took ‘pragmatism’ as a name tal consequences is conflated with the for a method of getting clear about the doctrine that the true is the good in the meanings of words rather than a complete way of belief to yield the conclusion that philosophical position; being a confirmed the true is what has good experimental coiner of technical terms he would have consequences. been quite as willing to subscribe to The notion of pragmatism became ‘’ and ‘’ as to ‘prag- connected with this doctrine about truth, matism’. And he certainly did not regard partly owing to the controversies between his pragmatic maxim as being in a theory James, Dewey and Schiller on the one side of truth as opposed to meaning; to him and RUSSELL on the other. The gravamen of it seemed evident that truth consisted Russell’s attack (see ‘Pragmatism’, 1909, in correspondence between statement and ‘James’ Conception of Truth’, 1908) and fact. is that the pragmatists have confused the But very early the word ‘pragmatism’ meaning of ‘true’ with the criteria we use was borrowed by other philosophers who for deciding whether a belief is true, gave it new and vaguer meanings, and thereby surrendering to an irrationalist Peirce responded by writing that ‘to serve position. Largely as a result of Russell’s the precise purpose of expressing the orig- attacks Dewey simply abandoned the use inal definition, he begs to announce the of the word ‘true’ and claimed that it could birth of the word “pragmaticism”, which is be adequately replaced by a notion of ugly enough to be safe from kidnappers’. ‘warranted assertibility’. The earliest philosophers thus to borrow Lying behind this view about truth is the concept of pragmatism were William the conviction of James and Schiller that JAMES, F. C. S. SCHILLER and John DEWEY; everything, including thought, must be what they have in common is first and understood in the light of human purpose: foremost a theory about truth which has thoughts are but tools for achieving certain since been regarded as the essence of prag- ends, and they must be judged as such. matism. In his Pragmatism, James said Hence ‘pragmatism’ has come to be a that ‘ideas become true just so far as they name for any position which lays emphasis help us to get into satisfactory relations on results as a test of satisfactoriness. The with other parts of our experience’ and that sense which Peirce, its inventor, gave to the ‘the true is the name of whatever proves word is now obsolete. See also AMERICAN itself to be good in the way of belief’. The PHILOSOPHY.(J.O.U.) connexion with Peirce’s views perhaps comes out when James says that the ques- Predestination See FREEDOM OF THE tion of the truth of an idea or belief comes WILL, DETERMINISM. 308 Prescriptivism

Prescriptivism Prescriptivism is the ethical questions. Except for the SOPHISTS, doctrine, derived from KANT and revived in whose tradition Socrates in this respect by HARE, that ethical judgments are essen- belonged, earlier philosophoi or ‘lovers of tially commands or imperatives, rather wisdom’ had subordinated human prob- than representations of facts. See ETHICS. lems to the assessment of external physi- cal reality. Thus those whom we term Pre-Socratics The term ‘Pre-Socratics’ Pre-Socratics were called by ARISTOTLE denotes a dozen or so of the earliest ‘investigators of nature’, physiologoi, Greek thinkers, down to the time of because they studied the – the SOCRATES, who attempted to define the nature or constitution of things as a constitution of the world and the nature of whole. Many of them had more special- reality. They range from THALES, active in ized physical interests too; indeed some the early sixth century BC, to DEMOCRITUS of the earlier ones, like the Milesians in the latter part of the fifth. The earliest Thales and ANAXIMANDER, were many- Pre-Socratics came from , the Greek sided thinkers who won fame with their colonization area in the centre of the west contemporaries not for their theoretical coast of Asia Minor. City states like accounts of reality – which in some cases Miletus were materially prosperous in the may have been of only incidental impor- first half of the sixth century and had tance even to their authors – but for their close trading contacts with the foreign ability to solve practical problems like cultures of Egypt and Lydia (and so with measuring the distance of a ship at sea, Babylonia) as well as with the Greek transporting an army over a river, or accu- colonies of the Black Sea and the west. In rately delimiting the seasons. All the Pre- addition, Ionia was itself heir to an old lit- Socratics tried to describe the nature of erary culture going back beyond Homer. the heavenly bodies; some – Thales and These conditions encouraged the surge of Pythagoras most conspicuously – had speculative thought in Miletus, Ephesus, special mathematical interests apart from Colophon and Samos. The interest in astronomy; Empedocles, Anaxagoras and philosophy soon spread overseas: Diogenes of Apollonia were concerned PYTHAGORAS migrated from Samos to one with medicine and embryology; and most of the Greek colonies of Southern Italy, of them seem to have attacked notorious while XENOPHANES wandered all over the natural problems like the causes of earth- Greek world. PARMENIDES and ZENO were quakes, rainbows, magnetism or the natives of Elea in south-west Italy and flooding of the Nile. It is important not to EMPEDOCLES came from Acragas in Sicily. overlook this strong practical interest, Thus most of the Pre-Socratics belonged combined as it surprisingly was with a either in the east or the west of the Greek quite unempirical dogmatism when it world, and Athens became involved only came to dealing with larger problems of when ANAXAGORAS moved there from the nature of the world. What gave these Ionia in the seventies of the fifth century. thinkers the right to be considered as In spite of their differences from each philosophers, unlike the other other, the Pre-Socratics form a logical, astronomers, geographers and doctors not merely a chronological, category. who were active especially in the latter Socrates turned Greek speculative half of the period, was their assumption thought in a totally new direction by that the world possessed some kind of rejecting physics and concentrating on integral unity and determinability which Pre-Socratics 309 could be understood and explained in to other accounts rain is the seed of sky rational terms. The first part of this which fertilizes earth so as to produce assumption can be found in earlier quasi- plants and crops. This quasi-mythological mythological cosmogonies and theogonies, cosmogony is complicated by the synthe- but it was the treatment of these problems sis in the Theogony of several different in straightforward descriptive terms and versions. A cruder and more completely the rejection of personification that gave mythopoeic story which occurs later in Thales and his successors, for later Greeks the poem, according to which Ouranos as for us, the title of ‘philosopher’. lies continuously with and refuses to Although they abandoned much of the allow her to bring forth offspring until he mythological language, the Pre-Socratics is mutilated by Kronos, probably repre- continued to be affected at certain points sents a more primitive version by which by pre-philosophical assumptions. When the original chaos was produced by the Thales declared that all things came from initial separation of earth and sky. At all water, he was probably giving rationalis- events the mythological idea that different tic expression to a partly mythic Egyptian components of the world are connected idea, paralleled in Babylonia, that the with deities who have a traceable ances- world arose from Nun, the goddess of try, as human beings have, led on to the primeval waters, which was itself a reflex- view that the world as a whole can be ion of the annual re-appearance of the derived from a single ancestor or pair of earth as the Nile recedes. A more impor- ancestors – for example, earth, or earth tant debt to myth appears in the central and sky. This assumption deeply affected presupposition that the world is coherent, the earlier Pre-Socratics, who replaced intelligible and unified in spite of the the Gaia or Chaos of Hesiod with a single diversity of its appearance. This presup- originative material like the water of position formulated itself in the anthropo- Thales or the air or mist of ANAXIMENES. morphic genetical tendencies of Even where cosmogony was rejected – as, traditional mythology. Thus in the for example, by HERACLITUS, who Hesiodic Theogony, a poem probably declared that the world-order was made compiled in the early seventh century, the by neither gods nor men, but had existed family of gods is traced back to the very always – the assumption of an essential beginning of the world, when Gaia, unity and determinability in the world mother earth, together with the different was retained. This important general pre- parts of the underworld, appears as the supposition, the reasons for which were first distinct cosmological entity out of an not discussed by the Greeks themselves, originative gulf called chaos (which was presumably also due in part to the means, not confusion, but simply ‘gap’). observation of natural regularities, of the Eros or sexual love – the anthropomor- sun, the seasons and so on, which encour- phic motive for further differentiation – aged the comfortable belief that the world comes on the scene at the same time. Gaia worked in accordance with laws not gives birth to the male sky-god, Ouranos, completely unlike those which ordered and to mountains and the inner seas; then human societies. The narrower view of sky-god and earth-goddess mate to pro- the main natural constituents as divine duce Okeanos, the encircling river that people with a single remote ancestor was connects them. Further generation takes a more specialized manifestation of this place from these same parents; according anthropomorphic approach. 310 Pre-Socratics

The survival of anthropomorphism which have survived through being can also be seen in the devices used by quoted by later authors of antiquity. Of some Pre-Socratics to account for the the Milesians there is almost nothing – a ultimate source of physical change. The phrase or a sentence of each; of Eros or sexual love of Hesiod found its Pythagoras, nothing at all; of Heraclitus, counterpart in the idea of legal retribution just over a hundred genuine sayings, in Anaximander, of war or strife in mostly very short (the longest consists of Heraclitus, or of love and strife in fifty-five words). There are about one Empedocles. Indeed, less primitive hundred and fifty hexameter lines of thinkers have had to fall back on Parmenides, about three hundred and metaphor here; for example, Aristotle forty of Empedocles; but this may have used Eros to explain how the Prime formed something over a third of the orig- Mover can move without being moved. inal works, which were probably quite Two other points at which the Pre- brief. Of Anaxagoras we possess about a Socratics were influenced by inherited score of fragments amounting to approxi- pre-philosophical assumptions were in mately a thousand words in all; these their conceptions of divinity and of the form probably not less than an eighth and soul. To a large extent they abandoned the not more than a half of his original book. traditional Olympian pantheon, but they Of Democritus, known to have been an all retained the idea that what was all- extremely prolific writer, between two powerful and indestructible was divine and three hundred fragments survive, (thus the Milesians seem to have applied nearly all of an ethical character and this description to their primary kinds of largely irrelevant to his more unusual matter). As for soul, its constitution was physical theories. Extracts from original largely ignored by the earliest Pre- works are, of course, only one source of Socratics; but the Pythagoreans, information about the ideas of a dead Heraclitus and Empedocles saw it as a thinker, and we rely heavily for our physical link between humanity and the knowledge of the Pre-Socratics upon outside world. These thinkers were summaries and commentaries made by reinterpreting the popular idea that the historians of thought in ancient times. soul is related to aither, the material of Thus PLATO himself made brief incidental the pure upper air and of the stars. At judgments, many of them of a humor- the same time confusion was caused in ous or ironical kind, on some of his Pre-Socratic psychology by failure to predecessors – Heraclitus, Parmenides and distinguish perception from intelligence Anaxagoras in particular. Plato seems to or mind; here the effects are evident of have taken seriously, but the influential but inconsistent treat- used most of the other Pre-Socratics as ment of soul in Homer, where psyche symbols for various kinds of wrong-head- meant sometimes life-stuff, sometimes edness. Aristotle, on the other hand, consciousness-stuff, and sometimes intel- attempted systematic assessments of his ligence. predecessors. The Pre-Socratic physicists 1 Sources. We do not possess were of special interest to him because, in anything like the intact works of any Pre- spite of grave misunderstandings about Socratic thinker. What we have takes the causation, they seemed to have been mak- form of isolated fragments, varying in ing what he called ‘lisping’ attempts to length from a word to a few sentences, express the truths which he revealed. The Pre-Socratics 311 value of Aristotle’s detailed opinions on metaphorical and poetical language did his early predecessors is disputed, and it not always meet with sympathetic inter- has been demonstrated that he was capa- pretation from the scientist . ble on occasion of seriously distorting Thus his history, even if it had survived their views. At the same time Aristotle’s entire, would itself require much interpre- information and judgments are always tation and modification, and even then valuable and often indubitably correct; would often not take us back beyond and they can only be safely rejected in Aristotle; but except for a section on sen- those cases where we possess reliable sation it too exists only in fragments. contrary evidence, which for the most Fortunately an unknown Stoic in the sec- part can be provided only by relevant ond century BC made a summary of it; original fragments, and where in addition this was recopied and expanded by one his motives for distortion can be detected. Aetius three or four hundred years later, The correct evaluation of Aristotle’s and his work has been reconstructed from judgments is particularly important extracts in two slightly later extant writ- because virtually all subsequent ancient ers. One more source must be mentioned: accounts of the Pre-Socratics were the Neoplatonist Simplicius is of great strongly influenced by him. The chief importance because, although he lived a source of information for later writers thousand years after the Pre-Socratics, he was The Opinions of the Physicists, a his- found it desirable for the purposes of his tory compiled by Aristotle’s colleague commentaries on two treatises of THEOPHRASTUS as part of the great Aristotle to set out the views of some of Peripatetic encyclopedia of knowledge. Aristotle’s predecessors in their own But Theophrastus himself, though on words; for by his time many of the Pre- many points he seems to have checked Socratic writings, and even the later sum- original sources, was also heavily influ- maries of them, had become extremely enced by Aristotle’s opinions, which are rare. To him, then, we owe in particular a sometimes reproduced in words borrowed great proportion of what we possess of from Aristotle’s Physics and Metaphysics. the original words of Parmenides, In many cases he seems to have been Empedocles, Anaxagoras and Diogenes unable to ascertain disputed points, no of Apollonia. doubt partly because not all the Pre- Of the chronology and biography of Socratics were still readily available in the Pre-Socratics we are also imperfectly their own words. Indeed, although the informed. For a crucial hundred years Greeks themselves assumed that each between the rise of the Sophistic move- Pre-Socratic (though not Pythagoras) ment and the foundation of the Lyceum wrote at least one book, to which they they did not greatly interest most Greeks. usually assigned the stock title ‘On Aristotle was interested in their ideas but Nature’, it is doubtful whether some of not their personal lives; so it was left to the earlier ones produced written works the mendacious Alexandrian biographers that achieved wide currency even in their from the third to the first century BC to own time. They may have relied more on produce such dubious stories as that oral propagation, and the extracts from Heraclitus buried himself in dung or that Heraclitus, notably, are primarily framed Empedocles cast himself into Mount as oral apophthegms. Even when Pre- Etna. A few plainer facts have survived, Socratic books were available their often which depend upon more reputable 312 Pre-Socratics sources. Most of the chronological infor- and the atomists Leucippus and mation, too, goes back to a more Democritus) and tended to revert to tradi- respectable but still largely speculative tional Ionian explanations of detailed side of Alexandrian learning. Sotion cosmological phenomena. classified the Pre-Socratics into eastern 2 The Milesians. Thales and his and western schools and, following two successors, Anaximander and Theophrastus, related them to each other Anaximenes, are sometimes grouped as master and pupil. Then the chronogra- together as ‘Milesians’. They considered pher Apollodorus left a standard account, that the unity of the world was to be found in verse, of the dates and opinions of in the material from which it had origi- philosophers and others; he assumed that nated, which Thales thought to be water. each thinker’s period of greatest activity Aristotle claimed, rather vaguely, that came at the age of forty, which he made to Thales ‘took his supposition from seeing coincide with the nearest of a series of the nurture of all things to be moist’. Now epochs or dated historical events. Further, Thales may have been affected by obser- a pupil was regularly made forty years vations like this, but the primary stimulus younger than his putative master. for his choice of water was probably the Fortunately we know a few objective near-eastern story that the world arose dates by which to check Apollodorus: for from a great surrounding flood. He was example, the eclipse predicted by Thales undoubtedly interested in Egypt and also must have been that of 585 BC, and had opportunities, through Sardis, for Melissus, the follower of Parmenides, contact with the Babylonian records on was Samian admiral against Athens in which his most famous exploit – the 441. In general the Apollodoran dating, prediction of an eclipse – must have though over-schematic, seems to be depended. Unfortunately it is hard to tell roughly reliable. how far Thales carried these theories. Was The ancient distinction between East- the unity of the world founded, in the old Greek and West-Greek schools is useful genetical manner, on a distant origin from up to a point. The westerns were less a single parent, namely water? Or was the materialistic in their search for unity, world still somehow made of water? indeed the Eleatics rejected the sense- Aristotle naturally assumes the latter, world altogether. In Pythagoras and since it fits his own idea of a persistent Empedocles there was a mystical or reli- material substrate. But Thales probably gious trend that would not have been tol- did not distinguish the alternatives very erated in the more matter-of-fact, if no clearly, or specify precisely how the world less dogmatic, atmosphere of eastern, achieved its present diversity. According Ionian thought. But there are many excep- to Aristotle he declared that all things are tions: Pythagoras was an Ionian by full of gods, and that magnetic stone, upbringing, though he moved to southern since it can move iron, must possess soul. Italy; the Ionian Heraclitus discovered But if apparently inanimate things possess unity in structure rather than material; soul and therefore life, then the world as a Melissus, though a follower of Parmenides, whole might be penetrated with soul or was an Ionian from Samos. Apart from life, which – because of its immense the Sicilian Empedocles, the post-Eleatic power and scope – must be divine and so pluralists came mostly from the eastern could cause the development of the present end of the Greek world (e.g. Anaxagoras, plurality. Pre-Socratics 313

Anaximander was somewhat younger cosmogonical substance: air/mist (aer in than Thales, whom he must have known. Greek) or breath. Anaximander’s probable He seems to have felt that if the origina- objection was circumvented by the tive stuff were identical with a present hypothesis that the originative stuff can world-component like Thales’ water, then take on other forms, and become the other the other components – for example fire, materials of our world, as a result of con- which is in many ways opposed to water – densation and rarefaction – variation of could not have asserted their identity. its amount in any one place. This expla- Anaximander accepted the idea of a nation of physical change – wrongly single originative material, divine and all- thought to be confirmed by the observa- encircling, but called it ‘the Indefinite’ – tion that the temperature of exhaled implying that it was both boundless in breath varies with the compression of the extent and different from any nameable mouth – succeeded in making material constituent of our world. Cosmogony monism logically feasible for the first took place when a nucleus that produced time. The consequent cosmogony and fire and dark mist became separated from cosmology were not too implausible, the Indefinite; the mist at its centre solid- since mist does seem to permeate many ified into earth, and was surrounded by a changes in Nature: rarefied, it turns into ball of fire which burst to form the heav- fire (for lightning bursts out of cloud), enly bodies. These were wheels of flame condensed, it becomes earth by way of encased in mist, each shining out through water, which seems to turn into earth, for a single aperture. The earth, according to example, when the sea recedes. But Anaximander, was a broad flat-topped Anaximenes’ choice of basic substance cylinder which stays in its place because was not entirely scientific; he likened the it is equidistant from everything else – a cosmic material (also called ‘breath’) to brilliant advance on Thales or the human soul, which is often associated Anaximenes who held that the earth floats with breath; in this way the motive of on water or air. Within the world, things change was still largely anthropomorphic. are divided into mutually opposed sub- 3 Pythagoreanism. In Anaximenes’ stances like heat and cold, winter and maturity (around 535 BC) Pythagoras summer, day and night, whose interac- migrated from Samos to Italy and estab- tions are motivated and regulated by a lished an exclusive semi-religious, semi- sociological metaphor: first they philosophical society. He wrote nothing encroach on each other and then they ‘pay himself, so assessments are particularly penalty and retribution for their injustice precarious. He taught that the soul according to the assessment of Time’. migrates from one body and species to (The use of traditional poetical language another; consequently all living things are and the absence of an abstract vocabulary akin, and abstinence from meat, as well as was a constant brake on philosophical other taboos, had to be observed. In com- development in this period.) The cosmo- mon with those known as Orphics he logical regularity was derived from the believed that the soul must be kept pure. divine Indefinite substance itself, which An important means of purification was thus transmitted its unity to the developed music. Here the mystical and scientific world. trends link up, for Pythagoras discovered In the next generation Anaximenes by the experiment of stopping a single reverted to the concept of a specific string that the major harmonic intervals 314 Pre-Socratics can be expressed in ratios of whole num- have affected Empedocles and bers. If music, which is related to soul, is Anaxagoras; his destructive rationalism numerical, then the whole world must was probably more generally influential. somehow be numerical too. Pythagoras’ Apart from attacking anthropomorphism, followers, developing this typically over- he appears to have parodied the exagger- bold induction, seem to have assigned ation and dogmatism of Ionian physical concrete bulk (which they took to be the theories by such suggestions as that the mark of existence) to the points which, as sun continues each day in a straight line. units, made up numbers and delimited Although not primarily interested in lines, planes and volumes. Hence physi- physics, and a professed sceptic over the cal objects, composed as they were of acquisition of certain knowledge, determinable geometrical shapes, could Xenophanes is not without scientific be resolved into sums of concrete unit- importance. He used the testimony of points. Further, the world could be marine fossils found inland to show that analysed into ten pairs of opposites, of the earth must once have been mud – a which the archetype was limit and the rare use at this period of rational infer- unlimited. These were the elements of ence from a well-testified and correctly number, too: odd numbers were limited, assessed observation. even numbers unlimited. The world came Further modifications of the Milesian into being when the unit as limit drew in approach were made by Heraclitus, active the unlimited and subjected it to various in Ephesus probably around 510–480. determinations. Most of these ideas were Philosophically as well as socially an probably later than Pythagoras; but the extreme individualist, he abandoned tra- master himself had ascribed special ditional cosmogony and insisted that the importance to the decade, and there is no unity of things was to be found in their reason to remove from him the famous essential structure or arrangement rather theorem associated with his name. It may than their material. This common struc- have been a follower, though, who drew ture or logos, which was not superficially the full damaging implication from the apparent, was chiefly embodied in a sin- consequent irrationality of the diagonal: gle kinetic material, fire. It was responsi- that some natural lengths, all of which ble both for the regularity of natural should be composed of unit-points, could changes and for the essential connexion of not be expressed in terms of whole num- opposites (Heraclitus accepted this tradi- bers at all. tional analysis of differentiation) through Pythagoras’ longer-lived coeval balanced interaction. The regularity Xenophanes, likewise an emigrant from underlying change was for Heraclitus the Ionia, devoted much of his poetry to significant thing, but like the Greek poets attacking the traditional Homeric descrip- he also emphasized the ubiquity of tion of the gods – both their immortality change (and was consequently subjected and the very basis of their anthropomor- to exaggerated interpretation, for example phism: it seemed absurd that each species by Cratylus). He likened change to strife should envisage gods in their own shape. or war; for without reaction between Xenophanes replaced them with a single, opposites and world-masses the logos and motionless god who ‘shakes all things by the unified cosmos would cease to exist. the thought of his mind’. This idea of a Philosophy was not a game: knowledge of divine, intellectual source of change may physics was ethically essential, for Pre-Socratics 315 humanity is part of its environment, and is thought by many to have directed his the soul, which in its unadulterated state paradoxes (which show that space is con- is a kind of fire, is connected through sen- tinuous, not composed of discrete points) sation and breathing with the fiery logos- against the Pythagorean view of matter. A constituents of the outside world. This curious and professedly ‘deceitful’ appen- enabled understanding to be distinguished dix, in which Parmenides outlines a cos- from mere perception. mology based not on one but on two 4 The Eleatics. The development of substances probably reflects, as well as these fruitful ideas was interrupted by a some reaction against Pythagoreanism, philosophical explosion on the other side his doubts over rejecting the world of of the Greek world. Parmenides wrote a manifest experience. Certainly it gives a poem claiming that we can only meaning- hint that pluralism is a possible escape fully say of anything that ‘it is’. The pred- from his dilemma. icate ‘is not’ was literally nonsense: To meet this dilemma Empedocles not-being was impossible, inexpressible, posited no less than four ‘roots’ or perma- and inconceivable; and since not-being nent kinds of matter: fire, water, earth was equated at this time with empty (Heraclitus’ world-masses), together with space, it followed that there could be no air, the concrete existence of which he movement. But Parmenides rejected confirmed by observation. To these were change on metaphysical rather than phys- added two kinetic agents, Love and ical grounds, since any change involved Strife – motives of attraction and repulsion its subject in not-being what it was which, anthropomorphic as they obvi- before. (This argument involved a confu- ously are, were described concretely as sion between the existential and the pred- ‘equal in length and breadth’ to the four icative ‘is’ which was not cleared up until roots. The different substances in Nature, Plato.) From the single premise ‘it is’ apart from unmixed earth, water, and so Parmenides proceeded to the conclusion on, were compounds of roots welded that reality or ‘being’ is homogeneous, together by the admixture of Love. motionless, solid and indivisible: ‘since Empedocles felt obliged to propose a uni- there is a furthest limit, it [Being] is form stage of existence – not a true cos- bounded from every side, like the mass of mogonical origin, which might imply a well-rounded sphere’. Parmenides was illegitimate ‘becoming’, but a recurrent still obliged to use materialistic language, period in a cycle – in which all things are and would no doubt, if pressed, have said mixed by Love in a homogeneous mass that this reality was concrete. From now equivalent to Parmenides’ ‘sphere’ of on, however, a more abstract language Being. Only Strife, by coming somewhat was developed, and it became possible to obscurely to ‘the lowest depths of the vor- attribute to the new kinds of reality a tex’, is excluded. Then, by the gradual status different from that of phenomena. intrusion of Strife, the roots begin to sep- Parmenides, ignoring Heraclitus here, arate into different combinations, until seems to have started from the old prob- eventually Love is excluded in turn and lem of how an initial unity can turn into a Strife has separated the roots into isolated plural world. His emphasis on ‘limit’ sug- masses. A world could only be formed in gests that he was deliberately rejecting the one of the two intermediate stages ‘unlimited’ component of Pythagorean between the total domination of Love or DUALISM. His follower ZENO of Elea, too, Strife: our world belongs to the stage 316 Pre-Socratics when Strife is increasing. Each intermedi- that matter is infinitely divisible, ate cosmological stage produces different evidently failing to notice that this was stages of animal evolution, generating incompatible with the principle of ‘a monsters and bisexual creatures as well as portion of everything in everything’. At the more efficient species of our present all events his theory, though complicated world. Sensation can be valid, since it is and in places self-refuting, preserved caused by material effluences from appearances without contradicting the objects entering pores in the sense- Eleatic premise; it further avoided the dif- organs: earth is perceived by earthy com- ficulties of Empedocles’ cyclical scheme, ponents in the body, fire by fire, as in and the objection that the formation of vision, and so on. Empedocles also wrote natural substances out of Empedoclean a more mystical poem called ‘roots’ seemed to involve coming-to-be of ‘Purifications’, in which the soul, origi- a kind. nally divine, is polluted by Strife and cast 5 The Sophists. It was at about this into the world of opposites; after succes- time that the Sophists, professional teach- sive incarnations it may purify itself and ers of wisdom, made themselves felt. regain the realms of Love. They believed that the current physical Anaxagoras, like Empedocles active theories and the Eleatic rejection of the around the middle of the fifth century, phenomenal world were either over-com- also maintained that physical change, plicated or absurd or both, and were in being merely the aggregation and disper- any case irrelevant to practical life. sion of different kinds of permanently and Gorgias, the most impor- existing matter, did not imply that ‘what tant of them, taught that the constitution is’ must turn into the vicious ‘what is not’. of the world lay outside human knowl- But for him these kinds of matter were not edge, and that we should assess things on four or six, but as many as there were dif- the basis of our own individual experi- ferent natural substances. Originally these ence. Yet there now appeared a much sim- were all mixed together in a sort of pler physical explanation of the world and Parmenidean One; then the motive sub- its changes. ATOMISM was probably stance, now described as Mind, and ‘sub- invented around 440–30 by LEUCIPPUS, of tlest of all objects and purest’, started a whom we know very little, and elaborated rotation and so, by separation and re- by Democritus, before being adopted by aggregation, a cosmogony. Objects in the EPICURUS and expounded by LUCRETIUS. world were compounded of lumps or par- The atomists began by denying the ticles called ‘seeds’. There is ‘a portion of Eleatic contention that empty space, or everything in everything’ – a portion, the void, cannot exist. There is not-being, probably, of every natural substance in this sense; in addition there is homoge- (except Mind, which only exists in some neous, solid matter, which is not continu- things) in every seed. Each seed has the ous (as was Parmenides’ Being) but apparent character of the portion that contained in an infinite number of indi- predominates. Thus the original unity is visible, invisible, atoms. Reality consists, preserved in the developed world, while then, in atoms and the void. The atoms evident alterations can be explained by are constantly in motion, colliding and the ratio of the portions of different rebounding; no metaphorical cause of seeds. Anaxagoras argued, against both motion was needed. Atoms differ only in the Pythagoreans and the Eleatic Zeno, position and shape, but sometimes they Pre-Socratics 317 get caught up with each other to form com- brought physical speculation to a depress- plexes, and a world arises when the colli- ingly sudden halt; but by his interest in sions and rebounds of an isolated group of definitions Socrates initiated a deeper atoms happen to start a vortex, where study of logic, without which philosophy heavy complexes of atoms are driven to the could not have made further progress. centre, light ones to the circumference. The Pre-Socratics, who for the most Human beings are themselves mere com- part made little appeal to their lay con- plexes of atoms, their souls being made of temporaries, plainly had great influence mobile spherical ones. Leucippus adapted on their philosophical successors; nega- the Empedoclean theory of sensation: tively, in the main, on Plato, but positively objects emit effluences, ‘membranes’ of on Aristotle in his revival of physics. atoms which, sometimes distorted in pas- Atomism, furthermore, survived for cen- sage, make physical contact with the turies through Epicurus, while Stoicism atoms of the sense-organ and then of the was deeply indebted to Heraclitus. But it soul. It follows that there are no real qual- may legitimately be asked whether their ities: appearances are secondary (but not fragmentary science and philosophy have therefore negligible; Democritus had a any value other than as a necessary prim- developed ethic, aimed at moral well- itive stage on the way to serious specula- being), and in reality there are only atoms tion. The inevitable deficiencies of these and void. Thus atomism simultaneously lively thinkers are striking but instructive: fulfilled the conditions of Eleatic logic their love of inference unconfirmed, for and the aims of Milesian material the most part, by observation, let alone monism. An entirely a priori construction, experiment; their retention of mythical and it has little in common with modern metaphorical explanations of change; their atomic theory, though this itself grew out inadequate linguistic resources, which of GASSENDI’s revival of Democritean delayed or distorted the formation of atomism. abstract concepts; their reluctance to exam- Various other theories of an eclectic ine what was implied by knowledge, and nature were propounded from the mid their rudimentary logic. Yet they also had fifth century onwards; by Hippon, for great virtues; and apart from the admirable example, and . Cratylus exag- quality of the rapid and systematic intellec- gerated Heracliteanism by holding that tual progress from Thales to Democritus, or everything is in flux all the time, while the comprehensiveness of systems like that Diogenes of Apollonia produced an of Heraclitus, the Pre-Socratics illustrate in unusually coherent old-style monistic a particularly clear form certain problems system in which air is basic substance, of materialistic philosophy and the limita- with warm air as divine and intelligent, tions of some of their classical solutions: directing all things for the best. This was problems, for example, of presupposed the kind of teleology that Socrates unity and observed plurality; of unseen or wanted; but Socrates rejected physics structural types of unity; of the physical and concentrated on ethics and the soul – source of change; of the evaluation of soul or mind being the obvious teleologi- sense-perception, and the interrelation of cal agent in his still anthropomorphic ethics and physics. In this respect view. In many ways the Socratic reaction, Pre-Socratic thought may perhaps be said aided by the Sophists and by current to have philosophical as well as historical anthropological, medical and social ideas, value. (G.S.K.) 318 Price, H. H.

Price, Henry Habberley (1899–1984) cannot, he thought, be explained from a English philosopher, who worked at radical empiricist standpoint; nor could Oxford and wrote mainly on perception the basic notions of morals. Price fol- and PHILOSOPHY OF MIND, and also on psy- lowed BUTLER in his rejection of psycho- chical research. In his first book, logical HEDONISM, but did not share Perception (1932), he rejected previous Butler’s confidence that duty and interest theories about the relation between for the most part coincide in this life. He SENSE-DATA and material objects, espe- argued that a hereafter must be postulated cially the theory that the latter cause the in order to make sense of our moral expe- former and so are known solely by their rience; but he saw that an infinitely long effects. In his view, sense-data not only after-life cannot be demonstrated in this belong to the physical object, but are way. Particularly valuable throughout related intimately among themselves, Price’s moral philosophy are his serious forming a ‘family’, or a set of series acknowledgement of the facts of moral each converging on a standard member; conflict and his tough-minded refusal to these standard members compose the accept over-simplifying ‘supreme princi- Standard Solid, which has the shape ples’, such as those of the egoists and ordinarily called ‘the real shape of the utilitarians of his day. (R.W.H.) thing’. For Price a ‘thing’ is a family of sense-data together with the coincident physical object, but he could say so little Prichard, Harold Arthur (1871–1947) about the object that he ran close to The English philosopher H. A. Prichard PHENOMENALISM. His later Thinking was probably the outstanding member of and Experience (1953) rejected theories the realist movement at Oxford of which which make thinking consist entirely Cook WILSON was the acknowledged of the use of symbols or of images or leader. His only large-scale publication on of concepts treated as subsistent objects, the theory of knowledge was Kant’s Theory contending that recognition is basic of Knowledge (1909), a polemical work in and that concepts are ‘recognitional which he opposes his realism to KANT. In capacities’. (R.HALL.) later years he modified these views, hold- ing that we perceive only coloured Price, Richard (1723–91) English patches and not bodies, of which we theologian and Minister at Newington could have only inferential knowledge. In Green, London. His Review of the moral philosophy his paper ‘Does Moral Principal Questions in Morals (1758) is Philosophy Rest on a Mistake?’ (1912) the earliest clear and cogently developed was influential in the revival of intuition- DEONTOLOGICAL theory – that is, an ist ethics: Prichard claimed that we could account of morality based on the concepts know, simply by attending to the matter, of ‘right’ and ‘obligation’. At loggerheads that certain acts are duties, while any with the school of HUTCHESON and HUME, attempt at a general theory of why such Price saw these as indefinable, a priori acts are duties was a mistake. In ethics, and objective. He attacked not simply however, as in epistemology, he grew their arguments for an ethic of ‘senti- sceptical in later years; in Duty and ment’, but the basis of their EMPIRICISM Ignorance of Fact (1932) he admitted a itself. Universal notions and concepts considerable element of subjectivity into such as substance, duration, and infinity the assessment of our duties. (J.O.U.) Protagoras 319

Probability Probability has given rise CARNAP, BRAITHWAITE, RUSSELL and to several conflicting philosophical theo- many other philosophers agreed that the ries. If we concentrate on such statements notion of probability is used in both the as ‘the probability of heads when a penny frequency way and in the evidence- is tossed is one half’, then the frequency assessing way and that we must under- theory may well seem most plausible. The stand it according to context. When a statement will be taken to mean, roughly, numerical statement is in principle possi- that in the long run the frequency with ble, some explanation of a frequency type which a tossed coin will fall heads is given; but where a statement takes the upwards will be one in two. Special form ‘it is probably the case that so and attractions of this theory are that, in a so’, where no numerical valuation seems well-known version of it, it follows from plausible, the word ‘probably’ is taken to the definition of probability that the be indicative of caution. It should be axioms of the mathematical theory must added that the great classical French be applicable and that it manifestly ties up mathematical writers (see PASCAL) probability very closely with statistical defined the probability of an event as the data. On the other hand it is very difficult ratio of favourable to total possibilities; indeed to give a satisfactory version of this is quite inadequate for philosophical this theory when, as is necessary, more purposes, since the ‘possibilities’ referred accurate expressions are substituted for to are hardly distinguishable from proba- ‘in the long run’ to indicate what fre- bilities and it is hard to see how to add up quency is relevant. The frequency theory favourable possibilities without falling was first stated in detail by VENN in into severe logical difficulties. (J.O.U.) his Logic of Chance (1866); other well- Proclus See NEOPLATONISM. known exponents are von MISES and Reichenbach. Protagoras The Greek sophist If we turn our attention to such Protagoras of Abdera, who flourished statements as ‘there is probably life on c.450–40 BC, is credited with several Mars’ the frequency theory becomes spe- books on logic, cultural origins, and cially unplausible; when dealing with the human behaviour, and was famous as a probability of theories, hypotheses and teacher of areté, practical excellence or special events it is hard to see how we political and rhetorical skill, working in could be referring to any sequence of several cities and taking fees for his events or any frequency within such a teaching. He attacked the dogmatism of series, though some philosophers have contemporary religion and philosophy, attempted to sustain such a view. When saying ‘I am unable to know about the dealing with such examples it is much gods either that they exist or that they do more plausible to regard the word ‘proba- not, or what form they have; for there are ble’ as indicating that the statement ‘there many things that prevent knowledge – is life on Mars’ should be accepted with both the obscurity of the subject and the some reserve; that it is made in a condi- shortness of human life.’ It was possible tion of evidential satisfactoriness mid- to make contradictory statements on any way between those we might indicate by subject, and each could be true according saying ‘we know there is life on Mars’ to circumstances; and we could never dis- and ‘there is no ground for supposing life cover any single absolute truth, since our on Mars’. own nature is intimately involved in any 320 Psychoanalysis judgment. This is probably the reference insight into individual personalities; and of Protagoras’ famous dictum ‘Man is the that skilful ‘interventions’ by analysts can measure of all things, of the existence of cure nervous disorders, and so replace the things that are and the non-existence ‘misery’ with ‘common unhappiness’. of the things that are not’, and seems to be Logically these claims are independent, directed particularly against the extreme of course: psychoanalytic treatment might ELEATIC ontology, which was also sub- be successful even if the interpretations jected to critical examination by on which it was based were untrue; and Protagoras’ contemporary, Gorgias. See profound insight into neuroses need not also PRE-SOCRATICS. (G.S.K.) necessarily help to cure them. Freud conceived of psychoanalysis as Psychoanalysis Psychoanalysis, or part of the inexorable progress of dispas- ‘depth psychology’, was invented in Vienna sionate scientific materialism, the third in the 1890s by and final blow to humanity’s inflated view (1856–1939), who described it as ‘a proce- of its uniqueness and importance. dure for the medical treatment of the nerv- Copernicanism, he said, had demon- ously ill’. But it is a very unusual kind of strated that the earth is not the centre of medicine: it consists in frequent and regular the universe; Darwinism, that homo sapi- private consultations between a patient and ens is not the lord of the animal kingdom; an analyst, sometimes spread over many and now psychoanalysis proved that the years; and as Freud said, ‘nothing takes conscious self ‘is not master in its own place between them except that they talk to house’. Philosophy, according to Freud, each other’. The patient’s side of the conver- was incorrigibly prejudiced in favour of sation comprises reminiscences, self- consciousness, and hence inseparable descriptions, reports of dreams, and from pre-scientific superstition. verbal free associations. The analyst’s In fact, however, many philosophers contributions are carefully-considered have welcomed psychoanalysis. Freud’s ‘interpretations’of what the patient has said. apparent faith in the healing powers of The aim of psychoanalysis is to discover self-knowledge could be assimilated to experiences which haunt the patient’s mem- the traditional Socratic imperative: ory, but which are so painful that they have ‘Know thyself’; and followers of been ‘repressed’ into ‘the Unconscious’. It WITTGENSTEIN could see the philosopher is these repressed memories, according to and the analyst as engaged in essentially Freud, rather than physiological abnormali- the same enterprise – offering painstaking ties, which cause most nervous illness; they and intricate therapy so as to relieve people are also the nucleus of non-neurotic of conceptual and psychic disorders, personalities. Freud’s enormous experience respectively. Their main reservation about as an analyst persuaded him that the crucial psychoanalysis concerned Freud’s ten- memories in everyone’s life refer to early dency (as they saw it) to treat concepts childhood, and that they are all essentially like ‘repression’ as literal descriptions of concerned with the child’s experience of quasi-hydraulic processes inside a itself as either a boy or a girl and its sexual pseudo-material machine called ‘the feelings about its mother-figure, its father- mind’, rather than as METAPHORS. figure, and itself (the ‘Oedipus Complex’). Some philosophers have been totally Freud made two basic claims about hostile to psychoanalysis. Ironically, these psychoanalysis: that it affords unrivalled critics align themselves with the very of 321 same current of scientific materialism as The philosophical adoption of psycho- Freud. To the LOGICAL POSITIVISTS, for analysis was taken still further by LACAN, example, or to POPPER, psychoanalysis is a and by neo-Nietzscheans like DELEUZE perfect example of a pseudo-science: the and neo-Heideggerians like DERRIDA: for analyst’s ‘findings’ are protected from them, Freud has unmasked the self-decep- open scientific scrutiny by the confiden- tions not just of consciousness and the tiality of the psychoanalytic session; and ego, but also of the very ideas of ‘Reason’ the idea of the inexhaustible interpretabil- and ‘the Real’, which they take to be ity of the Unconscious prevents analysts the unquestioned presuppositions of from venturing specific predictions which the entirety of Western philosophy. Like could be definitively tested. FOUCAULT, they criticize Freud for failing The third and most prolific philosophi- to pursue his ideas to their true conclu- cal response to psychoanalysis regards it as sion, namely that the whole idea of pursu- a significant event within philosophy itself. ing the truth is dangerous and deluded. According to GADAMER, for example, Freud Freud, of course, would hardly recognize taught philosophy to ‘get behind the sur- these philosophical views as develop- face of what is meant’ and to ‘go behind the ments of his own work; but, given his subjectivity of the act of meaning’; for him, doctrine of the Unconscious, he could not as for HABERMAS and RICOEUR, Freud was a consistently claim the authority to disown key innovator in the development of philos- them. See also MIND, PHILOSOPHY OF MIND. ophy as HERMENEUTICS. To socialist [J.R.] philosophers like MARCUSE, psychoanalytic ideas of repression and the Unconscious Putnam, Hilary (1926– ) American are in part descriptions of the misery and mathematician and philosopher who was ALIENATION peculiar to modern capitalistic trained in logical positivism and has been bureaucracies. Moreover, as ALTHUSSER trying to escape from it ever since, with noted, the idea that people’s consciousness special help from QUINE and WITTGENSTEIN. is systematically at odds with their real sit- He holds that modern philosophy has been uation corresponds closely to the Marxist impaled on a dilemma – ‘either ahistorical theory of IDEOLOGY. SARTRE, though critical unchanging canons of rationality or cul- of Freud’s ‘materialism’, thought of his tural relativism’ – which is fundamentally own version of phenomenology as ‘existen- misconceived (see Reason, Truth and tial psychoanalysis’. According to Sartre, History, 1981). His other books include: Freud’s leading achievement (especially in Mind, Language and Reality (1975); the later writings, where the conceptions of Realism with a Human Face (1990); ‘consciousness’ and ‘the Unconscious’ Renewing Philosophy (1992); Pragmatism were overlaid by the more developmental (1995), and The Collapse of the Fact/Value ideas of ‘Ego’, ‘Id’, and ‘Superego’) was Dichotomy (2002). that, like HEGEL, he devised a way of think- ing of the mind, and particularly the ‘I’ or Pyrrho of Elis (c.360–c.270 BC) the ‘Ego’, as constructed in a historical, Pyrrho is by tradition the earliest of the social world, rather than as the expression SCEPTICS. His name is associated with an of some pre-established interiority. For extreme variety of SCEPTICISM (sometimes many feminists, Freud’s achievement was called ‘’), as opposed to the to uncover one of the repressed themes of moderate variety espoused by the Middle philosophical thought, namely GENDER. and New ACADEMY. 322 Pythagoras

Pythagoras The Greek philosopher while probably not rejecting these ideas, Pythagoras of Samos flourished c.530 BC. associated them with developments of He left Samos to escape the tyranny of Pythagoras’ discovery that the musical Polycrates and settled in Croton in South scale is numerical. Since music was held Italy, where for a time he had great to have special power over soul, which political influence. He established there a permeated the cosmos, the whole world community of disciples, partly religious must be somehow numerical. The ele- and partly scientific. The master himself ments of number, and thus of the world, wrote nothing and since his followers, were the even, representing the unlim- out of piety, attributed their own works to ited, and the odd, representing limit. A him it is especially hard to assess his table of ten pairs of basic opposites ideas. Some lines of Xenophanes prove within the world was drawn up, in which that Pythagoras believed in the transmi- odd, male, straight, good, at rest, etc., gration of the soul, even between different came under ‘limit’, their contraries species, since all living things were akin. under ‘unlimited’. Unfortunately there is He was also renowned for his scientific little evidence here apart from ARISTO- and mathematical knowledge, and there is TLE’s rather vague account, which did not no reason to disconnect him from the distinguish early from later theorem that bears his name. He also Pythagoreanism. Most of these ideas probably made the important discovery were probably formed by the time of that the musical scale has a numerical PARMENIDES, who seems to attack basis, that is, that its main harmonic inter- Pythagorean DUALISM. By this time, too, vals can be expressed in ratios of the first the units which formed number were four integers. These integers together probably conceived as possessing spatial formed the Decad, to which sacred signif- magnitude, so that lines, surfaces and icance was attached in his community; solids could be expressed as sums of but whether Pythagoras himself main- units, and objects were literally made tained that not only music, but the whole out of number. According to the world, was somehow numerical, and Pythagorean cosmogony, which may made up out of ‘limit’ and ‘the unlimited’, have developed a little later, an initial is uncertain. See also PRE-SOCRATICS, unit ‘drew in’ the unlimited, in the form PYTHAGOREANS. (G.S.K.) of the void, and somehow divided into other units separated by the unlimited. Pythagoreans PYTHAGORAS founded These unit-point-atoms then grew into a community of disciples in Croton in lines, planes and solids. At the centre of Southern Italy, which split into a mathe- the universe lies fire; the stars, of which matical and a religious group. The latter the earth is one, each produce a sound lived according to taboos based on according to the speed of their revolu- Pythagoras’ idea of the kinship of living tion, and these make up a ‘harmony of things and the necessity for purification spheres’ inaudible by human beings. See of body and soul. The ‘mathematicians’, also PRE-SOCRATICS, ZENO. (G.S.K.) Q

Qualities Primary and Secondary, see Bohr’s Complementary Interpretation ATOMISM, DESCARTES, LOCKE. sets its face against theoretical realism by treating the micro-system and the measur- Quantum Mechanics Max Planck, ing apparatus as an indivisible whole. and Nils Bohr originally Thus properties whose measurement developed Quantum Theory in the early requires mutually exclusive experimental 1900s, to explain the interactions between arrangements cannot be simultaneously atoms and radiation. ‘Energy’ was found real. In Quantum Mechanics the HOLISTIC to be packaged in finite ‘quanta’, so that coordination of a system remains even the energy in a tight ‘wave’ behaved like a when its components are apparently sepa- stream of ‘particles’. In the 1920s de rate, so a measurement on one ‘entity’ Broglie extended this ‘duality’ by show- fixes the state of another. Alternatives to ing that material ‘particles’ could behave quantum mechanics, such as that of David like waves and a radically new mechanics Bohm, which treat properties as real, can was created by Schrödinger, Heisenberg, model this only if they permit instanta- Dirac and von Neumann. As a formal cal- neous action-at-a-distance. culus for predicting experimental results But can it be measurement which it is astonishingly successful, but its inter- makes properties actual? If Bohr’s way of pretation is racked with controversy. looking at the situation is applied to an Quantum Mechanics is philosophically enlarged system which incorporates the interesting because of its implications for observer, then his argument seems to DETERMINISM and REALISM, and some argue imply that the new system will be unde- that it also has implications for LOGIC. fined until observed by someone else! A remarkable body of ‘meta-theory’ And so on ad infinitum. To block this has developed on the question of whether regress Wigner argued that consciousness its revolutionary features could be makes measurement definite, thus com- reversed by future science. mitting physics to IDEALISM. Conversely, Quantum Mechanics represents a Everett and Wheeler’s Many-Worlds system by a complex mathematical func- Interpretation rescued realism, but only at tion which ascribes ranges of potential the cost of claiming that interactions con- properties to the component entities in a tinually split the world into more and coordinated fashion. Which properties are more parallel . The theory’s realized when a measurement is performed technical triumphs only deepen our meta- is a matter of PROBABILITY. Furthermore, physical perplexity. [J.H.P.] certain properties are ‘paired’ so that, according to Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Quine, Willard V. O. (1908–2000) The Principle, closer definition of one implies logician and philosopher Willard van more ‘uncertainty’ in the other. Since this Orman Quine was born in Ohio and studied appears to make precise prediction impos- under WHITEHEAD at Harvard, where he was sible in principle, quantum mechanics is to spend the rest of his life. In the early often taken to have refuted determinism. 1930s he was converted to LOGICAL 324 Quine,Willard V. O.

POSITIVISM and went to Warsaw to study truths which are synthetic or grounded in with CARNAP, whom he regarded as his fact’. The second was the ‘reductionist’ ‘greatest teacher’. Carnap migrated to doctrine that ‘each meaningful statement America in 1936 and Quine recalls how is equivalent to some logical construct he, GOODMAN and other young American upon terms which refer to immediate philosophers ‘moved with Carnap as experience’. The effect of abandoning henchmen through the metaphysicians’ these ‘’ was, as camp’. Quine intended, ‘a blurring of the sup- Quine never broke with Carnap’s ori- posed boundary between speculative entation towards the natural sciences and metaphysics and natural science’, and ‘a his belief that the heart of philosophy is shift towards PRAGMATISM’. Observations, mathematical logic. But his numerous experiments, and common sense formed, writings, all cast in a bright laconic style together with logic and the sciences, parts recalling Chandler and Runyon, have appa- of a seamless ‘web of knowledge’. The rently left Carnap’s vision of scientific laws of logic were not rigid necessary philosophy in ruins, since in Quine’s sys- truths, but simply statements which, for tem natural science is presented as a various practical reasons, we are particu- (superior) form of metaphysics, not a rad- larly unwilling to revise; there was no ical alternative to it. clear boundary separating them from Carnap and other logical positivists empirical facts, that is to say experiential had divided knowledge into two compo- opinions which we can freely revise, even nents: empirical propositions, which though no experience could definitely were supposed to correspond one-by- require us to do so. LOCKE and HUME had one to sensory experiences; and logical espoused ‘term-by-term empiricism’; propositions, which were no more than FREGE had attended to ‘statements’ rather explications of structural properties of than ‘terms’; but, for Quine, ‘the unit of signs. Quine came to believe, however, empirical significance is the whole of sci- that this view of knowledge depends ence’. Quine drew the conclusion that ‘our upon an indefensible ‘myth of mean- statements about the external world face ing’: it proceeds ‘as if there were a the tribunal of experience not individually gallery of ideas, and each idea were but as a corporate body’ – a doctrine which tagged with the expression that means he credited to DUHEM, and which has it’. So, according to Quine, the stark come to be known as the ‘Duhem-Quine anti-metaphysical programme of logical thesis’. positivism was secretly in league with These arguments are all contained in an extravagant metaphysic. The ‘linguis- ‘Two Dogmas of Empiricism’ (1951), tic theory of logical truths’, so dear to which was anthologized in From a Carnap and other logical positivists, had Logical Point of View (1953), a collection ‘less to it than meets the eye’. which also contains ‘On What There Is’ Quine’s ‘adverse treatment’, as he put (1948), which argues that every theory it, of the idea of meaning, led him to dis- involves an ontology. Of course, many of card two cardinal doctrines of logical pos- the objects apparently named in a theory itivism. The first was the ‘belief in some may not actually be required by it: their fundamental cleavage between truths apparent names can be eliminated by which are ANALYTIC, or grounded in mean- means of RUSSELL’s theory of descrip- ings independent of matters of fact, and tions. According to Quine’s doctrine of Quinton, Anthony 325

‘ontological relativity’, existence can then the very idea of meaning was dramatized be defined as follows: ‘to be is to be the in his doctrine of ‘the indeterminacy of value of a variable’. On pragmatic TRANSLATION’. This went far beyond ‘the grounds (he acknowledges no others), platitude that uniqueness of translation is Quine then implores scientists to reduce absurd’, to the astonishing thesis that their ontological commitments to a mini- there could be different ways of translat- mum, so as to escape, if they can, from ing one language into another, which ‘Plato’s beard’ – a ‘tangled doctrine’ would offer incompatible translations of which, with its luxuriant population of the same sentences but which would still shadowy entities, ‘has proved tough, fit all the observed facts. This thesis does frequently dulling the edge of OCKHAM’s not assert, of course, that there are shades razor’. of meaning which no translation can cap- For Quine, the objects of the physical ture; on the contrary, it implies that the sciences and of ordinary common sense very idea of uncaptured shades of mean- are ‘cultural posits’, just like Homer’s ing is pointless. Critics have wondered, Gods: ‘in point of epistemological footing nevertheless, whether the indeterminacy the physical objects and the gods differ thesis, and the idea of rival translations, only in degree and not in kind.’ Or, as he can have any sense at all within Quine’s argued in Methods of Logic (1952), ‘state- system. Quine’s other books include: The ments, apart from an occasional collec- Ways of Paradox (1966); Philosophy of tors’ item for epistemologists, are Logic (1970); Ontological Relativity connected only deviously with experi- (1969); and Quiddities: an Intermittently ence’, so that ‘there is many a slip twixt Philosophical Dictionary (1987). See objective cup and subjective lip’. also AMERICAN PHILOSOPHY, PHILOSOPHY Quine gave a systematic portrayal of OF SCIENCE, RELATIVISM. [J.R.] his position in (1960), which proposed an austere ‘canonical Quinton, Anthony (1925– ) British notation’, purged of singular terms, as the philosopher with sceptically materialistic likeliest framework for scientific opinions and broad but conservative sym- progress. In this notation it was mani- pathies. He is the author of The Nature of festly absurd to yearn for a solid founda- Things (1973) and of articles on tion for empirical knowledge – ‘a Conceptualism, Nominalism, Phenome- fancifully fanciless medium of unvar- nalism, Scepticism, Sense-Data and nished news’. Quine’s scepticism about Universals in this Encyclopedia. R

Ramsey, Frank P. (1903–30) Mathe- inferior substitute for reason; yet Leibniz matical logician who made significant held that all truths of reason were guaran- contributions to theories of TRUTH and teed by the principle of contradiction and PROBABILITY, and whose early death was therefore, in modern terminology, ana- deeply mourned by many, including lytic. However, Leibniz’s claim that the WITTGENSTEIN. contradictory of every true proposition is self-contradictory is very paradoxical, Rationalism In the usage of philoso- and we may say that the rationalist is one phers, the word ‘rationalism’ refers to the who claims knowledge which is not based kinds of which on sense-experience and which cannot be claim that we can arrive at substantial regarded as purely formal. But this is still knowledge about the nature of the world inadequate: KANT recognized synthetic a by pure reasoning, without appeal to any priori knowledge, only about phenomena empirical premises. It is in that sense that as opposed to things themselves; he DESCARTES, LEIBNIZ and SPINOZA are tradi- thought that it was one of the main virtues tionally quoted as classical examples of of his critical system that it avoided both rationalism. Rationalism is opposed to rationalism and empiricism. (J.O.U.) EMPIRICISM – the doctrine that experience is a necessary basis to all our knowledge – Rawls, John (1921–2002) American but neither term has a precise meaning. political philosopher, born in Baltimore, Thus we might expect that a pure empiri- who transformed Anglo-American POLI- cist would claim that all knowledge TICAL PHILOSOPHY with a series of articles requires empirical premises, and J. S. MILL published in the 1950s and 1960s culmi- did at times make this claim; for him even nating in A Theory of Justice (1971). In mathematical truths are empirical gener- opposition to UTILITARIANISM, with its alizations. But most empiricists have exclusive concern with aggregate happi- admitted that mathematical truths are a ness, Rawls argues that the fundamental priori; they are still considered to be political value is individual rights, or empiricists if they claim that mathemati- ‘’. Rawls proceeds by cal truths are analytic, formal truths reviving and generalizing the hypothesis of which give no information about the the SOCIAL CONTRACT as found in LOCKE, nature of the world. Thus there is a ten- ROUSSEAU and KANT. The best political dency to consider that a rationalist is one principles, he argues, are those which who claims to have synthetic a priori rational citizens would agree upon if they knowledge, and who claims to know, were to choose the ‘basic structure of soci- wholly or in part, what the world is like ety’ whilst a ‘veil of ignorance’ prevented by pure reason. But Leibniz is usually them from knowing their own eventual considered to be the most extreme of the position within it. According to Rawls they rationalists because he claimed that in would recognize a general presumption in principle all truths could be known by favour of equality, and hold that ‘all social pure reasoning, experience being but an values – liberty and opportunity, income Realism 327 and wealth, and the bases of self-respect – and NOMINALISM denies it. Mathematical are to he distributed equally unless an realism claims that numbers exist inde- unequal distribution of any, or all, of these pendently of mind, which discovers rather values is to everyone’s advantage’. than creates them. Realism about the On this basis, Rawls attempted to justify external world asserts that physical two principles of justice. The first and over- objects exist essentially independently riding one states: ‘each person is to have an of the mind of any perceiver. PHENOME- equal right to the most extensive basic lib- NALISTS (sometimes called ‘subjective erty compatible with a similar liberty for idealists’) deny realism about external others’. The second specifies conditions physical objects; John Stuart MILL, for under which inequalities may nevertheless instance, held that physical objects are be justified: ‘Social and economic inequal- nothing more than sets of actual and pos- ities are to be arranged so that they are both sible sensory data, which themselves have (a) to the greatest benefit of the least advan- existence only as the contents of a mind. taged and (b) attached to offices and posi- Realists about social phenomena deny tions open to all under conditions of fair that social wholes can be accounted for equality of opportunity.’ entirely in terms of the psychological Debate about Rawls’ system has con- states of individuals (cf. HOLISM). centrated on part (a) of the second princi- Some realists formulate their claims in ple, which is known as ‘the difference terms of essential independence from principle’. It implies that inequalities can- human activity, since acting, in its proper not be justified unless they are to the sense, presupposes that the actor has advantage even of the least privileged. intentions and purposes, and hence a Left-wing critics have feared that this mind. Contemporary thinkers normally opens the way for attempts to justify restrict ‘mind’ to human minds; but tradi- unacceptable inequalities. Right-wing tionally, anti-realists such as BERKELEY critics (such as NOZICK) have argued that, and HEGEL allowed objects to be essen- provided the better-off gain their advan- tially independent of all human minds, tages rightfully, they are under no obliga- but dependent on infinite mind, or the tion to bother about the disadvantaged. Deity. Either way it seems that ‘self-respect’, The word ‘essentially’ is important which Rawls regards as ‘perhaps the most here. It would not refute a realist about important primary good’, may not be safe the external world if every bit of reality in Rawls’ system. had depended in some causal or contin- Rawls consolidated his positions in gent way upon mind, and one can be a Political Liberalism (1993); The Law of realist about objects (for instance, to use Peoples and Collected Papers (1999); and MARX’s example, a cultivated cherry tree), Lectures on the History of Moral which would not have existed without Philosophy (2000). See also LIBERALISM human activity. If such dependence is AND COMMUNITARIANISM. [J.R.] inessential to the thing, in the sense that the object logically could have existed Realism Realism is sometimes said to independently of mind or activity, it poses be the view that some things exist essen- no problem for a realist. But this charac- tially independently of any mind. For terization of realism has the unfortunate example, realism about UNIVERSALS holds consequence of rendering realism about that they exist independently of any mind; the mind impossible by definition, since 328 obviously no mind can exist essentially theory are always logically or conceptually independently of itself. One could avoid inessential. this difficulty by defining realism as the Sometimes anti-realism is described view that a thing could exist independ- more weakly as the view that our knowl- ently, not of mind in general, but more edge of reality is theory-dependent, or specifically of any beliefs or thoughts we that it necessarily depends on language. It might have about it. We are realists about then might seem an easy step to conclude mental contents like pain if we hold that that reality itself is dependent on lan- one can be in pain even if one does not guage or theory. But this characterization believe it. We are realists about morality would be a mistake: a clear distinction if we think that actions can be right, or must be drawn between the mind- things can be good, whether or not anyone dependence of language or theory and believes that they are. In this sense, real- the alleged mind-dependence of the world ism is connected with the epistemological itself. A scientific realist can accept that idea that what is real can always serve as all descriptions of the world are theory- an objective ‘other’ against which our dependent (POPPER is a clear example of beliefs can be tested. The important point this). Suppose we have to use theory T in for realism, recharacterized in this way, is order to describe reality. Our descriptions that it is always possible either that our of the world will be T-dependent, and T is beliefs are wrong, or that we are wrong certainly something we have created. But about which beliefs we have. Error and it does not follow that without theory T mistake are always possible. In epistemol- the world could not have been the way it ogy, the correspondence theory of TRUTH is; all that follows is that without the the- is naturally associated with the metaphys- ory we would not be able to describe the ical doctrine of realism. world that way. can be character- The great problem that faces realism is ized using this second definition. It is the that, since it places a gap between mind view that scientific theories about unob- on the one hand and reality on the other, servable entities should be construed at it has to say that real objects transcend the face value, as attempts to describe an contents of our experience. Realists independent even if unobservable reality. believe that material objects and theoreti- Instrumentalists (like PEIRCE) and phe- cal entities are more than the experiential nomenalists (like MACH) argue for an anti- content of our minds; that social phenom- realist view, that scientific theories do not ena are more than the individuals who refer to an independent reality, but are participate in them; and that universals either heuristic tools for the prediction of are irreducible to the particulars of which empirical data, or shorthand summaries, those universals are true. But if real equivalent to the set of empirical state- objects transcend experience, how is ments which follow from them. Of knowledge of reality possible? See also course, scientific realists need not deny RELIGION. [D.-H.R.] the factual or causal dependence of some Reductio ad absurdum A technique part of reality upon theory, for example, of refutation in which a proposition is in the case of self-fulfilling predictions shown to entail a contradiction. which bring about the facts that make them true. But for the scientific realist, any Reid, Thomas (1710–96) Thomas factual ties between reality and scientific Reid was the originator of the Scottish Relativism 329 philosophy of common sense. He was edu- those things did really happen which cated at Aberdeen and worked as a profes- I distinctly remember’; (d) ‘our own per- sor first at Aberdeen and then at Glasgow, sonal identity and continued existence’; where he succeeded Adam SMITH. Like and (e) ‘that those things do really exist KANT, he was prompted to his original which we distinctly perceive by our philosophical position by reading HUME. senses, and are what we perceive them to Reid noted that all the modern philoso- be’. Anyone who doubts these principles phers – DESCARTES, LOCKE and BERKELEY, will be incapable of rational intercourse for example – assumed that the immediate and those philosophers, such as Hume, objects of the human mind in thought and who profess to doubt them cannot do so perception are peculiar mental entities sincerely and consistently. Reid’s critical called IDEAS, and that Hume had recog- work is at all times clear and acute, nized that if we have access only to dis- though his own positive views do not crete and unconnected ideas we cannot emerge so clearly from his writings as do have connected knowledge transcending the inconsistencies and unplausibilities of ideas. But Hume’s conclusions were too Locke and Berkeley. (J.O.U.) extreme in their to be tenable. Reification Reification is the mistake of Therefore his basic premise – the theory of treating an abstraction, or relation, or con- ideas – must be abandoned. In the Inquiry vention, or artificial construct, as if it were into the Human Mind (1764) Reid there- a natural thing (Latin res). See ALIENATION. fore attacked the theory of ideas as neither intuitively evident nor helpful in explain- Relativism Relativism can be charac- ing what it was introduced to explain. terized as the view (which PLATO reports In the Essays on the Intellectual PROTAGORAS as expressing) that ‘man is Powers of Man (1785), Reid set out a real- the measure of all things’. Plato’s discus- ist account of perception, memory and sion of the saying shows that it was con- conception, to replace the way of ideas. strued as asserting that any person’s views Common sense, he says, is ‘that degree of are as good as any one else’s. Relativism, judgment which is common to men with then, is a doctrine about differences whom we can converse and transact busi- between individuals (individualistic ness’. But, Reid held, ‘all knowledge and relativism) or between societies (social all science must be built upon principles relativism). It may focus on differences that are self-evident, and of such princi- in factual beliefs (scientific relativism); in ples every man who has common sense is morals (ethical relativism); in concepts a competent judge when he conceives (conceptual relativism); or in logic. them distinctly’. First principles may be Relativism asserts that in some sense necessary, as in mathematics, or contin- what is true in one situation may not be gent. Reid gives a list of principles of true in another; that what is right or good common sense in the contingent sphere in one situation may not be right or good which is very similar to the one MOORE in another; that the concepts used in one sit- gave in his ‘Defence of Common Sense’. uation might be unintelligible in another; or It includes: (a) ‘the existence of every- that what is rational in one situation may thing of which I am conscious’; (b) ‘that not be rational in another. the thoughts of which I am conscious are Relativism does not simply assert that the thoughts of a being which I call different things are believed or said or myself, my mind, my person’; (c) ‘that done in different times and places. Such 330 Relativism differences may be only derivative and attempts to falsify it. Kuhn, on the other therefore compatible with there being hand, argues that scientific change from some fundamental higher-order principles one theory to another is essentially non- or rules or concepts, valid always and rational. On his view, transitions between everywhere, which explain, in combina- scientific paradigms can be explained but tion with different local facts about the never justified in terms of methodological circumstances in which the two things considerations. occur, such variations. There might, for Some writers have held that different example, be a single rule of scientific societies or individuals could employ fun- support which licenses inquirers with dif- damentally different logics (either deduc- ferent information to believe incompati- tive or inductive). GOODMAN’s ‘new riddle ble theories. Or there might be a single of induction’ poses the possibility of an ethical principle which entitles or requires inductive logic fundamentally different persons in different circumstances to per- from our own. There is also a great deal of form different actions. The mere fact that controversy concerning the possibility of some languages use several concepts non-standard deductive logics, and the where other languages use only one (e.g. possibility of a logic which rejects the law English and Eskimo concepts of snow) of excluded middle, and thereby modifies does not show that there are no funda- the classical conception of TRUTH, cer- mental concepts common to all lan- tainly seems coherent. On the other hand, guages. Nor does the fact that a sentence the idea of a society whose logic rejected such as ‘it is raining’ can be true in one the law of non-contradiction does seem situation but not in another prove that deeply incoherent. truth is relative. Relativism should be Conceptual and ethical relativism are defined as the assertion that some of more plausible. It is unlikely that we will these differences are (or at least may he) find genuine of soci- fundamental rather than derivative. eties that differ fundamentally from us in The idea that what is true in one situa- concepts or in morality, but we can ask tion might not be true in another may seem whether it is logically possible for two more plausible than it is. This may arise societies to differ in the most fundamental from two confusions: the belief that ‘true concepts they employ? QUINE, with his in one situation but not in another’ means doctrine of the indeterminacy of transla- nothing more than ‘believed to be true in tion, thinks it is: that there could be a soci- one situation but not in another’; and the ety which used concepts of object stages failure to specify statements fully. The or undetached object parts, for instance, truth of ‘it is raining’ appears to be ‘rela- rather than our concept of an object as tive’ because the sentence is incomplete; enduring through space and time. If one but the truth of ‘it is raining at place p at society used a fundamental concept that time t’ does not even appear to be relative. another society had neither as a funda- Is there some scientific methodology, mental nor as a derived concept, the lan- valid universally, for judging when one guages of the two societies would be, to scientific theory or set of empirical that extent, mutually unintelligible. beliefs is better than another? POPPER and Could what was fundamentally right LAKATOS believe there is; KUHN and or good in one society differ from what FEYERABEND deny it. Popper, for example, was fundamentally right or good in requires that the theory withstand another? The answer to this depends on Religion 331 whether one regards values as being as ‘absolute’ (i.e. invariant) quantities but much a part of the universe as facts are. If creates new, ‘four-dimensional’, ones they are, then there is no more reason for (Minkowski 1908). good or right to differ fundamentally In General Relativity Theory (1916) between societies than there is for truth to Einstein attempted to show that the struc- differ. But if, as for example HARE and ture of space is determined by matter, SARTRE say, values are something we cre- thus eliminating ‘Absolute Space’ from ate, then there is a , if physics. By taking the paths of light rays not a real one, that different societies or in a vacuum to define ‘straightest lines’, individuals could create fundamentally Einstein was able to treat ‘gravitation’ as different moralities. [D.-H.R.] the curvature of space-time, and show that the world has a non-Euclidean Relativity The geometry. The theory explained known derives its name from the so-called anomalies and predicts novel effects Principle of Relativity, according to (most dramatically the Expansion of the which the same laws of physics obtain Universe). whatever frame of reference is adopted. It Relativity’s success in displacing the is primarily due to Albert Einstein entrenched assumptions of Newtonian (1879–1955), and its philosophical inter- theory shows how hazardous it is to claim est lies in the overthrow of what were pre- a priori status for concepts in physics, and viously regarded as necessary truths how easy it is to mistake a long-lived the- about space and time. ory for the final truth. Nevertheless some Einstein’s Special Relativity Theory argue that the general outline of Relati- (1905) removed a deep conflict between vity Theory can be deduced a priori, and and electromagnetic it seems certain that future developments theory by making the astonishing ‘Light will not reverse the changes wrought by Postulate’, which states that the velocity Relativity. [J.H.P.] of light is invariant, that is, the same in every frame of reference. Einstein Religion The human race seems small explains this postulate by showing that and weak compared with the vastness of any measurement of velocity requires the nature, and each of us occupies the stage synchronization of spatially separated of history but briefly. Are our lives really clocks. His method is based (with benign significant? If so how? In all cultures over circularity) on the Light Postulate, which recorded religions have implies that distances and time-intervals offered answers to such questions through are relative to frame of reference. Thus ideas rooted in experiences which seem to ‘relativity’ undermines the idea that there transcend the mundane routines of ordi- is a unique, universal ‘flow’ of time. nary life. Typically a religion traces the Special Relativity Theory was devised in value of human life to a ‘TRANSCENDENT opposition to ‘ Theories’ which realm’ beyond nature and human society. attempted to interpret phenomena in Rituals, prayer, and meditation are justi- terms of picturable mechanisms. fied by sacred stories about transactions Einstein’s idea of ‘invariance’ generated between the two realms. more elegant and more fruitful strategies Philosophers who interpret the religious for theory construction. Contrary to pop- idea of a transcendent realm in a REALIST ular belief, the theory does not abolish fashion face a dilemma: either this realm 332 Ricoeur, Paul has effects on the world of everyday only be understood as expressions of experience or it does not. If it does not, belief in the importance of human love. then it is difficult to see how it can have Such analyses accord with Matthew any relevance for human life. But if it Arnold’s comment that religion is ‘moral- does, then it seems that the progress of ity touched by emotion’. science threatens its ‘transcendent’ status. Anthropological studies have vastly Since the scientific revolution of the sev- extended out understanding of different enteenth century, one tendency, running forms of religious life, showing how reli- from DESCARTES to WHITEHEAD, has gious doctrines can fulfil such social endeavoured to construct metaphysical functions as legitimizing the distribution systems which encompass both sides of of power by reference to a ‘transcendent’ this dilemma. But another tendency, from source of authority supposedly beyond BERKELEY to DUHEM, has counter-attacked renegotiation. This complements philo- with anti-realist interpretations of sci- sophical scepticism about realist accounts ence, intended to leave room for realist of religion. accounts of Religion. Some thinkers (such as HEGEL) have Following KANT, most philosophers argued that the philosophical quest and have accepted that knowledge of a tran- the religious quest have the same goal, scendent reality is unattainable, and reli- and indeed that the questions with which gious thinkers such as Karl BARTH, have religions are concerned can be answered welcomed this conclusion, believing that only by philosophy. Much philosophical it leaves room for ‘faith’. Indeed Barth analysis is destructive of the metaphysical embraced the LOGICAL POSITIVISTS’ con- pretensions of traditional religious doc- clusion that the tenets of faith are literally trine and of the idea that religious com- meaningless, arguing that this under- mitment can yield knowledge which scores our utter dependence on Divine cannot be attained by other means. At the Grace. Religious language provides a very least the philosophical enterprise means for talking about experiences of calls for detachment from one’s precon- ‘numinous’ awe, or ‘mystical’ ecstasy or ceptions and a refusal to adopt beliefs tranquility. It is clear that religious sym- which cannot be rationally justified. That bolism can express or evoke such experi- such a commitment can be as total as any ences, and that those who have them feel religious commitment is symbolized in that they are of immense significance – it the story of how SOCRATES met his death. matters a great deal to them that their ‘nir- Although philosophy no longer seems vana’ is attained through a moral and able to offer metaphysical consolations of meditative discipline and not by injecting the sort which sustained him, the quest a chemical which disrupts normal brain for significance remains at its roots. function. However it is hard to seehow the [J.H.P.] occurrence of such experiences can pro- vide a basis for religious conviction. Ricoeur, Paul (1913– ) The French NIETZSCHE and the EXISTENTIALISTS took phenomenologist Paul Ricoeur has been the collapse of theistic realism to signal hailed as one of the few twentieth century the need for a fundamental reappraisal of thinkers to surmount the division between human values, and many followers of European and Anglo-American philoso- WITTGENSTEIN have come to the conclu- phy (see CONTINENTAL PHILOSOPHY). sion that statements like ‘God is love’ can Ricoeur is principally renowned for his Rorty, Richard 333 original development of the HERMENEUTIC of human understanding, is what Ricoeur method in philosophy, which consists in calls the ‘hermeneutic detour’. It has led interpreting the meaning contained within him through such inquiries as The pre-rational signs or symbols. Ricoeur’s Symbolism of Evil (1960), which analysed famous phrase ‘the symbol gives rise to the symbols of myth and religion, and thought’ expresses the basic premise of Freud and Philosophy (1965), concerned hermeneutics: that the symbols of myth, with the interpretation of dreams and religion, art and ideology all carry mes- unconscious desires, to an impressive sages which may be uncovered by philo- variety of studies of the signifying activity sophical interpretation. Hermeneutics is of language, ideology and fiction – The defined accordingly as a method for deci- Conflict of Interpretations (1969); The phering indirect meaning, a reflective Rule of Metaphor (1975); Hermeneutics practice of unmasking hidden meanings and the Human Sciences (1981); and Time beneath apparent ones. While this method and Narrative (1984–5). was originally used by theologians to Unlike the existentialists, who held investigate the inner meanings of sacred that the human subject is the ultimate ori- texts, it was radically redeployed by gin of all meaning, Ricoeur insisted that thinkers like DILTHEY, HEIDEGGER, meaning is always mediated through cul- GADAMER and Ricoeur to explore the lin- tural, linguistic and social signs. But guistic dimension of human being-in-the- unlike the STRUCTURALISTS, he never world. abandoned the basic phenomenological While a prisoner of war in Germany notions of world, self and history. An during the Second World War, Ricoeur astute synthesizer of rival theories, became acquainted with the writings of Ricoeur sought to chart a course beyond German phenomenologists and existen- both the traditional ontology of absolute tialists. Afterwards he launched his philo- truth and the avant-garde ideology of the sophical career with major works on absolute text. Relentlessly faithful to an JASPERS and MARCEL and an extensive open-ended ‘conflict of interpretations’, commentary on and translation of Ricoeur would seem to have placed his HUSSSERL’s Ideas (1950). In contrast to own philosophical bet on the possible SARTRE and MERLEAU-PONTY, who devel- existence of some TRANSCENDENT mean- oped French phenomenology in a polem- ing, even though, on his own principles, ical existentialist direction, Ricoeur such a meaning could never be known turned it into a hermeneutic project. directly. [R.K.] Concerned throughout his career with the Rights See ETHICS, POLITICAL PHILOSO- ultimate ontological question – the mean- PHY, LIBERALISM AND COMMUNITARIANISM, ing of Being – Ricoeur rejects what he LOCKE, NOZICK, RAWLS. sees as the ‘short cuts’ of Hegel and Heidegger. He proclaims the inevitability Rorty,Richard (1931– ) Richard Rorty of a ‘truncated ontology’ which, instead is an American philosopher and critic of presuming direct access to truth, whose central interest is in METAPHILOSO- accepts the obligation of always PHY. Starting from the work of QUINE and approaching it sideways, through the others he has developed a comprehensive mediation of symbols, images, stories and criticism of ANALYTIC PHILOSOPHY. In the ideologies. This indirect questioning of editorial introduction to his anthology, meaning, necessitated by the finite nature The Linguistic Turn (1967), Rorty argued 334 Ross,W. D. that ‘the entire philosophical tradition’ Philosophy as Rorty conceives it is had been put ‘on the defensive’ in the ‘a voice in a conversation’, rather than ‘a twentieth century. ‘What makes most subject’ or ‘a field of professional philosophers in the English-speaking inquiry’. He elaborated this conception in world linguistic philosophers’, he wrote, Consequences of Pragmatism (1982) and ‘is the same thing that makes most drew some political conclusions in philosophers in continental Europe Contingency, Irony, Solidarity (1989), phenomenologists – namely, a sense of which argued for social solidarity not as despair resulting from the inability of tra- ‘a fact to be recognized’ but ‘a goal to be ditional philosophers to make clear what achieved’. These themes were made more could count as evidence for or against the explicit in Achieving our Country (1998), truth of their views’. This raised the a controversial defence of - question whether modern culture was ist traditions; while Rorty’s continuing moving into a ‘post-philosophical’ phase, engagement with mainstream philosophy in which ‘philosophers will have worked is demonstrated by three volumes of themselves out of a job’, and also posed Collected Papers (1991–8). See also problems for ‘talking about the HISTORY AMERICAN PHILOSOPHY. [J.R.] OF PHILOSOPHY’. The way forward, Rorty Ross,W.David (1877–1971) W. D. Ross suggested, might lie in overthrowing the was a Scots philosopher who taught at ‘spectatorial account of knowledge’ Oxford. His editions of the Metaphysics, which had dominated philosophy ‘since Physics and Analytics, with elaborate Plato and Aristotle’. Rorty detected ‘the commentary and textual apparatus, are beginning of a thoroughgoing rethinking’ amongst the most important twentieth in the works of DEWEY, HAMPSHIRE, century work on Aristotle. But he was SARTRE, HEIDEGGER and WITTGENSTEIN. also responsible (The Right and the Good, Rorty sought to execute this pro- 1930) for an influential formulation of gramme in Philosophy and the Mirror of intuitionism in ETHICS: the doctrine that we Nature (1980), which argued that ‘tradi- apprehend our various duties directly and tional philosophy’ in general is a desper- do not derive them from any ulterior prin- ate ‘attempt to escape from history’. Ever ciple such as that of utility. Ross’s state- since Descartes’ ‘invention of the mind’, ment of the position is a model of philosophers had dreamed of providing precision, clarity and moderation. (J.O.U.) timeless ‘foundations’ for knowledge, morality, language, or society; but they Rousseau, Jean-Jacques (1712–78) had never been able to establish that they The Swiss writer Jean-Jacques Rousseau were doing anything more then ‘eternal- spent his life wandering from country to ize’ contingent prejudices. To replace the country, from faith to faith, from job to pretensions of ‘systematic philosophy’, job, often in bad health and always the Rorty recommended the ‘edifying philos- victim of his oversensitive and emotional ophy’ which he claimed to find in temperament. His early essays portray the Wittgenstein, Heidegger and Dewey – natural man as a creature of good instincts philosophers who aimed ‘to help their and simple tastes who has been corrupted readers, or society as a whole, break free and deprived of happiness by civiliza- from outworn vocabularies and attitudes, tion, and particularly by urban life, class rather than to provide “grounding” for the distinctions, and governmental tyranny. intuitions and customs of the present’. His novel La Nouvelle Héloïse (1761) Rousseau, Jean-Jacques 335 glorified sentiment and emotion against limitation on the majority and any notion the contemporary claims of reason and of individual rights, and absolute power is self-restraint. Its popularity and influence given to the majority. He realized that were immediate and immense. His next such a system would work only in very book, Emile (1762), the greatest of all small states (and was influenced by the writings on education, had an even wider examples of the Greek city state and the and more lasting effect. It held that edu- Swiss canton). To remedy the weakness cation should not curb or discipline the of such states he looked to , natural tendencies of the child but encour- though he never elaborated this solution. age them to grow and blossom. Teaching The application of laws to particular should come not from books and verbal cases was assigned to a body which instruction, but by example and direct Rousseau called ‘the Government’ whose experience of people and things. The fam- constitution would vary according to the ily, not the school, is its proper field; and size of the state and other local conditions. love and sympathy, not rules and punish- All associations within the state should be ments, the tools for the task. Religion eliminated so that the individual should should not be an affair of creeds and dog- feel no rival loyalties to those of citizen- mas, of texts and formalities, but the infu- ship. But Rousseau was well aware of the sion of the heart with feelings of awe and objections to direct democracy. It is inca- worship, feelings revelatory of a God who pable of continuous legislative activity, is beyond our reason. In his posthumously and the people may be ill-informed, short- published Confessions Rousseau claimed sighted and irrational. The remedy here is to be giving the world the first completely a ‘Legislator’ a semi-divine individual uninhibited picture, in all its colours who should draft legislation and persuade bright and dark alike, of a human soul. the assembly to enact it. Rousseau’s work was of great histori- In formulating these problems Rousseau cal importance as the first attack of the was led to his key conception of the romantic movement on the eighteenth ‘General Will’ and the ‘Will of All’. The century stronghold of classical rational- former is the will of a body of citizens ism. But the works noted earlier are not in directed to their own common interests, the narrow sense philosophical, and his the latter a mere aggregate of private indi- claims as a philosopher rest on his theo- vidual selfish wills. This conception had ries of government. These are found two separate aspects each of which had a chiefly in the Discourse on the Origins of more subtle and long-term influence than Inequality (1755) and the Social Contract the obvious revolutionary implications of (1762). Rousseau was not a systematic the theory of direct . nor even a coherent and orderly thinker. First there is the suggestion that a state is His writing is passionate and rhetorical; a person with a will of its own, which he saw society as Carlyle saw history – by arguably leads to a mystic nationalism flashes of lightning. with unlimited claims on individual loy- In the Social Contract Rousseau alty. Second there is the suggestion that urges that government is justified only if the General Will is infallible, in that we sovereignty remains with the people. cannot call any law an expression of it Every law must be passed by the direct unless it is genuinely in the public interest. votes of all the citizens. Representative Thus the General Will becomes an ideal to democracy is rejected, along with any which actual laws can only approximate. 336 Royce, Josiah

Direct democracy is justified by the argu- account of meaning. There are, he main- ment that if the people themselves make tains, two types of meaning – external and the laws under which they live they lose internal. The external meaning of a thing no freedom. But obedience to the General consists in its relations to all other things; Will is justified by the argument that it is its internal meaning is its peculiar ‘embod- directed to a common good which is iment of purpose’. Royce then argues that bound to be my good too, or at least the ‘embodiment of purpose’ is the mark of good at which I am morally obliged to ‘mentality’, and that, therefore, the internal aim. Law is not an external command with essence of anything is mental. This is his the sanction of force, but the voice of my version of idealism. own moral or higher or true self. Hence But if everything (including the false political obligation can be (like the service and the fictitious) embodies purpose, of God) ‘perfect freedom’. what is the criterion of truth or reality? But now it was not obvious what Royce’s answer is that the test of reality is democracy was for. As SPINOZA said, ‘if conformity with the ‘ideal community’ of the laws are good, it does not matter who purposes of humanity as a whole – past, makes them’. In this respect Rousseau present and future. Thus Royce’s foreshadowed the theories of KANT and ‘Absolute’ is the ideal community of all HEGEL which identified duty with free- human purposes. Aware that absolutism dom, the State with the moral ideal, and in Germany had led to anti-individualism, laws with right and justice. This led to the Royce devoted much labour to a defence glorification of the State as the supreme of American democratic individualism, expression of morality. Rousseau never based on proofs of the reality of Time, reconciled these different strands, and his Evil and Freedom. His efforts to interpret work is more important as a source of Christianity in terms of natural science ideas than a system of arguments. See also had considerable influence upon also POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY. (J.D.M.) theology. See also AMERICAN PHILOSOPHY. (J.W.S.) Royce, Josiah (1855–1916) American philosopher, born in California, and leading Russell, Bertrand Arthur William exponent of IDEALISM. The first of the two (1872–1970) Bertrand Russell’s father, main elements of his philosophy was what Viscount Amberley, was the eldest son of may be called the principle of self-applica- Lord John Russell, the Liberal statesman, bility, which requires that every philosophy who became the first Earl Russell, and his should be able to account consistently for godfather was John Stuart MILL. Both his the fact of it being expressed. Royce used parents died before he was four years old this principle to discredit evolutionism and and he was brought up by his grand- PRAGMATISM, believing that only his ideal- mother, Lady Russell. After being pri- ism could conform to it. The second princi- vately educated, he won a mathematical ple is that of idealism itself. Royce insisted scholarship to Trinity College, Cambridge, that everything has both a ‘that’ and a in 1890. In 1893 he turned from mathe- ‘what’ and that no philosophy is satisfac- matics to philosophy, obtaining first class tory if it asserts ‘that’ when it cannot spec- honours in 1894. Two years later, he ify ‘what’. The ‘what’ of anything is simply published a work on German Social its ‘meaning’, and it follows for Royce that Democracy, the first of his many books. the core of sound philosophy is a clear He was a Fellow of Trinity from 1895 to Russell, Bertrand 337

1901 and a Lecturer in Philosophy from Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia, from 1910 to 1916. During this period he was which he was ejected in 1943, in circum- mainly occupied with mathematical logic, stances which led him to bring a success- but retained an interest in politics, unsuc- ful legal action for wrongful dismissal. cessfully fighting a parliamentary by- In 1944 he returned to England having election on behalf of the National Union been re-elected to a fellowship at Trinity. of Women’s Suffrage Societies in 1907. After the war he continued to write, He was a militant pacifist in the First lecture and broadcast on a variety of World War and was dismissed by Trinity subjects, his numerous books including after being prosecuted and fined for writ- two volumes of short stories. For a time ing a leaflet about the case of a conscien- he was in favour of the atomic bomb as tious objector. In 1918 he was prosecuted a deterrent to the Russians, but he was again, for an article in which he was held later a protagonist in the Campaign to have libeled the British Government for Nuclear Disarmament. Russell suc- and the American Army and he was sent ceeded his elder brother in the earldom to prison for six months. While in prison, in 1931. he wrote his Introduction to Mathe- 1 Logic and Mathematics. Russell matical Philosophy (1919) and began stated that he was induced to take an inter- work on the Analysis of Mind (1921). est in philosophy by his desire to find In the years following the war Russell some reason for believing in the truth of paid visits to Russia and . He was mathematics. Under the influence of the disillusioned by the results of the Russian works of F. H. BRADLEY he became a con- revolution, of which he had at first vert to HEGELIAN Idealism, but was soon approved, but very favourably impressed re-converted by G. E. MOORE to an by the old civilization of China. Though extreme form of REALISM. Among other reinstated by Trinity in 1919, he never things, he was impressed by the argument took up his duties there. He stood unsuc- that the fundamental idealist doctrine, that cessfully as a Labour Candidate in the what is known is conditioned by the know- General Elections of 1922 and 1923 and ing of it, denies to the propositions of in 1924 went on the first of many lecture mathematics any objective validity. tours to the United States. In 1927, in col- Further, it seemed to him clear that math- laboration with his second wife, he ematical propositions are irreducibly rela- founded a progressive school at Beacon tional, and this led him to reject both the Hill near Petersfield and tried to put some idealist thesis that relational judgments of his theories into practice. In the fol- are vicious abstractions and the view – lowing decade he engaged extensively in ascribed to ARISTOTLE and LEIBNIZ – that political and social journalism. He contin- all propositions are of the subject-predi- ued to uphold pacifism but renounced it cate form. In an early book on Leibniz, on the outbreak of the Second World War, Russell argued that it was Leibniz’s the greater part of which he spent in the acceptance of this view that provided the United States. In 1940, after holding key to his metaphysics. On the other hand, professorships at the Universities of while admiring Mill, Russell was not sat- Chicago and California, he was judicially isfied with his theory that the propositions pronounced unworthy to be a professor at of pure mathematics are empirical general- the College of the City of New York. He izations, for this did not seem to him to was then employed to lecture at the afford a sufficient guarantee of their truth. 338 Russell, Bertrand

His own solution was to reduce are constructed on the basis of Russell mathematics to logic. This involved, first, and Whitehead’s work. an analysis of the fundamental terms of Perhaps Russell’s most original contri- mathematics into purely logical concepts, bution to this field was his theory of and second the elaboration of a system of types. This arose out of his discovery of a logic which was adequate to furnish the contradiction which made Frege say, premises from which the propositions of when the news was communicated to mathematics could be deduced. The first him, that the whole foundation of mathe- part of the undertaking was carried out in matics had been undermined. It can be the Principles of Mathematics (1903) fairly easily set out. Most classes appear and the second in Principia Mathematica not to be members of themselves: for (co-authored with WHITEHEAD, 1910–13). example, the class of men is not itself a His definition of number, in which he was man. But some classes do appear to be anticipated by the German mathematician members of themselves: for instance, the FREGE, made use of the concept of a class of all the things that can be counted one-one relation; that is, a relation such would itself appear capable of being that if x is so related to y, no other term is counted. Now consider the class of all so related to y, and x has the relation to no classes which are not members of them- other term. Two classes are said to be selves. Is it or is it not a member of itself? similar if their members can be correlated If it is, it is not, and if it is not, it is. by a one-one relation. Then the number of Similar contradictions can be found in a class is defined as the class of all those other fields. A notorious example is the classes that are similar to it, and a cardinal paradox of Epimenides the Cretan who number is defined as anything which is said that all Cretans were liars. Another the number of some class. At that time starts from the point that some words are Russell believed in the existence of predicable of themselves and others not. classes. Later, he came to think that Thus the word ‘short’ is short but the they were logical fictions, and thereby put word ‘long’ is not long. Let us call those the status of numbers again in question. that are so predicable ‘autological’ and This was a difficulty which he never those that are not ‘heterological’. Is the resolved. word ‘heterological’ predicable of itself? Principia Mathematica occupies an If it is, it is not, and if it is not, it is. architectonic position in the development Russell’s solution to these paradoxes of symbolic logic. The breach with was to arrange objects into a hierarchy of Aristotelian logic consisted not so much types, so that what can be true or false of in the use of a special notation as in objects of one type cannot significantly be the greater generality of Russell and said about those of another. In particular, if Whitehead’s system, and above all in a given class is the extension of a given their attempt to make it rigorously for- predicate, it is nonsensical to apply that mal. How far they succeeded in this, or in predicate to that class. Thus it is not false their programme of deriving mathematics but nonsensical to say that the class of men from logic, is a technical question is human, and the question whether the about which there is still some dispute. word ‘heterological’ is itself autological or Other systems of logic have since been heterological is meaningless. Even when a developed which can lay claim to a predicate does appear to characterize greater rigour, but to a large extent they objects of different types, it does not have Russell, Bertrand 339 the same meaning in each case. Thus a he dropped the self from the list, for he predicate like ‘being countable’ becomes, came to hold that selves did not exist as as Russell put it, systematically ambiguous. entities distinct from the experiences The theory of types, of which only the attributed to them; but he continued to outline has been given here, has a certain hold that we are acquainted both with our ad hoc air about it. Not all forms of self- own sense-data and with universals. reference are logically vicious, and we Contemporary criticisms of the notion of seem to have no adequate rules for pick- sense-data did not disturb him, but there ing out the cases in which it is to be pro- is reason to think that he would have liked hibited. But the theory has had a strong to dispense with universals. The recogni- historical influence. By calling attention tion of such abstract entities runs counter to the fact that a sentence might be gram- to the ‘robust feeling for reality’ which he matically well-formed and yet succeed in always claimed for his philosophizing. He saying nothing, it prepared the way for the did not, however, think it possible to dis- LOGICAL POSITIVISTS’ declaration that pense with them. He allowed, perhaps metaphysical statements are not even wrongly, that one can successfully take false but literally meaningless. the NOMINALIST step of reducing them all 2 Theory of Knowledge. Russell to the single relation of resemblance, that always tried to integrate his logic with his one can, for example, substitute for the theory of knowledge, and accordingly quality ‘whiteness’ the relation of ‘resem- identified the statements that formed the blance in being white’; but he did not basis of his semantic hierarchy with those think that much is to be gained by this that were epistemologically primitive. In as resemblance, in his view, is itself a The Problems of Philosophy (1912) he universal. drew a distinction between what he called When he wrote The Problems of knowledge by description and knowl- Philosophy Russell believed that physical edge by acquaintance and took as his objects were known only by description, basic propositions – those which supply being postulated as the causes of sense- the foundation for all our empirical data. But following a principle which he knowledge – propositions which refer called the supreme maxim in scientific only to things with which one is directly philosophy – ‘wherever possible substi- acquainted. The meaning which he here tute constructions out of known entities gave to ‘acquaintance’ was such that if one for inferences to unknown entities’ – he was acquainted with an object it followed abandoned this view in favour of the the- that the object really existed and really had ory that physical objects are logical con- the properties that it was apprehended as structions out of actual and possible having. On the other hand he regarded the sense-data. This amounts to claiming that existence and properties of things known statements about physical objects can be only by description as problematic. faithfully translated into statements about At that time Russell held that the sense-data. This theory was developed in things with which one could be Our Knowledge of the External World acquainted were one’s own private SENSE- (1914) and in two of the essays reprinted DATA, images, thoughts and feelings (both in Mysticism and Logic (1918). Roughly present and past since he allowed memory speaking, his view was that at any given to be a form of direct knowledge), one’s moment each observer perceives a private own self, and UNIVERSALS. Subsequently three-dimensional world with its own 340 Russell, Bertrand private space (or spaces: he distinguishes into the constitution of minds, and by the the space of sight from the space of operation of different causal laws. Thus touch). He called such private worlds ‘per- the sense-data which help to constitute spectives’. In addition to these perceived minds when correlated according to the perspectives, there is also an infinite num- laws of psychology, constitute physical ber of unperceived perspectives, namely objects when correlated according to the all those that would be perceived if an laws of physics. In their mental aspect observer were in the appropriate state and they engage, among other things, in what position. These contain not sense-data but Russell called mnemic causation, a kind what Russell called ‘sensibilia’, entities of action at a distance by which experi- which are generically similar to sense-data ences produce subsequent memory but are not actually sensed. He did not images. Though Russell gave up the fully work out this theory, which encoun- reductionist view of the nature of physical ters obvious difficulties even if one is will- objects, he retained it with respect to ing to assume that sensibilia and minds, in the sense that he rejected the unperceived perspectives literally exist. notion of consciousness or the self as a In later years, Russell reverted to a substantial entity. On the other hand, causal theory of perception. He came to while he dallied with BEHAVIOURISM, he think that it alone can do justice to the never denied the existence of states of evidence which is furnished by science. A consciousness which are not definable in curious feature of his causal theory was physical terms. that he located sense-data in the percipi- 3 Names and descriptions. Russell’s ent’s brain. He did not mean that when we predilection for WILLIAM OF OCKHAM’s think we are perceiving the world around razor was not due merely to a love of us we are really observing only our own intellectual economy for its own sake, . His argument was rather that an though this may have played its part. His event’s position in space-time is deter- main reason was epistemological: the mined by its causal relations and that ‘the belief that the more entities you allow causal and temporal connections of per- yourself to postulate, the greater the risk cepts with events in afferent and efferent of your being wrong. There are also nerves gives percepts a position in the semantic considerations which are dis- brain of the observer’. It might be thought played in his famous theory of definite that if percepts are to be admitted as enti- descriptions, a theory which he himself ties one would do better to maintain that regarded as one of his most important they are not the sort of things that can be contributions to philosophy. It was first located in physical space at all. sketched in ‘’ (1905), more Russell’s reductionism was carried to rigorously formulated in the first volume its furthest point in The Analysis of Mind of Principia Mathematica, and further (1921), where he adopted a theory akin to explained in the Introduction to the neutral monism of William JAMES. He Mathematical Philosophy. The philo- held that both mind and matter are logical sophical problem which gave rise to it constructions out of elements – primarily was that of showing how it was possible sense-data – which are themselves neither to speak meaningfully of non-existent mental nor physical. They are distin- objects, such as the present King of guished by the fact that certain elements, France, or even of objects which could such as images and feelings, enter only not possibly exist such as the round Russell, Bertrand 341 square, as in the statement ‘the round ordinary proper names, like ‘Homer’ and square is a contradiction’. His solution ‘Napoleon’ – are turned by him into predi- was to show that expressions of the form cates is that they do not guarantee the suc- ‘the so and so’, at least in this usage, cess of their reference. It is always logically never function as names. It does not fol- possible that they should denote nothing. low from the fact that they are meaningful But if the statements in which they occur that there is any object which they mean. are to be meaningful Russell thought that He showed this by giving a rule for trans- their analysis must terminate in statements lating the sentence in which the definite containing substantival words whose deno- descriptive phrase occurs, in such a way tation was guaranteed. The ultimate values that the phrase no longer looks as if it of his existential variables are denoted by were a name. Thus, to take his own exam- what he called logically proper names. ple, the statement ‘The author of This is the basis of the doctrine of Waverley was Scott’ becomes in his trans- ‘LOGICAL ATOMISM’ which Russell, under lation a conjunction of the three state- the influence of his pupil WITTGENSTEIN, ments ‘At least one person wrote put forward in the years following the First Waverley’; ‘At most one person wrote World War. The view is that, in the last Waverley’; and ‘It is not the case that any- analysis, the world consists of atomic facts one both wrote Waverley and was not iden- and that these facts correspond directly – tical with Scott’. To put it symbolically, as as it were photographically – to elementary Russell would have preferred, he held that propositions. The elementary propositions to say that the thing which has ␾ has ␺, are those which are expressed by conjoin- when ␾ is the property concealed in the ing a lowest level predicate with one or and ␺ the property more logically proper names. Once more attributed to what it describes, is to say that tying up his logic with his theory of knowl- there is an x, such that x has ␾, and, for all edge, Russell tended to assume that these y, if y has ␾, then y is identical with x, and logically proper names stood for sense- x has ␺. Thus, any description of the sub- data: for it is plausible to argue that only ject goes into the predicate, and what demonstrative expressions which stand for Russell called a ‘bare particular’ is left to sense-data are bound to succeed in their be the value of the variable x. reference. It may be thought, however, that This theory, which has been called ‘a the whole enterprise was misconceived, paradigm of philosophy’, later came in since there seems no good reason to for criticism on the ground that it makes suppose that for a referential statement definite descriptive statements false when to be meaningful it is necessary that its they fail in their reference, whereas it reference should be logically guaranteed. would be more in accordance with ordinary In the Inquiry into Meaning and Truth usage to say in that case that they were (1940), Russell gave this theory a new neither true or false. A more serious aspect by identifying particulars with objection, which does not directly impugn qualities. His motive was to eliminate the truth of the theory but does diminish what he regarded as the metaphysical its importance, is that Russell throughout notion of substance. He therefore fol- assumed a defective view of meaning, in lowed BERKELEY in treating the things of that he identified the meaning of substan- common sense as collections of qualities, tives with their denotation. The main united by what he called the relation of reason why definite descriptions – and even compresence. This view is retained in 342 Ryle, Gilbert

Russell’s last important philosophical he was not interested in analysis for its work, Human Knowledge: Its Scope and own sake, but only as a method of proof. Limits (1948), which is otherwise of inter- In this way, as in the power and elegance est chiefly for its attempt to deal with the of his literary style, he remained in the problem of INDUCTION. He took the view high tradition of British Empiricism, the that inductive reasoning stands in need of tradition of Hobbes, Locke, Berkeley, justification and elaborated a set of prin- Hume and Mill. He was its outstanding ciples which he thought would be suffi- representative in the twentieth century. cient for the purpose. He did not, (A.J.A.) however, claim that any of these princi- ples can be known to be true. Ryle, Gilbert (1900–76) Gilbert Ryle, From the purely philosophical point of who was born in Brighton and spent his life view, Russell’s work in the field of ethics teaching at Oxford, was probably the most and of social and political philosophy was influential British philosopher of his gener- not of comparable interest with his work ation. He was at one time much impressed on logic and the theory of knowledge. He by the earlier writings of HUSSERL, but had been persuaded that ethical state- already in the early 1930s he was adum- ments have no objective validity, a con- brating one of the characteristic doctrines clusion which he confessed to disliking of modern linguistic ANALYSIS when he on emotional grounds; and was therefore suggested that the task of philosophy was inclined to hold that the main issues in ‘the detection of the sources in linguistic ethics are psychological and social: ques- idioms of recurrent misconceptions and tions of what people desire and how they absurd theories’. In Dilemmas (1954) he may attain it. In the sphere of education suggested that philosophical problems arise and politics he was above all an advocate from apparent conflicts between general of liberty. Though he was more keenly truths none of which we could sincerely aware of the irrational features in human abandon; the task of philosophy was there- conduct, his political position was in fore to resolve these apparent conflicts by many ways strongly reminiscent of that of an elucidation of the concepts which were John Stuart Mill. used in stating these truths; philosophy was Russell often changed his philosophi- then essentially the dissolution of dilemmas cal views, but his approach to philosophy arising from our imperfect understanding was highly consistent. His aim was of our own conceptual apparatus. This posi- always to find reasons for accepted tion is akin to, but not identical with, that of beliefs, whether in the field of mathemat- the later WITTGENSTEIN. ics, natural science, or common sense. He Ryle’s best-known work, The Concept was a consistent sceptic, not in the sense of Mind (1949) exemplifies this theory of that he denied our claims to knowledge, the nature of philosophy. Ryle considers but that he questioned them. He adhered that problems about the nature of mind also to a single method: the method of and the relation of the mind to the body starting with propositions which are the arise from a misunderstanding of the con- least susceptible to doubt, and trying to cept of mind and of concepts of such reconstruct the edifice of knowledge on mental ‘states’ and ‘activities’ as willing, this basis, with as few assumptions as pos- thinking or imagining. We are inclined to sible. The result was that his justifications construe the mind as an extra object usually took the form of analyses: even so situated in the body and controlling it by Ryle, Gilbert 343 a set of unwitnessable activities; this is wholly freed himself of the ‘reductive’ what he calls the dogma of the ghost (the tendencies of RUSSELL. mind) in the machine (the body). Ryle In his treatment of mind and elsewhere regarded this picture as totally mislead- Ryle made much use of the notion of a ing and, in a series of brilliant studies, ‘category mistake’; we make a category he attempts to disabuse us of it by show- mistake when we misunderstand what kind ing that mental concepts refer not to of concept we are using or considering, as ghostly acts but to dispositions to behave if we were to think that the University of in certain ways in appropriate circum- Oxford were something that we could visit stances, to the style of actual witnessable in addition to the Colleges. To think of the performances, and similar unproblematic mind as a hidden substance is to make such matters. He protested vigorously that he a category mistake. Apart from his studies was not putting forward a doctrine of in the nature of philosophy and the concept BEHAVIOURISM, or in any way denying the of mind Ryle’s main work was on the reality of the mental life, but only nature of meaning and the philosophy of attempting to clarify the nature of the logic; he also contributed to Platonic mental. But the work has often been scholarship. Ryle also wrote the articles on attacked as behaviouristic and it has been Categories, Epistemology, and Solipsism suggested that Ryle at this stage had not in this Encyclopedia. (J.O.U.) S

Saint-Simon,Claude-Henri de Rouvroy, In RELIGION Santayana repeatedly pro- Comte de (1760–1825) French social- claimed his NATURALISM and materialism, ist and philosopher of history, see COMTE, insisting that the essence of religion is POSITIVISM. myth and poetry. Emotionally, however, he was unquestionably Roman Catholic. Santayana, George (1863–1952) As He never concealed his utter disdain for a SCEPTIC, the American philosopher Protestantism, and his later works show denied that the exis- that his Catholicism was more than skin tence of anything can ever be proved, and deep. The last years of his life were spent insisted that all beliefs as to existence are in a Catholic retreat in Rome. (J.W.S.) based upon ‘animal faith’. As a Platonic REALIST, however, he insisted that we have Sartre, Jean-Paul (1905–80) The indubitable knowledge of UNIVERSALS or French writer Jean-Paul Sartre worked ‘essences’. The proposed bridge between with great originality in a vast range of these two sides of his thought is the claim philosophical, critical, literary and dra- that essences (which both are and are not matic forms. He was the epitome of the real) do not exist. ‘committed’ intellectual, and his name The above paragraph uses the word became almost synonymous with EXIS- ‘real’ in PLATO’s sense, but Santayana does TENTIALISM throughout the world. Instead not generally so use it. ‘To be real’ for of opting for the life of a professional him means to exist in space and time; and philosopher in an academic institution, he he insists that all reality in this sense is communicated his ideas to a wider audi- material. In his metaphysical scheme the ence by adopting a popular style in sev- ‘Realm of Matter’ is the basic reality. eral of his theoretical works and by Essences, according to this way of talk- composing a series of plays and novels ing, are ideal only. Thus, in an unorthodox which earned him international acclaim way, Santayana seeks to combine REALISM as a writer. He was offered the Nobel and IDEALISM. Another strange union in Prize for literature in 1964, but refused it. his philosophy is between hard-boiled Having taught for a brief spell at a naturalism and aesthetic romanticism. He Lycée in Le Havre, Sartre travelled to could combine the harshest naturalistic Germany in 1933 to study PHENOMENOL- description of what exists in space and OGY at first hand. HUSSERL and HEIDEGGER time (the stone of sculpture, the canvas of were his main influences, though HEGEL, painting, the sound waves of music) with KIERKEGAARD and KANT also figured the most sensitive appreciation of the strongly in his existentialist writings. ideal content of the work of art. His meta- What most fascinated him about the phe- physical distinction between the ‘reality’ nomenological movement was its determi- of matter and the ‘ideality’ of essence nation to describe human consciousness assists him in this. He was himself a poet as it exploded into the world, intentionally of considerable talent; and the literary relating to the everyday things around it quality of his prose is generally very high. and dynamically projecting new meanings Sartre, Jean-Paul 345 for its future (see INTENTIONALITY). (1947). It follows from this that ‘man is Human existence was thus revealed as condemned to be free’. Even such factors first and foremost a being-in-the-world as the unconscious or could (être-au-monde). And this meant in turn not, for Sartre, deprive us of our ultimate that even the most ordinary objects of our responsibility and freedom. While we do environment could be treated as matters not of course decide what class, sex, lan- of immediate philosophical concern. guage or world we are born with, we do Sartre has described the enthusiasm with decide what is to be made of them. In which he and other French thinkers like other words, we are at all times free to MERLEAU-PONTY and create and recreate the meaning of our greeted the phenomenological invitation world in terms of a project of possibilities to ‘philosophize about everything – even reaching into the future. the essence of a gas street lamp’. Nothing Not surprisingly, Sartre’s first two appeared more important to these French philosophical works – Imagination (1936) existentialists than the ‘promotion of and The Psychology of Imagination street lamps to the dignity of philosophi- (1940) – were devoted to an analysis and cal objects’. Philosophy had abandoned assessment of imagination. His basic its academic haven and was now to be argument in these works is that conscious- found in the streets. ness negates the world as it is and invents All of Sartre’s works share a commit- a possible one in its stead. Here we find ment to a philosophy of freedom. His the seeds of Sartre’s decisive ontological famous claim that existence precedes conviction that human being is free and essence exemplifies this. There is no such for-itself precisely because it has this thing as a given ‘human nature’, deter- capacity for negation – the power not to be mining how we act and behave. On the what it is and to be what it is not. This con- contrary, it is our everyday acts and viction was developed in Sartre’s subse- choices that make up our identity. Man quent writings – and most notably his first of all exists, Sartre argues, and monumental work Being and Nothingness defines himself afterwards. (1943). Here Sartre explored the central Sartre did not deny that we are always existential dilemma – how can human ‘situated’ in a concrete world. His claim consciousness relate positively to other was that it is precisely our way of people and things in the world if its very responding to such situations which con- freedom as a being-for-itself is defined stitutes our freedom. We can choose against what is other than itself? Existence either to abandon ourselves to the prevail- is described accordingly as an absurd con- ing state of affairs, passively conforming flict between freedoms, each one trying to to the status quo and reducing ourselves ‘nihilate’ the other in order to preserve its to the level of a mere object among own sovereign autonomy. objects. Or we can choose to transcend But how is moral action or political what is given by projecting ourselves commitment possible? This question was authentically towards a new horizon of relentlessly pursued in Sartre’s novels possibility. Either way, we are always (Nausea and the Roads to Freedom trilogy) choosing what we are, and never able not and plays (No Exit, The Condemned of to choose. We are what we make of our- Altona, The Flies, The Respectful selves, as Sartre proclaims in his polemi- Prostitute and The Devil and the Good cal essay Existentialism and Humanism Lord ). It also figured centrally in most of 346 Saussure, Ferdinand de his post-war philosophical works and linguistics with his Course in General accounts for his growing interest in Linguistics (1916). The book was created Marxism – an interest which began as after his death, out of various sets of stu- early as What is Literature? (1947), where dents’ notes, by two of his disciples. To this Sartre first raised the controversial notion apocryphal but seminal text we owe above of ‘committed writing’. The attempt to rec- all a theory of the sign, conceived as the oncile the existentialist claim for individ- union of a signifier (a form) and a signi- ual freedom and the Marxist claim for fied (an idea). The relationship between collective revolution became most explicit these is not natural, but arbitrary; nor is it in The Critique of Dialectical Reason, the autonomous: it depends on the network of first volume of which was published in relationships within language as a whole – 1960. (Volume Two appeared posthu- a sign has a ‘value’ before it has significa- mously in 1985.) Indeed the debate tion. Thus, language is conceived as a sys- between existentialism and Marxism dom- tem: the Course distinguishes langue, the inated much of French intellectual life in code common to all the speakers of a lan- the post-war period and featured centrally guage, from parole, the individual speech- in the columns of Les Temps Modernes, the act which externalizes the system. Finally, left-wing journal founded and co-edited by the object of linguistics is defined as syn- Sartre, Merleau-Ponty and de Beauvoir. chronic rather than diachronic: the linguist In his later writings, Sartre seems to studies the system in a particular state, have rediscovered his early fascination with without reference to its evolution in time. the powers of imagination. He devoted sev- There is another, darker side to Saussure: eral full-length works to the study of the the never-published notebooks in which he existential crisis of creativity experienced develops the theory that Latin poets con- by writers such as Genet, Mallarmé and cealed anagrams in their texts. This dubi- Flaubert (the last of which extended to ous theory nevertheless anticipates three massive volumes published in contemporary conceptions of the free play 1971–2). He even wrote an autobiographi- of the signifier. [J.-J.L.] cal account of his own imaginative journey through childhood (Words, 1964). But Scepticism Scepticism is a doctrine Sartre’s return to the theme of imagination which holds the possibilities of knowl- was not a retreat from the political fray. He edge to be limited. In one form it con- retained his combative stance up to his tends that there are things which cannot, death in 1980, frequently crossing swords in principle, be known at all; in another with structuralists, psychoanalysts, doctri- that knowledge of some things can be naire Marxists, and of course the right- attained only with difficulty and given wing French whom be took certain precautions. In this second form it great delight in denouncing as salauds. supports a methodological policy of Perhaps the most abiding feature of Sartre’s reserve and circumspection in the forma- work was his unswerving attachment to the tion of beliefs. Its opposite is dogmatism. freedom of a critical intellect that always Different species of scepticism are distin- refuses the compromise of certainty.[R.K.] guished in two principal ways: by refer- ence either to the methods of inquiry Saussure, Ferdinand de (1857–1913) whose reliability is questioned or to the The Swiss philologist Ferdinand de kind of objects whose knowability is Saussure founded modern structural doubted. Doubt about methods may be Scepticism 347 general, based on the ground that there is of the ethical sceptic about an order of no infallible way of getting knowledge values, and of many philosophers about a and that all methods have failed at some substantive and immortal soul. Finally, time or other. But more usually scepti- the sceptic may assert that the objects in cism about methods is partial and depreci- question could not possibly exist and ates the trustworthiness of one recognized therefore that knowledge of the sort he is source of knowledge in the interests of doubting is logically ruled out. another. Reason and sense-experience BERKELEY’s attitude to material substance have been set against one another and and HUME’s to real or intrinsic connexions again jointly defended against the preten- between events are instances of this type. sions of authority, revelation and intu- General or total scepticism has always ition. On the other hand, defenders of been rare, most sceptics being partisans of faith like PASCAL, have expressed a radical one method or one type of object. There scepticism about the ability of reason to are good reasons for taking general scepti- arrive at religious truth. Thus , cism to be a kind of dialectical extrava- which distinguishes the natural truth gance. To start with there is an obvious air accessible to reason from the supernatural of paradox about it. It seems self-refuting truth that is beyond its reach, is ambigu- to say that nothing at all can be known, for ous. It may be a sincere belief that the to assert it is to claim at least one piece of unaided human intelligence cannot knowledge – the sceptical principle itself. acquire religious knowledge, but it may This was clear to Pyrrho of Elis (c.300 also be ironical and imply that since rea- BC), the first sceptical philosopher, who son is unable to acquire such knowledge it concluded that the principle could only be cannot be acquired at all. held tentatively – a rather enfeebling It is more usual for particular and lim- manoeuvre. According to RUSSELL’s theory ited varieties of scepticism to be defined of types, general scepticism, since it refers by means of the objects held to be to itself, is not capable of significant for- unknowable. Sceptical arguments have mulation. In general, it can be argued, if been used to deny that we can get knowl- one is to have any reasonable ground for edge of any matters of empirical fact, of skepticism, there must be something the external world of material objects, of of which one is not sceptical. The usual the minds of others, of the past, of the reason for sceptical doubt is the experi- future, of nature as a whole, of values and ence or possibility of failure in claims to of any objects of religious or metaphysi- knowledge. Failure reveals itself through cal speculation which lie beyond sense- inconsistency and to recognize this we experience. Scepticism about objects has must be aware that contradictory state- three levels or degrees. The sceptic may ments have been made and that the law of admit that the objects in question exist but contradiction is true. Furthermore, past deny that we can ever know more than experience of failure in a given type of this about them. KANT’s position on thinking is only relevant to one’s future things-in-themselves is sceptical in this confidence in it if the rationality of induc- sense, as is that of the inductive sceptic tive argument is assumed. One could con- about laws of nature. Second, the sceptic ceivably exhibit complete scepticism by may assert that the objects in question do refusing to claim any knowledge at all; not in fact exist: this is the standpoint of what one could not do is offer a rational the ordinary religious sceptic about God, defence for this procedure. 348 Scepticism

Scepticism began with Pyrrho in the the sixteenth century whose most distin- same way as it has from time to time guished representative was MONTAIGNE. recurred – as an expression of discontent HUME is the most penetrating and compre- with the intellectual chaos produced by hensive of modern sceptics. He argued the conflict of dogmatic systems. For that our belief in bodies, minds and Pyrrho philosophy was a practical art causes rested not on reason or the senses whose aim was detachment and peace of but on the workings of the imagination mind (). This goal could not be which was naturally constituted so as to attained unless the inevitably frustrating make a coherent structure out of the dis- search for truth were abandoned. Most of orderly flux of sense-impressions that the conceivable arguments for scepticism was all we really knew. Hume’s intentions are to be found in the thought of the are ambiguous and insecure enough for it Greek SCEPTICS as reported by Sextus to have been plausibly argued that he was Empiricus. Aenesidemus put forward ten not really a sceptic at all but rather a ‘tropes’ which set out in detail the reasons defender of ‘natural belief’ against irrele- for doubting the reliability of perception. vantly rigorous criteria of knowledge. Agrippa’s five ‘tropes’ are more compact This interpretation is in sympathy with and more far-reaching. As well as the rel- a doctrine deriving from G. E. MOORE, and ative or subjective nature of perception, ultimately from REID, which argues that he lists the infinite regress of proof pro- common sense beliefs are more deserving pounded by Carneades, the conflict of of our confidence than the arguments of opinions between men, the inevitably sceptical philosophers and that philo- hypothetical character of all ultimate sophical scepticism is insincere, or, at premises and the logical circularity of the best, ‘methodological’ – a technique for syllogism, later emphasised by J. S. MILL. bringing to light principles and criteria of Some Sceptics – Arcesilaus for example – knowledge ordinarily taken for granted. concluded that since certainty was not to To the followers of WITTGENSTEIN, philo- be had we must make do with probability, sophical scepticism is a symptom of con- and Carneades suggested that coherence ceptual confusion and disorder, an of beliefs was a measure of reliability, indication that language is being misun- that the more systematic one’s body of derstood and put to improper use. It is beliefs the more reason there was for argued that we can only learn what confidence in it. Since the period of the ‘knowledge’ and ‘certainty’ mean by Greek sceptics (of the fourth to second hearing them used in connection with centuries BC) scepticism has reappeared material objects, past events, other peo- from time to time in the history of ple’s feelings and so on, and that it is thought. ABELARD’s Sic et Non (‘Yes and senseless to inquire whether these para- No’) – a collection of contradictory opin- digm cases are genuine instances of ions by the Fathers on points of doctrine – knowledge and certainty. WISDOM and introduced a sceptical technique that was AYER suggested that problems in the the- used by KANT in setting out the antinomies ory of knowledge have a characteristic with which he sought to prove the impos- pattern and commonly arise in a sceptical sibility of constructive metaphysics. The form. In each case there is an apparent anti-Aristotelian and anti-Scholastic logi- conflict between (a) our evidence, what cians of the Renaissance prepared the way is given or known directly (sense- for the more thorough-going sceptics of impressions, present events, other people’s Sceptics 349 words and deeds, particular occurrences); by Pyrrho of Elis (c.360–c.270) and and (b) what we claim to know (material expounded by his pupil Timon. For things, past events, other people’s feel- Pyrrho, as for many in his troubled age, ings, laws of nature); and (c) the fact that the state of imperturbability was the ethi- what we claim to know goes logically cal mainspring of philosophy, and his beyond the evidence for it. Sceptical the- originality lay in the method by which he ories say that we must abandon the claims sought to attain it. With no means of to knowledge (b), but there are less cata- arriving at knowledge, nothing could be strophic ways out of the difficulty. Causal said to be in itself any more this than that, and analogical theories resolve the incon- and no argument could be judged more sistency by appealing to principles that certain than its opposite. The external validate inference from the evidence to stimulus of belief, desire, and emotion logically distinct conclusions. Reductive was thus severed, and this produced indif- theories like PHENOMENALISM deny (c); ference, followed by tranquility, and one intuitionist theories like naïve REALISM was left with no guide for action other deny that we are confined to the evidence than custom. specified in (a). To many philosophers 2 Middle and New Academy (third to scepticism is of no serious importance as first century BC). Pyrrhonism faded out a philosophical theory. Its point is to before the dialectical scepticism of the make us aware of what is involved in our Middle and New ACADEMY – a logical claims to knowledge and perhaps, by attack directed principally against the doing so, to render them more secure. STOIC theory of knowledge, which held (A.Q.) that special sense-perceptions caused by real objects irresistibly demanded the Sceptics The name ‘sceptics’ is given assent of the wise. Arcesilaus of Pitane to certain groups of philosophers in the (315–c.241) argued that there is no dis- Hellenistic-Roman period who, doubting cernible difference between true and false the capacity of senses and reason to fur- perceptions, and that the latter may be as nish knowledge of the nature of things, irresistible as the former. In teaching he advocated . Their adopted the basic sceptical practice of common ground was an epistemological arguing impartially on both sides of any attack on all philosophies which were question. His scepticism may have had dogmatic, that is which claimed to have roots in SOCRATES as well as Pyrrho. discovered truth. There seems no way, Carneades of Cytene (c.214–c.129), the they said, of penetrating beyond ‘appear- most formidable of the Sceptics, system- ances’ to knowledge of external objects. atized the attack on dogmatism. With a Sense perception gives contradictory wealth of brilliant argument against the reports and there is no criterion in sensa- possibility that true and false sense- tion itself to distinguish true from false impressions are distinguishable in them- impressions. Nor is there any criterion of selves, and against the capacity of any correct judgment, and an attempt to find rational process to do more than test for- one must lead to infinite regress. Thus we mal validity, he swept the EPISTEMOLOGY must withhold our judgment. Classical of the Stoa from the field. He severely skepticism went through three phases. damaged their anthropocentric theology 1 Pyrrhonism (late fourth and third and their theories of divination, provi- century BC). Pyrrhonism was inaugurated dence and fatalism. In a systematic review 350 Schelling, Friedrich of all ethical ends he demonstrated logical Modes of Attack, followed Aenesidemus difficulties in the Stoic moral goal, and on in his use of relativity and found four a famous embassy to Rome in 166–5 he types of fallacies in dogmatic arguments: argued the relativity of moral terms. In discrepancy of theories, infinite regress, practical life he proposed a theory of prob- hypothetical assumption and circular rea- ability as a guide for action: there were soning. We finally hear of two ultimate three grades of probability – the probable; Modes: nothing is apprehended intu- the probable and undisputed; and the prob- itively, as is shown by the disagreements able, undisputed and tested; and the latter of philosophers; nor can anything be was the highest state of belief, attained apprehended through something else, as when a whole system of logically con- this would involve or nected ideas is formed. Carneades left no infinite regress. The sceptical attack on writings, but was fully reported by his causation is likewise classified by voluminous successor, Clitomachus of Aenesidemus in Eight Modes, directed Carthage. Philo of was still main- against the inadmissibility of a dogmatic taining scepticism in the first century BC jump to the non-apparent, unconfirmed by but his successor, , any evidence from appearances. There is turned the Academy towards an eclecti- no certain connexion between reality and cism which incorporated Stoic views. phenomena; a reason is arbitrarily chosen 3 The new Pyrrhonism (from the first to suit the theory of the moment. There is century BC). It was outside the Academy also an interesting argument on the relativ- that the sceptical movement flowed ity of cause and effect: if cause is produc- strongly for the next two or three cen- tive of effect it must exist before it (which turies. The new sect professed to go back will lead to an infinite regress); but since to Pyrrhonism, arguing that the Academic cause is relative to effect it cannot be prior sceptics had no right to deny the possibil- in existence (and their relativity makes any ity of knowledge: they should have with- argument concerning them circular). The held their assent even from this. On the whole edifice of scepticism may be other hand there seemed no basis even for explored in the works of Sextus Empiricus opinion; one could only take things as one (late second century AD) which are all the found them and live by custom, conven- more valuable for their lack of originality. tion, tradition. But the new Pyrrhonists Scepticism was of immense impor- gladly accepted the Academic tradition of tance in an age dominated by the dog- dialectical argument, and combining with matic philosophies of Stoicism and this the EMPIRICISM of the Empiric Epicureanism; indeed a persistent move- Medical School, made a complete sys- ment of doubt and inquiry which insists tematization of sceptical arguments. on keeping open for examination any Aenesidemus of Cnossus, probably an assertion seems fundamental for all phi- earlier contemporary of CICERO, dealt with losophy. In addition, stoic examinations the relative nature of sense-perception of sense-perception, causality and proba- in his Ten Tropes (or Modes) of With bility are of great interest for much recent holding Assent, arguing that every per- philosophy. (I.G.K) ception is relative to percipient, object and concomitant external and internal cir- Schelling, Friedrich W. J. (1775–1854) cumstances, so that the object itself was The Wunderkind of German IDEALISM inapprehensible. Agrippa, in his Five and ‘the Proteus of philosophy’ to his Schiller, F. C. S. 351 contemporaries, Schelling must be recog- order to account for their ultimate unity, nized as a magnificent failure. However, the entire Judaeo-Christian tradition of the failure is that of METAPHYSICS and ONTOLOGY and ETHICS is made to tremble. moral philosophy themselves. The fact Whereas Hegelian dialectic often seems to that failures are often more instructive be a machine that bulldozes its path of than successes may explain why after progress, Schelling’s meditation never for- long being buried under a flourishing gets the damage done: however nostalgic HEGEL renaissance Schelling has returned for ‘eternal joy’, it stresses the ‘source of to haunt contemporary philosophy. sadness’ in moral philosophy, ‘the veil of Interest has concentrated less on his last, melancholy draped over all nature, the highly religious works – Philosophy of profound and indestructible melancholy Mythology and Philosophy of Revelation of all life’. (1821–43) – than on the major works of Major influences on him were PLATO, his early and middle periods, for example, NEOPLATONISM, Bruno, Jakob Böhme, Ideas for a Philosophy of Nature (1797); KANT, FICHTE, Hegel and Hölderlin. On the World-Soul: A Hypothesis of Schelling, in turn, should be studied by Advanced Physics toward an Explanation philosophers interested in SCHOPENHAUER, of the Universal Organism (1798); NIETZSCHE, HEIDEGGER, WHITEHEAD, System of MERLEAU-PONTY, contemporary philoso- (1800); and On the Essence of Human phy of biology, ecology or ANIMAL rights, Freedom (1809), along with a series of and also by anyone interested in the fate of sketches, The Ages of the World Kantian ‘moral freedom’. [D.F.K] (1810–14). As the titles indicate, the two principal themes in Schelling’s philoso- Schiller, Ferdinand Canning Scott phy are NATURE and FREEDOM. Yet why (1864–1937) The British philosopher ‘failure’? And why ‘magnificent’? F. C. S. Schiller worked in Oxford and, in The problems of nature and freedom in later life, in Southern California. He was modern philosophy arise from the notori- a personal friend of William JAMES, with ous Cartesian split between extended sub- whose pragmatic philosophy he was in stance and thinking substance. Schelling close sympathy, though he claimed to regards all philosophy after DESCARTES as have arrived at the basic principles of sterile and even mutilated, inasmuch as its PRAGMATISM independently. Unlike James ‘subjective idealism’ has cut it off from he was a polemical writer; he was con- nature. He traces the Cartesian split back vinced that the fashions in philosophy to the MANICHEAN-Augustinian tradition in prevalent at his time in Oxford were theology. As long as DUALISM vitiates phi- obscurantist and quite without worth. As losophy, with its oppositions of mind/mat- a result most of his writings are attacks, ter, subject/object, good/evil, etc., the particularly on F. H. BRADLEY and those genuine problems remain insoluble. whom he called the ‘formal logicians’, Schelling tries to confront those problems often couched in an ad hominem form head-on by developing an ‘objective’ or which at a later date is somewhat tedious. ‘real’ idealism and a philosophy of But he had a powerful and original mind absolute ‘identity’. Yet as he tries to and his now little-read works contain absorb the negative sides of each duality much that is worth reading. Schiller’s back into the positive sides – matter back basic thesis was that all human activities into spirit, evil back into the good, etc. – in are moulded by human purposes and only 352 Schiller, Friedrich intelligible by reference to them. This, he for the essential diversity of poetic style, held, was true of thinking as well as and On the Sublime (1801), which postu- action; the conceptual frameworks we lates that the mysteries of nature will employ, the modes of reasoning that we always triumph over our attempts to adopt and the beliefs we hold have their comprehend them. {J.R} only justification in their utility for Schleiermacher, Friedrich (1768–1834) human aims. To call a statement true is to German romantic and protestant theologian, evaluate it favourably, just as to call an who extended the scope of HERMENEUTICS action good is to evaluate it favourably. to cover the art of textual interpretation in Much of Schiller’s effort was devoted to general; see THEISM. the application of his ‘HUMANIST’ thesis to this logic. In his Formal Logic (1912) and Schlick, Friedrich Albert Moritz his Logic for Use – An Introduction to the (1882–1936) Moritz Schlick was edu- Voluntarist Theory of Knowledge (1929), cated in Berlin, originally as a physicist. Schiller maintained that the view of rea- In 1922 he took over MACH’s chair in the soning exhibited in the logic books was Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences in wholly mistaken; his principal charges Vienna, where he later founded the VIENNA were that formal logic operated with ille- CIRCLE (see also LOGICAL POSITIVISM). gitimate abstractions in speaking of Fourteen years later he was assassinated propositions since meaning and truth were by a demented student, and his death dependent on the time, place and circum- hastened the break-up of the Circle. stances of communication, and second Despite his scientific training, Schlick’s that validity as a criterion of success in early writings are largely on moral and aes- reasoning was useless since no concrete thetic questions, and display a poetic sensi- argument could be formally valid, and bility not conspicuous in his later work. unquestionally good arguments in all He then gained notice as an expositor of fields made no attempt even to approxi- RELATIVITY-theory (1917), and as author of mate to such an ideal. In place of formal a treatise on EPISTEMOLOGY (1918) which logic he offered an account of reasoning argues, in opposition to KANT, and from an which in its stress on verification, hypoth- EMPIRICIST standpoint, that the proposi- esis and approximation anticipated later tions of LOGIC and MATHEMATICS are not accounts of scientific thought. (J.O.U) synthetic A PRIORI but ANALYTIC, or true by definition, and hence empty of content. Schiller, Friedrich (1759–1805) The Scientific theories, on the other hand, were German poet and playwright Friedrich a posteriori systems of concepts, whose Schiller reacted against the subjectivism truth depended on correspondence, inas- of the theory of aesthetic taste expounded much as their consequences must be capa- in KANT’s Critique of Judgement. In his ble of verification by observed facts. Nor Letters on the Aesthetic Education of Man are these facts sensations merely, as they (1794–5) he postulated an ‘aesthetic’ or were for Mach; anything answering to a ‘play’ impulse that was supposed to unify scientific concept may legitimately be the Kantian opposites of form and matter. taken as real. Schlick also tackles the His contention that judgements in aesthet- mind-body problem, which he regards as ics are as objective as in any other field spurious, in that the supposed dualism was developed further in On Naïve and involved is merely a duality in our ways of Sentimental Poetry (1795), which argues describing the phenomena. Schopenhauer, Arthur 353

Schlick’s later opinions reflect the deeply personal resentment. His diatribe influence of WITTGENSTEIN and CARNAP, ‘On University Philosophy’ also has a and consist, in effect, of an extension of personal background. He applied to his views to all the traditional problems of become a lecturer at the University of philosophy. Such problems arise ‘only Berlin, was found acceptable by a com- from an inadequate description of the mittee including HEGEL and decided to world by means of a faulty language’, and offer his lectures at the same hours as the task of philosophy is not to solve them, Hegel. But he failed to attract any stu- but merely to clarify the question in dis- dents, so his university career ended in pute. It will then appear that the answer is failure. After that, he outdid himself in either ascertainable, in principle, by scien- vituperating Hegel, SCHELLING and tific methods, or else void from the start, FICHTE, calling them windbags and char- the question itself being so framed that latans, though he heard Fichte as a stu- there could be no evidence relevant to its dent, and owed a great deal to his decision. The metaphysical assertions of conception of the will. IDEALISM, MATERIALISM, REALISM, etc. are The two philosophers he most all meaningless in that no possible combi- admired were KANT and PLATO. He con- nation of sense-experiences could either sidered himself the rightful heir of Kant, verify or falsify their claims. while Fichte, Schelling and Hegel were In basing verification (and meaning) usurpers. Like Fichte, he found Kant’s on immediate sense-experience, the later doctrine of the unknowable thing-in-itself Schlick, like other empiricists, was seek- unacceptable, and thought he had discov- ing an incorrigible foundation for knowl- ered the ultimate reality: will. In his best- edge. But the attempt leads to many known work, The World as Will and Idea paradoxes, and even imperils the founda- (1818), he argued that will is blind striv- tions of communication, since meaning ing: it had no purpose or aim and was defined in terms of private experience is neither reasonable nor rational. plainly inaccessible to anyone else. The details of Schopenhauer’s META- Schlick’s explanation, that the ‘structure’ PHYSICS and ETHICS have had little influ- of experience is communicable, but its ence. His historical importance can be ‘content’ beyond description, did not give summed up in three points. First, he was general satisfaction, and the problem of the first major European philosopher to formulating the ‘basic’ or incorrigible make a point of atheism. Second, he was propositions required by this theory was a the first to call attention to the source of much subsequent dissension in and Buddhism. He is often described as a the Vienna Circle. (P.L.H) pessimist, and insisted on the universality of suffering. He claimed that we can find Scholasticism See MEDIEVAL PHILOSOPHY. salvation only by overcoming the blind Schopenhauer, Arthur (1788–1860) cosmic will, but outright suicide was After his father’s death, the German meta- unacceptable because it was itself an physician devoted assertion of will. There are three aids to himself entirely to philosophy, being able salvation: philosophical knowledge, to live comfortably on his inheritance. His contemplation of works of art, and sympa- ridiculously vehement essay On Women, thy for others, based on the recognition which has probably been read more that in reality we are all one. This ethic widely than anything else he wrote, airs a of sympathy contrasts very sharply with 354 Scotus, John Duns

Schopenhauer’s life, for few philosophers Franciscan view of the soul as a substance have been more unsympathetic to others. in its own right, whose intellectual powers Third, he inaugurated an increased empha- are not confined to sensible reality. The sub- sis on will and the irrational in modern tle mingling of these two divergent tenden- philosophy. Although KIERKEGAARD, cies earned him his title of Doctor Subtilis. NIETZSCHE, VAIHINGER, JAMES, BERGSON Scotus argues that the proper object of and Freud clearly did not agree with him, philosophical speculation is reality or their ideas show that Schopenhauer marks being, without any of the determinations an important point of departure in the his- which restrict it to one mode (e.g. infinite tory of thought. His conception of the being or God) rather than another (e.g. intellect as an instrument of the will is sensible being). But the human mind is especially noteworthy in this connexion. hampered by having to draw its knowl- Initially, The World as Will and Idea edge from the sensible. So METAPHYSICS is attracted no attention at all, even after an abstract science of essences bearing Schopenhauer added a second volume upon a single field which is differentiated (1844) by way of elaborating his meta- in terms of purely formal distinctions. physic. Of two essays on ethics which he These forms fall short of actual differ- submitted for prizes, one won a prize, the ences but are not merely the product of other not; so he published them together, the mind’s activity; physical existence is specifying on the title page ‘crowned by...’ accounted for by a form of ‘thisness’ or and ‘not crowned by...’ – confident that haecceitas. Scotus was a profound thinker he would thus immortalize in infamy the but, in the hands of less able followers, his academy that had passed him by. Late in work degenerated into an endless ver- life, he witnessed and relished his growing bosity which contributed greatly to the fame. It may be that the widespread disil- collapse of scholastic thinking. (J.G.D) lusionment after the unsuccessful revolu- Searle, John (1932– ) The American tions of 1848 helped to make his philosopher John Searle was trained in pessimism popular. Certainly, his clearly Oxford, and is the author of Speech Acts written essays, published as Parerga and (1969), Intentionality (1983) and The Paralipomena (1851), helped to find him Construction of Social Reality (1995); see an audience. Among his declared and METAPHOR. devoted admirers were Richard Wagner, whose Tristan and Isolde tries to realize in Sellars, Wilfrid (1912–89) Wilfrid music Schopenhauer’s blind will, and the Sellars is regarded by some as the greatest young Nietzsche, who later outgrew his American philosopher of the twentieth infatuation. (W.K) century. His education in France and Britain inspired him with respect for the Scotus, John Duns (c.1266–1308) natural sciences, accompanied by doubts Born in Scotland, Scotus joined the about LOGICAL POSITIVISM and indeed ANA- Franciscan order in 1281 and later studied LYTIC PHILOSOPHY as a whole. These reser- and taught both at Oxford and at Paris. His vations took shape very slowly, eventually main works are two commentaries on the finding expression in the attack on ‘the Sentences of Peter Lombard, which com- Myth of the Given’ in his very celebrated bine acceptance of the typically Aristotelian essay on ‘Empiricism and the Philosophy theory of knowledge directed to the nature of Mind’ (1956). Sellars thought that the of physical objects with a typically vaunted ‘clarity’ of authors like AYER or Sense-data 355

MOORE was achieved at the expense of have spoken of ‘sensible species’, ‘ideas’, ‘adequacy’, remarking towards the end of ‘impressions’, ‘representations’, ‘sensa- his life that in philosophy it was important tions’ and ‘the given’, but preference has to ‘give one’s muddiest intuitions the been given to ‘sense-datum’ on the fullest benefit of the doubt’. {J.R.} grounds of its comparative neutrality. As a technical term it presupposes as little as Semiology See STRUCTURALISM. possible about the nature and origins of Seneca, Lucius Annaeus (c.5 BC–AD 65) perception’s immediate objects. But it is The Roman dramatist, poet, and STOIC as hard to find a neutral definition for philosopher Lucius Annaeus Seneca was sense-datum as it is to find a neutral term born in Cordoba, Spain. He switch-backed for the idea it expresses. From the time of from a dangerous philosophical and rhetor- HERACLITUS, PROTAGORAS and DEMOCRITUS ical eminence under Caligula, to banish- many philosophers have been persuaded ment under Claudius; soared as millionaire that independent, external, material tutor and confidant of Nero, before sinking things are not the direct or immediate into prudent retirement and death by objects of perception. In any perceptual enforced suicide. He was a follower of situation we can always doubt that what CHRYSIPPUS, but his works have a Latin we perceive is a real material thing. flavour both in thought and presentation; It might be a hallucination or we might be Cato was his hero, Roman rhetoric his dreaming. But there is something we can- medium. He changed the doctrine of the not doubt, for whatever, if anything, may Stoics by grafting the Roman concept of be going on outside us, we may be sure will onto their intellectualism, and altered that our senses are affected in a certain its direction by applying their individualis- way and this indubitable residue is our tic philosophy to the government of the current sense-datum. Though we may be . His shortcomings as in doubt as to how things are, we cannot philosopher and politician are due to con- be in doubt as to how things now appear tradictory leanings towards worldliness on to us to be. So to say how things appear to the one hand and stoic IDEALISM on the us now, with no implication that this is other; the resulting discrepancy of actions how they really are or how they would and professions may perhaps be excused by appear to anyone else, is to describe his honest belief that he was compelled our current sense-data. Most of our politically to justify means by ends, and ordinary perceptual beliefs involve a that his philosophical teaching was the good deal of inference. In taking what I result of examination of his own moral now see to be a chair, I ascribe to it a back, struggles. But the weakness of his character a texture and a weight, but none of these formed his stoicism, rather than his philos- are at the moment present to my senses. ophy his character; thus the question of the The inferred elements of our perceptual capacity of the Stoa as an educative force in beliefs are the dubitable ones. The sense- politics remained unanswered. (I.G.K) datum is what remains when they are suppressed. Sense-data ‘Sense-data’ (singular: It is clear that sense-data are private. ‘sense-datum’) is a comparatively new My sense-data may resemble yours but word for an idea that is almost as old as this likeness can only be established by philosophy, namely the immediate object of a complex and precarious inference and is sense-perception. In the past, philosophers always a contingent matter. The fact of 356 Sextus Empiricus hallucination shows that it is possible to earlier, even if only minutely, than the have a sense-datum to which nobody event of perceiving it. But, it is argued, we else’s sense-data correspond at all. The can only perceive what is present, since to privacy of sense-data follows from their say that something is present is simply to being defined in terms of what appears to say that it is contemporary with my cur- me. There is no very clear or uniform rent perception. convention about the extent or complexity If sense-data are distinct from material of sense-data. Are we to call all dreams, objects, the fundamental and traditional hallucinations, memories and images problem of perception presents itself: what sense-data even when we are not in the is the relation of sense-data to material least tempted to suppose that we are per- objects, and how can we have any knowl- ceiving some real material thing? Is my edge about material objects if all we imme- current sense-datum the whole of what I diately perceive is sense-data? Some am sensibly aware of at this instant or is it philosophers, HUME for instance, have been what I am aware of by means of any one sceptical of the validity of any inference sense, my current visual field, for exam- from sense-data to material things. More ple; or is it any one discriminable part of commonly it has been held either, with a current sense-field? Philosophical LOCKE, that we can reasonably infer mate- usage tends to favour the last of these. A rial objects as the causes of our sense-data, more substantial problem arises about the or, with BERKELEY and PHENOMENALISM, duration of sense-data. Can I be aware of that material objects are entirely composed the same sense-datum twice or do sense- of sense-data, actual or possible or both. In data endure only for one specious pres- opposition to the sense-datum theory two ent? Some philosophers have held that main tendencies can be discerned. One sense-data can have properties which they view, that of RYLE, is that there are no such do not appear to have (cf. H. H. PRICE). things. Another, less radical, view is that Against them AYER has argued that sense- though there are sense-data they are not the data are by definition precisely and only things that we immediately perceive: entirely what they appear to be. they are the causes rather than the grounds There are two main arguments to our perceptual beliefs and for the most part prove that sense-data are necessarily dis- their existence and character is a matter of tinct from material objects. First, the inference. (A.Q.) argument from illusion. My sense-datum, what I immediately perceive, may be just Sextus Empiricus See SCEPTICS. the same in a case where I am really per- Shaftesbury, Earl of (1671–1713) ceiving a friend as it is in a case where Anthony Ashley Cooper, third Earl of I am undergoing the hallucination of see- Shaftesbury, argued in his Characteristics ing him. Since what I immediately per- (1711) that we have innate senses of beauty ceive is precisely the same in both cases and morality independent of religion. and cannot be a material object in one of them it cannot be a material object in Sidgwick, Henry (1828–1900) The either. Second, the causal or time-lag English philosopher and Cambridge argument. The perception of very remote professor wrote on eco- events, such as the explosion of stars, nomics as well as philosophy and was a brings out dramatically that perception is founder member of the Society for always of something that is temporally Psychical Research and its first President. Smith, Adam 357

The work for which Sidgwick is remem- can follow the principle of benevolence bered is , published with the assurance that we shall not thereby in 1874 but modified and expanded in violate the rational principle of egoism. subsequent editions. He adopted a hedo- Thus Sidgwick, in his anxiety to do justice nistic UTILITARIAN position, but with an to all the facets of morality, attempts to har- unusually clear recognition of the many- monize a number of positions which are sidedness of moral problems. Having usually regarded as essentially opposed; he denied that moral terms can be defined in is utilitarian and DEONTOLOGIST, egoist and non-moral terms Sidgwick goes on to universalist. (J.O.U) contend that morality is founded on the A Siger of Brabant (c.1235–81) The PRIORI moral intuition that ‘we ought to French philosopher Siger of Brabant was a aim at pleasure’. Any other basic moral leader, with Boethius of Dacia and knowledge is concerned with the way Bernier of Nivelles, of the so-called Latin pleasure should be distributed; thus we AVERROISTS, who claimed to be pure know that similar cases ought to be philosophers of the school of ARISTOTLE, treated similarly and that ‘the good of any rather than theologians. They accepted the one individual is of no more importance, Averroist distinction between truths of from the point of view of the universe, reason and truths of faith, and ruthlessly than the like good of any other’. From worked out a philosophy which was an these basic positions Sidgwick deduces Aristotelianism coloured by Averroes and the principle of benevolence: ‘each one is AVICENNA. Some of their doctrines, such morally bound to regard the good of any as that of the eternity of the world, the other individual as much as his own’. unity of intellect in all human beings and Sidgwick acknowledges that in practice the determination of human affairs by people are swayed morally by rules of astral influences, went straight against the conduct and not by general principles of Christian dogmas of creation, the individ- universalistic hedonism; he himself is ual soul and divine providence; these willing to accept these rules of conduct doctrines were condemned in 1270 and on the ground that they are a means to the 1277, but the authors insisted that their utilitarian end. This position is however philosophical tenets did not conflict with complicated by the fact that Sidgwick their faith in revelation. (J.O.U) finds himself compelled to acknowledge as self-evident the principle of rational Singer, Peter (1946– ) The Australian , that ‘it is irrational for me philosopher Peter Singer reacted against to sacrifice my happiness to any other the domination of ETHICS by meta-ethical end’. Sidgwick is well aware of the appar- inquiries (such as those of HARE) when ent incompatibility of this principle with studying at Oxford. His works on Animal the universalistic hedonism which is his Liberation (1975) and Practical Ethics other main contention; he regards this (1979) helped turn the discipline towards incompatibility as the basic problem of practical applications usually informed by ethics, but simply finds himself unable UTILITARIANISM; he is also the author of honestly to deny either the principle of ego- the article on Applied Ethics in this ism or the principle of benevolence. His Encyclopedia. solution is to suggest that the universe is so arranged that egoism and universal benev- Smith, Adam (1723–90) Adam Smith olence never come into conflict and that we was one of the greatest of that line of 358 Social Contract eighteenth century Scottish philosophers Republic Book II; famous modern versions who shifted the study of human nature are those of HOBBES in Leviathan, LOCKE in from its traditional concerns with theology his Second Treatise of Civil Government and the pursuit of happiness in the life here- and ROUSSEAU in The Social Contract. after, to one which was based on philoso- These versions differ from each other as phy, history and the pursuit of happiness in regards both the parties to the contract and the world of common life. In doing so he its terms; they also differ in the degree to helped to challenge the claims of the the- which the historicity of the contract is ologians to provide an adequate guide to affirmed, since some authors content the problems of living in the increasingly themselves with a tacit or implied con- complex world of commerce. tract. The theory was destructively criti- Like his close friend David HUME, cized in HUME’s ‘Of the original contract’ Smith was interested in the principles of and HEGEL’s Philosophy of Right. See also social interaction and the processes by POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY, RAWLS. (J.O.U) which we acquire the metaphysical, moral, political and religious skills which Socrates (469–399 BC) Socrates of are necessary to ordinary living – matters Athens was perhaps the greatest of the which he discussed in his first book, The Greek philosophers, but he left no writ- Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759). But ings of his own, and probably never pro- he was also interested in the role of labour duced any. Our information about him and property in shaping social behaviour comes from four sources: , and social institutions and in transform- and PLATO, whose lives over- ing society from its barbarous to its civi- lapped his, and ARISTOTLE, who was prob- lized state – matters discussed in his ably born some thirteen years after the greatest work, year in which, according to Plato, Socrates (1776). All of this required him to elabo- was tried and sentenced to death for ‘cor- rate a fine-meshed account of the way in rupting the young men and not believing which any society disposes of its land, in the gods of the city’. The only statement labour and capital resources and develops common to all four of these writers is that the political, cultural and religious institu- there was a philosopher called Socrates. tions it needs in order to maintain its sta- Beyond that, the picture of Socrates in bility. In so doing, he developed the first Aristophanes’ farce The Clouds should be fully-fledged ‘materialist’ model of soci- entirely disbelieved: it contains nothing ety and its history, on which all subse- agreeing with the other three, and nothing quent models have been based. See also individual or unusual, but only the popular POLITICAL ECONOMY.[N.P.]idea of a sophist dubbed ‘Socrates’ and given a mask with the features of the real Social Contract Social contract theo- Socrates. ries are attempts to explain the duty of Xenophon’s Memories of Socrates, a obedience to the laws and civil authority work of some 180 pages, consists mainly by reference to a contract or compact or of amusing little dialogues between promise to obey made for the sake of the Socrates and various other persons, at benefits gained from the civil society some of which Xenophon says he was thereby instituted. There are many differ- present. He also wrote an Apology of ent versions of the contract theory; one, Socrates, a short report of the trial, which, not accepted by PLATO, is given in however, Xenophon does not claim to Socrates 359 have attended; an , in which But Aristotle does not prepare us for Socrates discusses household manage- the strange fact that the Platonic Socrates ment; and a Symposium, depicting a party uses his inductions and syllogisms not for at which Socrates is present. Though but against proposed definitions of the Xenophon was a serious historian, his virtues. His conversation takes the form Socratic writings are clearly fictions of putting questions to a single respon- exploiting the storyteller’s device of say- dent. The first question, being a request ing ‘I was there’. They should be believed for a definition, does not admit the only so far as they agree with Plato or answers yes and no and is a matter of Aristotle. doubt, but the subsequent questions In the Metaphysics Aristotle gives us demand the answer yes or no. Having the most likely account we have of obtained a number of apparently discon- Socrates’ thought. ‘Socrates occupied nected answers in this way, Socrates ‘syl- himself with the excellences of charac- logizes’ them, as Aristotle says, and ter, and in connexion with them became shows that they refute the respondent’s the first to raise the problem of universal answer to the first question. He then asks definition. ...It was natural that Socrates the respondent to find another answer to should be seeking the essence, for he the first question, and treats that in the was seeking to syllogize, and “what a same way. The effect is to show that the thing is” is the starting-point of syllo- respondent is contradicting himself, and gisms. ...Twothings may be fairly ascribed does not know what he thought he knew. to Socrates, inductive arguments and uni- Socrates does not, however, claim to versal definition, both of which are con- understand the matter himself. On the cerned with the starting-point of science; contrary, he denies all knowledge of it, but Socrates did not make the universal or and claims that he never intended to con- the definitions exist apart.’ All these vict his respondent of ignorance: ‘I was points except the last are well supported never a teacher of anybody’. He claims – by Plato and not contradicted by though it is hard to believe – that his ques- Xenophon, and should therefore be tions might, for all he knew beforehand, accepted. have led to the confirmation rather than Plato’s portrait of Socrates is by far the the refutation of the answer given. Hence most copious and impressive. Socrates is his victims tended to call him ‘sly’, for the main speaker in all Plato’s early and pretending to know less than they do middle dialogues. His conversation there when actually he knows more. The Greek concerns the nature of virtue and of par- for slyness is ‘irony’; and this is the origin ticular virtues, and tends to the view that of the conception of irony as the con- virtue is knowledge, and vice ignorance. veyance of a statement by words which He takes a particular virtue and tries to literally convey its contradictory. find its essence by giving a general defi- There is something repellent about nition of it. He produces SYLLOGISTIC this pattern of talk, and Plato says it arguments (where two premises when put incurred some condemnation. He repre- together necessitate a new proposition, the sents Socrates as having some other ques- conclusion), and often recommends one of tionable traits, but still he makes us feel the premises by an inductive argument that his character was wonderful and from similar cases. In these respects Plato uniquely valuable. In the Symposium he agrees excellently with Aristotle. shows Socrates first as the deep thinker 360 Socrates who has got stuck in contemplation out- he claimed to enjoy a mysterious ‘divine side the host’s door, then as the lover eas- sign’, a sort of inner voice which fre- ily obtaining the seats next the most quently forbade him to do what he was attractive young men, then as a benign thinking of doing, and whose advice he cross-examiner of his host, then as the believed to be always good. It is doubtful, philosophical sublimator of earthly love however, whether Socrates really thought into a religion of Beauty, and then as the that he had been ‘ordered by the god, both subject of a daring encomium by by and by dreams and by every . Alcibiades likens him to a means by which a divine destiny was ever statue of the ugly Silenus that opens to imposed on a man’, to convict men of show hidden beauties within, and con- their ignorance by refuting their opinions fesses to having persistently tempted in cross-examination. Socrates and thus experienced his It would have been easy to escape unbreakable self-control. He also praises from the Athenian prison; and those who Socrates’ formidable calmness and voted for his death may well have endurance on campaign, and affirms his assumed that Socrates would do so. In his wonderful unlikeness to any other human exquisite little dialogue, Crito, Plato being alive or dead. All this is to be shows Socrates’ old friend Crito pleading believed. with him to escape, and Socrates refusing. Like Xenophon, Plato offers us an The reason he gives is that, by choosing to Apology of Socrates. It professes to com- pursue his life in Athens, he has promised – prise the three speeches made by Socrates in deed, though not in word – to obey the at his trial, but they are certainly not tran- laws of Athens, and that he must keep his scripts, bearing at best a remote resem- promise. Finally, in the magnificent blance to what was actually said. Some Phaedo, ‘Plato depicts Socrates’ last con- think that Socrates offered no defence at versation and death, while letting us know all. But it is probably true that the indict- that he himself was not there. We may ment was that ‘Socrates corrupts the believe Plato when he tells us that young men, and does not believe in the Socrates’ wife and children visited him on city’s gods and believes in new divinities’, his last day but were not present at his and that if thirty more jurors had voted death; that his friends wept loudly when the other way he would have been acquit- he drank the poison and were rebuked for ted. It is also probable that Socrates pro- it by the unmoved Socrates; that his last posed as a penalty that he should be fed at words were ‘Crito, we owe a cock to public expense, and that he changed this ; pay it and do not neglect it’; to a fine at the request of Plato and others. that Crito answered ‘it shall be done; think And, if we believe that he was intransi- if there is anything else’; and that no gent in his choice of a ‘penalty’ after con- answer came. The last pages of the Phaedo viction, we should believe that Plato’s are of extraordinary beauty and grandeur. work is probably true to life in the mag- We had better not believe, however, nificently proud and unbending tone it that Socrates really defended the doc- makes Socrates take with the court. trines which Plato represents him as It is very probable that Socrates was, defending on his last day. In the Phaedo as Plato makes him claim, a courageous Plato shows Socrates convinced that there opponent of the injustices both of tyrants is a life after death; but in the Apology he and of the people. It is also probable that is probably more accurate, making Sophists 361

Socrates treat it as an open question. In trees and people, I have to reply ‘My sight, the Phaedo Plato has Socrates say that in hearing, touch, in short, my perceptions his youth he took an interest in physical tell me so. Certainly my perceptions are questions, but the passage is probably sorted and supplemented by memory, only a dramatic way of setting certain inference and conjecture, but without per- points of view in opposition to each other. ceptions such thinking has nothing to In the Phaedo Plato also makes Socrates work on. Now perceiving is having sensa- expound and assume the theory of Ideas, tions. But you cannot have, for example, thus coming into conflict with Aristotle’s my visual or tactual sensations, any more statement that ‘Socrates did not make the than you can have my toothaches. So you universals or the definitions exist apart.’ It cannot perceive anything that I perceive. is very probable that Aristotle is right, as The world that my senses acquaint me tradition holds, in saying that the theory with is private to me. Even the you that of Ideas was the invention of Plato. It was I see and hear could no more exist without a natural step forward from Socratic defi- my existing than my toothaches could. nition, but probably not one that Socrates I hanker to believe that independently himself took. Plato introduced it into the existing, unperceived things tally with the Phaedo as a way of dedicating to Socrates perceived contents of my private world, but the fruits of his teaching, rather than as a I ought to believe that I alone (solus ipse) record of that teaching itself. exist in my own right, all else depending The greatest value of Plato’s Socrates is on me as my toothaches do.’ No important his superb championship of the ideal of philosophers accept this repellent conclu- reason, and his high and clear conception sion. But many, accepting the argument for of what reason demands. He impresses us, it, have to postulate non-perceptual reasons more than any other figure in literature, for believing in independently existing with the supreme importance of thinking things and people. We should, instead, as well as possible and making our actions reject the step in the argument ‘perceiving conform to our thoughts. To this end he is having sensations’. (G.R.) preaches knowledge of one’s own starting- points, hypothetical entertainment of opin- Sophists In traditional ions, exploration of their consequences education consisted of music (poetry, and connexions, willingness to follow drama and in general the subjects arguments wherever they lead, public con- presided over by the nine muses) and fession of one’s thoughts, invitation to oth- gymnastic. In the more sophisticated ers to criticize, readiness to reconsider, and social conditions of the fifth century BC at the same time firm action in accordance the need for a further education became with one’s present beliefs. Plato’s Apology apparent, and the sophists came forward made Socrates the chief martyr of reason to supply it. They were itinerant profes- as the gospels made Jesus the chief martyr sors, wandering from city to city giving of faith. (R.R.) courses of lectures, mainly on rhetoric and the art of getting on, in return for fees Solipsism Sometimes we idly fancy from their audiences. Thus the term that the whole world is merely our dream. ‘sophist’ originally meant something like Solipsism is a theory, rather like this ‘professor’; and with some exceptions, fancy, but based on argument. If asked such as PROTAGORAS, the sophists were not why I believe in the existence of stars, specially concerned with philosophy, and 362 Speech Acts it is quite mistaken to think of them as work of German biologists and antedates forming some philosophical school. The the publication of DARWIN’s work. establishment of such permanent centres Spencer defined life as a continuous of higher education as the schools of adjustment of the internal to the external PLATO and ARISTOTLE (who were of course environment; to live is to be the sort of sophists to the general public) led to the thing which continually adapts its own disappearance of the sophists in the middle nature to be able to deal better with its of the fourth century BC. environment. This is the fundamental The opprobrium which now attaches to viewpoint of the Principles of Biology the word ‘sophist’ is due to skilful propa- (1864–7) and Principles of Psychology ganda against their rivals by Plato and (1870–2). He claimed in the Principles of Aristotle. The basic charge was that what Ethics (1879–93) that ETHICS has ‘a natu- the sophists taught was not knowledge but ral basis’ because moral conclusions fol- an art of getting on which neglected the low the general law of evolution. Human highest values. The best known of the beings were capable of indefinite adapta- sophists are Protagoras, Gorgias, , tion to circumstances, in particular to the , Antiphon, , change from wild to settled, civilized life; Lycaphron and Isocrates. (J.O.U.) in this adaptation humanity represses old selfish traits and develops new ones by Speech Acts See AUSTIN, SEARLE. virtue of a principle of sympathy. Moral Spencer, Herbert (1820–1903) Herbert principles are rules which aid the harmo- Spencer achieved an enormous popular nious, readjusted life of civilization. A reputation in England towards the end of hedonistic element can be legitimately the nineteenth century by projecting a recognized since ‘pleasure promotes ‘System of Synthetic Philosophy’ which function’ and the law of evolution ensures would unify the biological and social sci- that those actions we find pleasant will be ences by means of a generalized philo- such as tend to have survival value. sophical notion of evolution. In First Spencer’s attempt to draw ethical conclu- Principles (1862) Spencer maintained that sions from evolutionary principles still we could have knowledge only of phenom- has imitators today. (J.O.U) ena, but that we could nevertheless infer to an Unknowable, an Incomprehensible Speusippus The Athenian philosopher Power which is the source of phenomena, Speusippus was born towards the end of the the most important of which is the Law of fifth century BC. He was PLATO’s nephew Evolution which he obscurely phrased as and a member of the ACADEMY, which he follows: ‘an integration of matter and con- headed from Plato’s death in 347 until his comitant dissipation of motion, during own in 339. Only fragments of his many which the matter passes from an indefinite works survive, but four points are clear. incoherent homogeneity to a definite First, Speusippus maintained – against coherent heterogeneity’. He also defined Eudoxus – that pleasure is not good but that progress as a change from homogeneity; pleasure and pain are opposite evils. (Plato’s thus he identified evolution and progress Philebus is partly concerned with this con- and could claim that ‘progress is not an troversy in the Academy.) Second, he wrote accident, not a thing within human control, a number of works of ‘Classifications’, and but a beneficent necessity’. This general seems to have held that nothing can be sat- conception of evolution is based on the isfactorily defined unless all other things Spinoza, Benedict de 363 are also; to understand a concept was to About this time, Spinoza became know how it is related by similarities and acquainted with Henry Oldenburg, one of differences to all others. Third, he held that the Secretaries of the Royal Society, and the account of the making of the world in began a correspondence which lasted for Plato’s Timaeus was simply an expository fifteen years. In 1663, he moved to device. Lastly, it is clear from Aristotle’s Voorburg, near the Hague and published Metaphysics that Speusippus abandoned his Renati des Cartes Principia Plato’s theory of Ideas and also recognized Philosophiae, together with Cogitata more kinds of entity than Plato, assigning Metaphysica (1663). A Dutch translation different principles to each kind. (J.L.A) appeared immediately, and his room became a meeting place for the intellec- Spinoza, Benedict de (1632–77) Born tual leaders of the day, among them in Amsterdam of Jewish parents, Spinoza Huygens and Jan de Witt. In the Tractatus was brought up to speak Spanish, Theologico-Politicus (1670) Spinoza tried Portuguese and Hebrew, but he had a less to show that the Bible gave no ground for sure command of Dutch. He attended a violence and intolerance, but the work Jewish High School in Amsterdam where was immediately condemned by the the- one of his teachers was Rabbi Manasseh ologians. In 1673, Spinoza was offered Ben Israel, who negotiated with Cromwell the Chair of Philosophy at Heidelberg, the re-entry of the Jews into England. At but declined, saying he preferred to pur- the age of eighteen, Spinoza went to a sue his investigations ‘in accordance with Dutch teacher, Van den Ende, to learn Latin his own mind’. and the ‘new science’, studying the works Spinoza now moved into Amsterdam, of Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler, Harvey, completed his Ethics, and made plans to Huygens and DESCARTES. publish it. Information was laid against Spinoza wished to lead a quiet life, him to the authorities and Spinoza with- attending the Synagogue and pursuing his drew the book. He worked on a Hebrew studies. He became critical of orthodox grammar and a translation of the Old interpretations of the Bible, but had no Testament into Dutch, with the object of wish to disturb the beliefs of others. enabling his fellow citizens to become When his orthodoxy was called in ques- directly acquainted with the Bible. These tion, the leaders of the Synagogue offered plans were brought to a sudden end by his him a pension if he would leave Van den death, at the age of forty-five. The Ethics Ende and conform. He refused and was was published immediately afterwards. excommunicated, thereupon moving to a In the Tractatus de Intellectus suburb of Amsterdam. In conformity with Emendatione Spinoza declared the object Jewish custom which required all men to of his work to be the discovery of ‘the life learn a trade he had mastered the art of of blessedness for man’. This entailed a grinding and polishing lenses, and now search for that ‘by whose discovery and proceeded to earn his living by this acquisition I might be put in possession of means. His Short Treatise on God, Man a joy continuous and supreme to all eter- and his Well-being was composed at this nity’. It involved a clear understanding of period. In 1661 he moved to a lodging in human nature, the universe, and the rejoic- a small house at Rhijnsburg – now the ing which is essential to human beings, Spinoza Museum – where he wrote his and Spinoza called it ‘the intellectual love Tractatus de Intellectus Emendatione. of God’. For Spinoza, knowledge is to be 364 Spinoza, Benedict de pursued by freeing the understanding from together, they form a basis for rational the vague and confused ideas of sense- theology and the sciences. Substance is perception and imagination, and from defined as ‘that which is in itself and is inappropriate attachment to objects. It is conceived through itself’, attribute as for these reasons that Spinoza’s main ‘that which the intellect perceives of sub- work, a largely metaphysical treatise, is stance as if constituting its essence’. called the Ethics. In it we are shown find- Definition VI equates ‘God’ with ‘sub- ing our freedom and blessedness in the stance consisting of infinite attributes’ realization that we are part of a system and leads to a concept of God as One, which is determined throughout. We infinite, necessarily existing, containing rejoice in this state, and in Spinoza’s sense all being and the sole cause of every exist- of the word, this is to love God. ing thing. This inference depends on an When the intellect is working well it is axiom stating that ‘the knowledge of an in possession of true ideas and of certainty. effect depends upon and involves the (‘He who has a true idea knows at the knowledge of the cause’. That is to say, same time that he has a true idea.’) True the causal relation for Spinoza is the ideas are expressed in definitions which relation of ground and consequent. may then be deductively developed, the Substance, since it is conceived through connexion between each proposition and itself, is its own ground, that is, it is self- the next being self-evident. We thus reach caused and so necessarily existing. There a system of true propositions. Those who could not be two such beings, for if there proceed in this way enjoy knowledge of the were, then either one would have to be second grade, ratio; knowledge of the understood in terms of the other, or both highest or third grade, scientia intuitiva, would have to be understood in terms of a belongs to God alone. The lowest grade, third thing which would then itself be imaginatio, is knowledge by sense percep- substance. Everything except substance is tion and imagination, by vague signs and ‘in something else, through which also hearsay. These sources are not erroneous in it is conceived’, so that there is nothing themselves, but they lead to error unless outside substance. they are recognized as states of the body Substance is also manifested in infi- rather than parts of a system of ideas. Error nite attributes, each infinitely modified is a privation of knowledge, an unacknowl- into ‘modes’ which are ‘conceived edged confusion of ideas. Vague signs are through’ substance under one or other of ones like ‘man’ and ‘horse’, which stand its attributes. Of the infinite number of confusedly for any number of particulars, attributes, we know only two – extension in contrast to ‘Peter’, which stands and thought – which are perceived as if unequivocally for one body-mind in a constituting the essence of substance. determinate place in the spatio-temporal Philosophers had mistakenly supposed system. ‘Man’ has no place in a system of that thought and extension are substances, ideas, but ‘Peter’ may be understood as a so creating the problem of connecting body-mind in a system of interacting bod- things ‘which have nothing in common ies or body-minds (see GENDER). with one another, and so cannot be con- The Ethics consists of a system of ceived through one another’. Extension definitions, axioms and theorems. The and thought are two attributes of the one definitions in Part I are not derivable from substance, not interacting, but each any more fundamental concepts. Taken infinitely diversified into modes which Spinoza, Benedict de 365 occur together. The most interesting case own nature; the body is a part of a system of this ‘occurring together’ is in human of interacting bodies. Free persons have beings, where mental events are paral- an adequate idea of their own state as leled by physical events. The mind is ‘the such an effect; and even though it may be idea of the body’. painful, the appropriate emotion is joy, in The system of extension is facies that the pain is known to be occurring in totius universi (the aspect of the entire its proper place. If the pain has arisen as universe), and is studied at different levels the result of the action of other human in different sciences: in geometry, beings, the free person will neither blame through the concepts of point, line and nor hate them. Love is ‘joy accompanied plane; in mechanics, through those of by the idea of an object’, and ‘hatred is smallest bodies, motion and rest; while in sorrow accompanied by the idea of an biology, the concept of conatus – ‘the object’. The free person, who sees all endeavour with which each body perse- human beings as parts of a determined sys- veres in its own existence’ – is fundamen- tem, can only rejoice in this knowledge, tal. These three sciences were all founded and cannot hate anyone. in the concept of substance under the The important concept in explaining attribute of extension; there had been no human actions, as in explaining any other comparable development under the attrib- event, is not purpose but cause. Spinoza’s ute of thought, but this is what Spinoza favourite example of error is the belief in hoped to provide: ‘I shall consider human free will: people are aware of their actions as if I were considering lines, ‘actions’ but ignorant of their causes, and planes or bodies.’ Just as a human body is when they say have they acted freely, this to be described in terms of ‘smallest bod- only shows the obscurity in which the ies’ moving in ways determined by earlier causes of our ‘actions’ are for the most motions, so a human mind is to be part hidden. Indeed the so-called ‘actions’ described in terms of action, passion and of those whose ideas are confused and adequate ideas, and mental events in inadequate are in fact passions, and their terms of earlier events. The essence of an explanations are to be sought in our individual is its conatus, and the cohesion circumstances, not our nature. There are of physical parts is patterned by the three primary emotions: desire, which is mind’s awareness of its own unity and its conatus; joy, which is the organism’s union with the body. passage to a higher state of perfection; Differences between simple bodies are and sorrow, which is its passage to a lower expressible in terms of degrees of motion, state. All other emotions are compounded those between complex bodies in terms of these three, together with ideas of of their own motion and that of their objects appropriately or inappropriately parts. The differences among minds are conjoined. To pass to a higher or lower expressible in terms of the degrees of state of perfection is not to become better clearness and adequacy of their ideas. or worse in the moral sense, but to People whose ideas are clear are said to become more or less active. People with be free and active in the sense that the inadequate ideas are passive in that what causes of their actions lie, as far as is they do depends on what happens to compatible with their finitude, within them, not on what they are. their own nature. The causes of action of Spinoza’s moral theory is relativistic a finite being cannot lie completely in its and naturalistic. (‘We call that good which 366 Stevenson, C. L. we certainly know to be useful to us.’) of perfect and imperfect beings, his power Nothing is good in itself, but persons with is equally manifest in both. A physical or adequate ideas will attach the term to mental cripple is such because of his place whatever increases their power of action, in the system: God has not tried to produce whilst those who are passive will apply it perfection and failed. (‘To him material to whatever they see as ministering to their was not wanting for the creation of every- purposes. They attach emotion to objects thing, from the highest down to the very instead of assigning it to its proper place lowest grade of perfection; or to speak in the causally connected phases of their more properly, because the laws of his mental life. Praise and blame are equally nature were so ample that they sufficed for inapplicable to human action, though they the production of everything which can be may be used as causes in affecting the conceived by an infinite intellect.’) Such a actions of those for whose conduct we feel God can be loved and worshipped by the responsibility. Nothing can be more useful wise, but they will not expect him to love to the free than the society of other free them in return, or to allot rewards and pun- people, so that Spinoza’s ‘good man’ will ishments. Those who love God do not look in fact be good in the normal sense. He to a future life: this life may be one of will naturally try to bring it about that oth- blessedness; and in thinking adequately, we ers are free and wise, understanding that think God’s thoughts, and share in his hatred and resentment are as inappropriate rejoicing self-knowledge, that is to say in towards human beings as towards rocks ‘the love with which God loves Himself’. and stones. He knows that the only object To this extent, we may be eternal. (R.L.S.) worth pursuing, knowledge, is better Stevenson, Charles Leslie (1908–79) attained in companionship than alone, but The American philosopher C. L. Stevenson he also knows that everyone has their own is best known for Ethics and Language conatus, and no matter how mistaken they (1944), which gives an elaborate statement may be about how best to ‘persevere in of the emotivist theory of the significance their own being’, they have the same right of ethical terms. Stevenson’s principal con- as the wise so to persevere. The wise will tention is that to say that something is good be tolerant of others, interfering with the is to state that one approves of it and to seek harmless beliefs of nobody, whether in to evoke the same attitude in one’s hearers. politics or religion. They will choose the He also maintains that the concept of valid religion which promotes a good life, and argument is not applicable to moral dis- the social system which gives security to course. These ideas had been hinted at by its citizens and strengthens their ‘natural HUME and summarily stated by the LOGICAL right to exist and work without injury to POSITIVISTS, but never so carefully treated: themselves or others’. Since there are peo- the book in undoubtedly the classical state- ple of all grades of perfection, some must ment of emotivism. (J.O.U.) be led by authority. For this reason, it is of immense importance that theologians and Stewart, Dugald (1753–1828) The civic leaders should understand the condi- Scottish philosopher built tions of the good life. on the work of Thomas REID to create the If resentment of other people is inap- so-called ‘Scottish school’ of ‘common propriate, it is a thousand times more inap- sense’ which was widely admired, espe- propriate towards God. God is above good cially in France and America, in the and EVIL, and though he is equally the cause nineteenth century. Stoicism 367

Stoicism Stoicism was one of the dom- offered HEDONISM. Zeno’s reaction was to inant philosophies of the Hellenistic- devise a philosophy of security for indi- Roman period. It was founded by ZENO of viduals without divorcing them from the Citium at the end of the fourth century BC, circumstances in which they found them- receiving its name from the painted Stoa selves. His starting point was that of the (colonnade) where he taught in Athens. CYNICS – that insecurity and unhappiness All the fundamental doctrines of stoicism were the result of pursuing what was not are attributed to him, but they were for- wholly under our control. No physical or mulated as a definitive system in a series external ‘goods’ can be ultimate goods: of works by CHRYSIPPUS in the following health can deteriorate, fortunes be lost, or century. Panaetius and Posidonius made reputation vanish through external some changes of emphasis and detail in causes. The only thing completely in our the second and first centuries BC. In the power is the correct moral attitude of Roman Empire it was modified still fur- mind, which is virtue. Further, this atti- ther by SENECA, EPICTETUS and MARCUS tude is based on knowledge (courage was AURELIUS, but it always remained in the knowledge of what was and was not to essence the unified comprehensive sys- be feared). For the Stoic, happiness arose tem of Zeno and Chrysippus. It faded out from knowing the right thing to do at any after the end of the third century AD. given moment, and knowing that the The Stoics divided philosophy into actual attainment of the object was irrele- LOGIC (dialectic and rhetoric), ETHICS and vant since happiness depended solely on physics (which included theology); these the moral functioning of human reason. It were intertwined and interdependent, but was argued that the wise want only what not of equal importance. The Stoic interest they can achieve, and thus can always in logic was mainly confined to perfect- achieve what they want. ing arguments in defence of their system; The Stoics imparted a special flavour it was the wall protecting the garden, to the Cynic ingredients through their the shell safeguarding the egg. Physics, conception of the universe. All reality was on the other hand, was both the starring material, mind as well as matter; for, they point and culmination of their ethics: argued, only matter can move or be Chrysippus said there could be no other moved. But there was an important dis- basis for justice, and their definition of tinction between active force and passive happiness was ‘to live in harmony with matter; the active force was logos, divine nature’. reason, the of the universe. Stoic ethics was a response to the Indissolubly diffused through passive needs of the time. At the close of the matter, it fashioned the universe into a fourth century, the break up of the Greek rational purposeful living whole of which city state produced not only physical, humanity was an integral part. It was this economic and political insecurity but also logos, identified with creative fire (or a moral vacuum. The response of the warm air) among the elements, which was philosophical schools reflects this: the the substance of the human soul. Reason ACADEMY allowed ethics to slip into is all-important in us just as it is in the rest the background and turned SCEPTIC; the of the universe, and our happiness must PERIPATETICS engaged in scientific depend on it alone; and since human reason research, and acknowledged many differ- is the same as the , our ent human goods; and the EPICUREANS knowledge of ourselves and our duties 368 Stoicism cannot be complete until it comprises the our power to fulfill all or any of them. The universe and our place in it. It is by under- ‘intermediates’ are nevertheless the mate- standing the working of reason in the rial (though not the end) of perfect duties, universe that we can identify with its pur- and the field in which virtue functions. pose. We thus have the power to accom- But virtue alone is good. The ‘intermedi- modate our own nature to universal ates’ accord with human nature, but only Nature, or in the Stoic phrase, to live in the right exercise of moral choice among harmony with nature. them can bring us into harmony with uni- Physics afforded a justification for the versal nature. Thus the Stoics retained the supremacy of moral intelligence rather self-sufficiency of the Cynics, while than an account of its field of exercise; for refusing, like the Peripatetics, to divorce that the Stoics turned to psychology. They morals from human nature. observed certain natural impulses and It is just this distinctive relationship aversions which point to certain ends; the between virtue and ‘intermediates’ which attainment or avoidance of these appear formed the core of Stoicism and roused natural for a human being and involve most criticism and misunderstanding. appropriate actions. For example, the This was fostered by certain shifts of principle of all life, the securing of one’s emphasis in different Stoics, and not least own existence, led to physical and exter- by their love of paradox. They were fond nal satisfaction, health, comfort, adequate of stressing the absolute importance of wealth, etc. The instinct to perpetuate the moral intelligence by insisting that there race was the basis of family life and thus were no half measures. If one perfected it, of friendship and society in general, and all one’s acts would be right; if not, none. the responsibilities they entail. The Everyone was either perfectly good and impulse of the intellect fostered reflec- wise, or a fool and a knave; all mistakes tion, curiosity, and the fine arts. It accords or vices were equal. Although all Stoics with our nature to pursue all these and accepted this position, some emphasized avoid their opposites, and is therefore it more than others, notably Ariston (a appropriate; but as they are based on the pupil of Zeno), whose complete indiffer- conception of human nature alone, and ence to the ‘intermediates’ largely elimi- not on human nature as part of the uni- nated the practical side of Stoicism. verse, their importance is subordinate to Chrysippus showed that the paradox ‘all that of the rational. They form a class of sins are equal’ meant that all moral mis- intermediate objects having relative takes were equally mistakes in compari- value, but not absolute (i.e. moral) value. son with perfect virtue, but regarded Their relative value, determined by a solely by themselves one could be worse study of human psychology, makes possi- than another. The objects of our natural ble the formation of general rules for their impulses and the ‘appropriate’ duties attainment or avoidance which is the sub- involved were not always valueless; some ject of ‘appropriate’ duties. But the attain- had a prima facie ‘worth’ and were to be ment of ‘intermediates’ cannot be good, ‘preferred’, others ‘unworth’ and to be nor can ‘appropriate’ duties be perfect acts, ‘relegated’; others were completely indif- because the general rule is sometimes ferent. Thus health is to be preferred as a wrong; such actions may be done by good general rule, and pain avoided; but neither people or bad or for a wrong or insuffi- health nor pain is good or evil in itself, cient reason; and it is never completely in and circumstances may arise where it is Stoicism 369 right to reject the preferred or vice versa: impulses externally roused and overriding ‘appropriate’ duties receive absolute correct judgment. Chrysippus, who value only from the decision of moral regarded all mental forms as modes of rea- intelligence. The position finds clear son, went so far as to call them evil reason expression in the educative methods of arising from mistaken judgments; but this the Stoa, for if those who are not wise are view was criticized by Posidonius, who fools, fools could nevertheless be intro- once more posited an irrational faculty in duced to the material of ethics by the the mind to explain moral predicaments. rules of ‘appropriate’ duties, and thus But all the Stoics thought that passions make progress towards virtue. But depended on an assent which could only Stoicism concentrated on concrete acts, be granted if reason was weak, and that and the rules always required interpreta- they should therefore be eradicated. Stoic tion; hence fools remained fallible and moral education was intended as a pro- vulnerable until they grasped that the phylactic cure for this mental sickness. infallible directing principle of morality But the Stoics never banished emotion; came from within. In every instance they the wise would feel correct emotions must know what they should choose and derived from their sound state, but their why; for this they must comprehend the reason would never be clouded by emo- logos. Each individual alone can be the tions from other sources. And despite the captain of his own soul. Yet it was appar- influence of Panaetius, who held that the ent that most if not all men were still in wise had a duty to enter politics since the progressive stage; consequently they had duties to their fellow human Panaetius (c.185–110 BC) and Posidonius beings, Stoicism remained fundamentally (c.135–50 BC), when faced with a Roman an ethic for the individual. Since the only audience demanding a more practical goal was virtue, or the soundness of approach than Greek theory, concentrated moral reason, the wise were at liberty to on the topic of ‘appropriate’ duties, with commit suicide: they would merely be its emphasis on human beings and their following the summons of divine pur- relations to others. Thus Panaetius pose. Life and death were alike indiffer- derived from the virtues a series of moral ent, and the door was always open. and political rules for action. This did not Although Stoics had no belief in an after- mean that he abandoned the higher study life, there were periods when suicide of man in the universe; but it led in the became almost a Stoic obsession. first century BC to the criticism that the Despite their interest in physics, the Stoics were saying nothing different from Stoics did not engage in scientific research. the Peripatetics. Even to Posidonius, physical phenomena It was this essential framework of the had interest purely as displaying the end and scope of morality which gave rational, purposive nature of the universe, unity to the diverse ramifications of which was to be regarded not with scien- Stoicism. In ethics, since the condition for tific curiosity, but with religious awe. They right action was the soundness of moral argued that the universe is completely reason, the greatest danger came from irra- material, without void; that everything is a tional movements of the mind, or passions. mode of the original single being, combin- Stoics classified the passions under the ing passive unqualified matter with force; genera of pleasure, pain, desire and fear, and that this force is reason and God. Just and regarded them as springing from as a drop of wine could suffuse a whole 370 Stoicism ocean, so divine reason penetrates the Chrysippus replied by distinguishing entire universe, making it an organic whole. between the external cause which imme- There was nothing without a tincture of the diately precedes an action, and the all- divine, and nothing not subject to rational important internal cause furnished by the law. This position involved, first, a rigid nature of the thing. External causes bind fatalism: all events were part of an unbro- us with the fatalistic chain, but our own ken chain of cause and effect, and ‘chance’ nature gives us the power of decision over was a name bestowed by human, while pos- our own virtue and vice. Yet even so, we sibility means only that a future event is not can do no more than run willingly excluded by a known law of nature (cf. between the shafts along the road SPINOZA). Second, since God is good, prov- appointed by fate; otherwise we will be idence rules for the good of the whole: the dragged willy-nilly in the same direction. logos varied in purity and ‘tension’, with Our nature is subject to Nature’s direc- lower forms contributing to the good of tion, but it is in our power to work hand in higher (e.g. animals which do not possess glove with Nature itself. Our happiness is active reason are created for the benefit of under our control, but not our part in the humans who do). functioning of the universe. The Stoics’ This physical doctrine may have but- view of humanity as part of a single tressed Stoic ethics, but critics lost no divine organism gave them an affinity for time in pointing out two consequent diffi- divination and astrology, and a deep culties. In the first place, the problem of religious feeling, especially marked in EVIL became acute. While Stoics main- Cleanthes (pupil of Zeno), Posidonius, tained that most things regarded as evil Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius. are morally indifferent, only vice being One of the principal tasks of Stoic evil, they did recognize its existence, and logic was to provide a theory of the knowl- the variety and contradictory nature of edge on which virtue depended. Since all their answers show that they did not quite reality was material, knowledge depended know how to meet the problem. There on sense-perception, tested by reason. were three main lines of argument. The Material images of objects were repro- first was that God could not create evil for duced directly in the mind. Some images its own sake, so it must be the result of the corresponded so exactly to the real object material with which he has to work, or a as to demand assent from sound reason; secondary result of his provisions for the such assent became ‘comprehension’ (or world. The second was that evil is not the ‘grasping’, as one grasps an object in the fault of God, but a result of human misuse hand), and thus unshakeable certainty. of his bounty, which has granted us con- However the Sceptics pointed out that trol of our virtue. The third was that evil there is no mark to distinguish true from is necessary: (a) for there to be good, false perceptions, that the latter may be as since opposites only acquire meaning irresistible as the former, and that there is from each other (cf. Plato, Theaetetus); no criterion of judgement. This remained (b) as a punishment or test; (c) by some the weakest link in Stoicism. In their arrangement beyond human comprehen- desire to perfect their arguments, the sion, for the good of the whole. Stoics made considerable contributions to The second difficulty was that while the study of the syllogism. Believing that their physics involved fatalism, their speech is thought in sound, and that words ethics required FREEDOM OF WILL. arise from the nature of things, they Structuralism 371 engaged in , and also in the confirming or endorsing a statement. In study of grammar, to which they made ‘On Referring’ (1950) he criticized RUS- significant contributions. SELL’s . His most Most of the components of Stoicism important work is Individuals: An Essay in were not original, but the attempt to unify Descriptive Metaphysics (1959), in which them into a comprehensive system he studies the ways in which we actually produced something new, including a distinguish individual things of all kinds, magnificent crop of paradoxes. Not least concluding that the space-time location of paradoxical was the combination of an bodies is fundamental to all our ways of emphasis on everyone’s capacity to achieve locating all kinds of things, including our- happiness with a recognition of human selves. This study he calls descriptive depravity. Over time, the idea of wisdom METAPHYSICS in contrast with speculative became more and more of an ideal, but it metaphysics which, in Strawson’s opinion, always remained a practical one: no one is largely concerned to set up new concep- was born perfect, but anyone could tual systems. Later works include: The become so. This combination of practical- Bounds of Sense, An Essay on Kant’s ity and noble ideals gave the Stoa domi- Critique of Pure Reason (1966); Freedom nance for some five or six hundred years; and Resentment, and other Essays (1974); it survived both the savage attack of the and Scepticism and Naturalism: Some New Academy, and the acquisitive eclec- Varieties (1985). Strawson is also the ticism of later Academics and author of the article on Metaphysics in this Peripatetics. Although its natural basis Encyclopedia. (J.O.U.) and intellectual framework was Greek, and completely alien to Christianity, there Structuralism The method of structural were many points of contact between the linguistics was first developed by the two in ethics; Seneca was later repre- Swiss theorist at sented as a secret Christian in correspon- the beginning of the twentieth century, dence with St Paul; and Epictetus but it was not until the 1960s that a struc- appeared in the Christian curriculum. The turalist philosophical movement took influence of Stoicism on later philosophy shape and began to occupy a commanding is not easy to trace, but there are some role in European thought, vying with remarkable echoes in the philosophy of EXISTENTIALISM, PHENOMENOLOGY and Spinoza. (I.G.K.) humanist Marxism for the centre stage. The proliferation of a number of contro- Strawson, Peter Frederick (1919– ) versial works by French thinkers like P. F. Strawson was for many years a pro- , , fessor at Oxford. In his Introduction to , Jacques LACAN and Logical Theory (1952) he examined the Claude Lévi-Strauss, put structuralism on general nature of formal LOGIC, demon- the intellectual map. These thinkers strating that the gulf between formal and developed Saussure’s rather abstract informal discourse is wider than orthodox model of linguistic structures into a fully- accounts suggest. He criticized the seman- fledged ‘semiology’ – that is, a science of tic and correspondence theories of TRUTH signs which goes beneath the surface and put forward the view that the phrase ‘is events of language (parole) to investigate true’ has no assertive or descriptive a variety of concealed signifying systems function but is used to perform the act of (langue). 372 Structuralism

Although few of these thinkers madness, sexuality, sickness and crime; adopted the label ‘structuralist’, the term Lacan’s exploration of the unconscious did have some general basis in its refer- structures of desire in speech and lan- ence to a number of diverse applications guage; and Lévi-Strauss’ painstaking dis- of Saussure’s method. Most structuralists closure of a hidden ‘wild thought’ (pensée also shared a predilection for the psycho- sauvage) which operates as a timeless analytic model of the unconscious and the mythological logic beneath the veneers Marxist model of determining social of cultural and historical progress. structures. For the French structuralists, Rigorously analysing the systems of Saussure, Freud and MARX represented a binary opposition governing the pattern- new intellectual trinity which radically ing of mythic narratives and rites, Lévi- challenged the prevailing existentialist Strauss concluded: ‘myths are machines gospel of the autonomous human subject. for the suppression of time’. They attempt In contrast with existentialism, structural- to resolve the fundamental contradictions ism was deeply anti-HUMANIST. In of human existence – for example, the response to Sartre’s maxim that we are conflict between the one and the many, what we make of ourselves, the struc- eternity and transience, permanence and turalists declared that we are as we are change – by translating the disorder of because of structures which lie beyond empirical experience into the order of conscious will or individual control. It is systematic structures. What cannot be not we that speak language, they argued, solved at the everyday level of fact can be but language that speaks us. resolved at the structural level of fiction. While Saussure was the first to adum- The polemical public disputes which brate a science of structural linguistics, or raged between structuralists and human- semiology, it soon became evident that ists in the 1950s and 1960s were by no such a project could be extended to means confined to Paris. Structuralism embrace a considerable range of ‘trans- exerted an enormous influence on intel- linguistic’ signifying systems. These could lectual life throughout Europe and the include mass media , English-speaking world, particularly in anthropology, literature, social science or the fields of literature, linguistics, information theory. As Roland Barthes humanities, history, politics, social sci- argued, semiology can account for any ence and media studies. In the 1970s, system of signs, regardless of content or structuralism began to be challenged and limit – ‘images, gestures, musical sounds, in many cases superseded by a movement objects, and the complex association of called post-structuralism. The basic struc- these, which form the content of ritual, turalist claim to uncover hidden un- convention or public entertainment: these conscious structures behind surface constitute, if not language, at least systems meanings was now being questioned by of signification’ (Elements of Semiology, DERRIDA and the deconstructionists. The 1964). Barthes’ own most spectacular con- post-structuralists rejected the binary tribution to the structuralist debate was oppositions between surface and depth, probably his analysis of the signs of popu- event and structure, inner and outer, con- lar media culture in Mythologies (1957). scious and unconscious as revived forms This was followed by Foucault’s interro- of metaphysical dualism. Renouncing the gation of the underlying assumptions structuralist quest for a science of signs, guiding Western notions of reason and they celebrated instead the irreducible Synthetic 373 excesses of language as a multiple play of to translate ARISTOTLE’s notion of ousia meaning. [R.K.] (‘nature’, ‘essence’, or ‘being’). In Categories, Aristotle defines a substance Subjectivism Like most terms ending as something that exists on its own, or in ‘ism’, the word ‘subjectivism’ is used ‘that which is neither predicated of a sub- very vaguely and loosely in philosophy; ject nor in a subject, such as a particular roughly a view is said to be subjectivist if man or a particular horse’. This notion it maintains that the truth of some class of was transformed in the seventeenth cen- statements depends on the mental state or tury, when DESCARTES suggested that the reactions of the person making them. material world comprises not many dif- Thus in ETHICS and AESTHETICS a subjec- ferent substances but just one, which tivist will hold that to describe something could be identified with space. LOCKE as good or beautiful is to say something also broke with tradition by treating ideas about one’s reaction to it (that it gives one of substances not as basic and natural but a special feeling of pleasure, perhaps), as complex and artificial. See also rather than about its ‘objective’ character- DUALISM, LEIBNIZ, MONISM, PERSONAL istics. It is necessary to distinguish such a IDENTITY, SPINOZA, UNIVERSALS. {J.R.} subjectivist view from the expressive theory (found for example in Ayer’s Syllogism Syllogism is a form of argu- Language Truth and Logic) which holds ment comprising three steps, each of that when we say something is good we which is a proposition containing two do not make a statement about our reac- terms. If the first step (or major premiss) tions to the thing but rather are thereby links A to B, the second (or minor pre- reacting to the thing in words in a way miss) will link B to a further term (C), analogous logically to cheering or throw- and the third (the conclusion) will link A ing one’s hat in the air. The view that what to C. (For instance: ‘All A are B, C is A, is perceived exists only because it is per- therefore C is B’, or ‘All humans are mor- ceived (BERKELEY’s ‘ esse est percipi’) is tal, Socrates is human, therefore Socrates also termed subjectivism or subjective IDE- is mortal.’) It will be noted that the two ALISM; subjectivistm in this sense asserts – premises share one term (A or ‘human’), usually on the basis of the fact of percep- which does not figure in the conclusion; it tual illusion – that colours, sounds, smells, is known as the ‘middle term’ and is some- etc. exist only ‘in the mind’ and not in the times said to ‘mediate’ between the other natural world. (J.O.U.) two terms, which are known as ‘extremes’. The theory of the syllogism – especially Substance The word ‘substance’ has a the classification of syllogisms into vari- distinct meaning in philosophical con- ous ‘figures’ and ‘moods’ – was the boot- texts, roughly equivalent to ‘thing’ or camp of classical LOGIC from ARISTOTLE to ‘individual’ (as opposed to properties or FREGE. See also PETER OF SPAIN. {J.R.} relations), or reality (as opposed to appearance). The word originates in the Synthetic The opposite of ANALYTIC. Latin substantia, which is standardly used For ‘synthetic a priori’, see A PRIORI. T

Tarski, Alfred (1902–83) Polish- things he organized the diversion of a river, American logician, author of the cele- and urged federation on the Ionians. His brated paper ‘The Concept of Truth in mathematical and astronomical discover- Formalized Languages’ (1935); see TRUTH. ies, later somewhat exaggerated, included methods of mensuration, for example, of Taylor, Alfred Edward (1869–1945) the height of pyramids, and the compila- The British philosopher A. E. Taylor began tion of a star-catalogue for nautical use. He his philosophical career as an idealist and probably visited Egypt, and for his estima- follower of BRADLEY. But in The Faith of a tion of the eclipse must also have had Moralist (1930) he argued that our moral access to Babylonian celestial records. We knowledge necessarily presupposes the do not know how prominent and how pre- existence of a God who controls the uni- cisely formulated his more theoretical cos- verse with a moral purpose, and the mology was. He certainly believed that the immortality of the human soul. (J.O.U.) flat earth floated on water, from which it Taylor, Charles (1931– ) In his first had originated. Here he was probably book (The Explanation of Behaviour, adapting a common motif of Near-Eastern, 1964), the Canadian philosopher Charles and especially Egyptian, mythology. He Taylor argued that there was little chance may also have thought, as ARISTOTLE that scientific psychology would ever be asserts, that the world and its parts were able to dispense with the apparently still essentially watery. He seems to have unscientific concept of human purpose. said: ‘all things are full of gods’, meaning In his later work – including a study of that they are permeated by soul. Even Hegel (1975) and an inquiry into moder- the magnet-stone, apparently inanimate, nity (Sources of the Self, 1989) – he has causes motion and is therefore alive. It was strengthened and elaborated his view that by abandoning personification and attempt- human beings cannot be understood ing to explain the whole world rationally except in terms of their histories, their that Thales earned his traditional title of cultures and their self-understandings the originator of Greek philosophy. See (see LIBERALISM AND COMMUNITARIAN- also PRE-SOCRATICS. (G.S.K.) ISM). He is also the author of the article on Mind in this Encyclopedia. Theism Theism is the belief that there is a God and that God is omnipotent, An attempt to omniscient and benevolent, distinct from derive the existence of God from the the universe which he has created and in appearance of purpose or design in the which he intervenes. To be a theist is not in world; see THEISM, DEISM. itself to hold a philosophical theory, but it is Thales, who lived in to be committed on philosophical issues, the sixth century BC, is by tradition the first both of truth and of meaning. At the same philosopher, and predicted an eclipse time, a belief shared by AQUINAS, DESCARTES which occurred in 585–4. He was a sophos and BERKELEY obviously has a certain or sage with many interests: among other chameleon-like quality. The grounds on Theism 375 which the existence of the God of theism eighteenth-century apologetics. The habit has been asserted are very various. There of reading the arguments of medieval the- is first the Cartesian view that ‘God ism as earlier versions of them is however exists’ is a necessary truth: ‘recurring to a questionable one. Clearly the chief dif- the examination of the idea of a Perfect ficulty in advancing a proof of the exis- Being, I found that the existence of the tence of God lies in the elementary Being was comprised in the idea of it, in logical point that in a valid proof nothing the same way that the equality of its three can appear in the conclusion which was angles to two right angles is comprised in not already contained in the premises. the idea of a triangle...and that conse- A valid proof of God’s existence could quently it is at least as certain that God, therefore be nothing other than the mak- who is this Perfect Being, is, or exists, as ing explicit of a belief which was implicit any demonstration of geometry can be’. in the premises. Those who are prepared Descartes made a mistake – one which to deny not only those premises which Aquinas had identified four centuries ear- state, but also those which imply, divine lier – in thinking that any assertion of existence must necessarily be left existence could be a necessary truth; but untouched by the theistic arguments. The this mistake is not committed by those concept of theistic proof as proceeding by who have accepted either the cosmologi- unquestionable inferences from undeni- cal or teleological arguments. able premises is ruled out not by any Both these arguments attempt to special difficulty in theism but by the pre- derive the conclusion that God exists requisites of proof in general. Aquinas, at from premises about the world. The cos- least, was well aware of the central issues mological argument takes as its premise here. All that you can do, on a matter of the assertion that something exists, the first principles such as theistic belief, is to teleological assertion that the universe show that your opponent’s position fails. manifests traces of intelligent design. The The failure of the eighteenth-century cosmological argument then proceeds by triad, however, led not to a re-examination way of the assertion that the existence of of the notion of proof but to an appeal to anything at all can only be explained by inner religious experience. This appeal supposing that there exists an uncaused became characteristic of Protestant phi- First Cause. The teleological argument losophy of religion and led to the quest passes from the assertion of design in for an experience at once plainly identifi- nature to the assertion of a supernatural able as the religious experience by those designer. Both arguments have been, per- who enjoyed it and as plainly witnessing haps over-frequently, pulverized by the to the existence of God. The ‘feelings charge that they attempt a causal infer- of absolute dependence’ of Friedrich ence from the universe to its maker; and Schleiermacher (1768–1834) and the HUME showed that it only makes sense to ‘numinous’ of Rudolf Otto (1869–1937) speak of causal relations as holding are the most notorious candidates in this between observable states of affairs, and, field. This whole movement had fruitful whatever God is, he is certainly not an consequences for the phenomenological observable state of affairs. study of religious experience. But as an These arguments – the Cartesian (or attempt to provide grounds for theistic ‘ontological’), the cosmological and the belief it fails, for it becomes either teleological – became a standard triad in another version of the familiar invalid 376 Theism causal inference, passing in this case from uniformly experienced to occur. Now an alleged introspectible state of affairs to where such a sequence of events has been an unobserved author of this state of uniformly experienced by the whole of affairs, or a simple irrationalist affirma- mankind it is to the highest degree improb- tion that because I feel that it is so, it is so. able that such a sequence should be inter- The latter alternative must be distin- rupted. And when someone testifies that guished from another Protestant position, such a sequence has been interrupted, as which rests belief neither on argument the apostles testified that Jesus walked nor on experience. For some Protestants on the water, it is always more probable the whole ground for belief is faith in a that the testimony is erroneous than that divine revelation; the belief that there is a the hitherto observed regularity of nature God is from the standpoint of rational should have been contravened. But this is argument simply groundless. This is not an argument against accepting reports of to say that theistic belief lacks grounds the miraculous rather than against believ- which it might possess, but that theistic ing in the possibility of miracles; and it belief necessarily lacks grounds. Such a ignores one essential feature of claims belief is not however invulnerable to rati- about the miraculous. What distinguishes a onal argument even on its own assump- miraculous event is not just its apparent tions. For, if God has revealed himself, it inexplicability; but also the fact that it must be at some time and place to some appears as an answer to a human command specific person and the allegation that or need. The concept which demands there was such a person is a purely histor- scrutiny is not that of a ‘miraculous event’ ical affirmation which can be challenged but rather that of ‘performing a miracle’. on historical grounds. So the revealed This relationship between divine inter- belief of Islamic theism depends upon vention and human life is characteristic of historical assertions about Mahomet and the religious content of theism, so it is not that of Christian theism depends on asser- surprising that it should affect the con- tions about Jesus. ceptual problems which theism raises. It How in any case can the assertion that emerges notably in the difficulty posed a given event is revelatory of the divine be for theistic belief by physical and moral warranted? A necessary condition presum- EVIL. If God is all-powerful, then he must ably is that the event in question should be able to prevent evil. If God is all-good, either be a miraculous occurrence or be then he must wish to prevent evil. But evil accompanied by such occurrences. In this occurs. So that God cannot be both all- way the problem of miracles arises for the powerful and all-good. And to assert that theist, and since the assertion that God he is both these things and to allow that intervenes miraculously is essential to the- evils occur is to admit that theism ism, as contrasted with DEISM, an a priori involves the starkest contradiction. The proof of the impossibility of miracles theistic answer to this charge is usually would be a disproof of theism. That Hume that God’s willing some good end such as provides such a proof has often been human freedom and the possibility of asserted. Hume accepts the theological human moral achievement made it logi- definition of a miracle as a breach of cally necessary that God should create a a law of nature, and argues that when we world with possible or actual evils in it. speak of a law of nature we mean that Among the difficulties which this answer a certain course of events has been encounters is the fact that so much animal Theophrastus 377 suffering, for example, must have taken possibilities of an after-life. Thus the the- place before man ever appeared and must istic claim comes into logical connexion therefore be considered irrelevant to any with the claim that human beings are not divine purpose for human freedom. mortal, a connexion which is already Theists however are normally disposed to made in most of the great religions on the- admit that the facts of evil constitute at ological grounds. least a prima facie objection to theism. There is no one problem or group of That they admit this perhaps assists them problems which can be labelled ‘the theis- in meeting another type of problem. tic question’. Proof, introspection, laws of Critics of the theistic proofs argue that nature, free-will, – almost all there are no good reasons for believing the topics of philosophy – can arise in the- that God exists; exponents of the problem istic contexts. The conceptual problems of of evil are apt to claim that there are good the theistic philosopher are thus for the reasons for believing that God does not most part the ordinary conceptual prob- exist; neither scepticism cuts as deep as lems of philosophy, raised from a particu- that which claims that it is equally mean- lar point of view. See also RELIGION. ingless to assert or to deny the existence of (A.MACI.) God. This may be asserted on the general positivist ground that the meaning of a Theophrastus (c.370–c.286 BC) Born statement is the method of its verification, in Lesbos, a Greek island in the Aegean, and that there is no method of verifying Theophrastus was ARISTOTLE’s most theistic statements. But the same charge famous pupil, and took over as head of the can also be made in a way that brings out Lyceum when Aristotle left Athens in 323. the nature of theistic belief more strik- Of his surviving works, the De Plantis ingly. For to make an assertion is always to introduced important botanical concepts allow that one may be wrong – that there while the Metaphysics raised problems is some conceivable state of affairs incom- about some of Aristotle’s doctrines, espe- patible with one’s assertion which, if it cially concerning the Prime Mover. Most occurs, shows that one’s assertion is false. of his many writings are lost, but it seems If one does not rule out anything by mak- that he remained fundamentally an ing what appears to be an assertion, then Aristotelian, while criticizing Aristotle on one simply has not succeeded in asserting particular points and making useful addi- anything. But the theist does not seem to tions to Aristotle’s logic, and paving the allow that anything conceivable could fal- way for STOICISM and EPICUREANISM. sify the assertion that there is a good and Theophrastus compiled a large work sum- all-powerful God. Whatever disasters hap- marizing the views of previous Greek pen the theist claims that their occurrence philosophers on nature, God etc., which is not incompatible with the care of an all- became the source for numerous later his- loving, all-powerful God. This seems to torians of Greek philosophy (cf. PRE- evacuate words like ‘loving’ and ‘power- SOCRATICS). Historians of Pre-Socratic ful’ of all meaning. To this the theist will philosophy were dominated by the influ- reply that his assertions would be falsified ence of Theophrastus until comparatively by the occurrence of pointless and irre- recent times; this was unfortunate because deemable evil, but that no actual evils can he saw all earlier philosophers as precur- be shown to be pointless and irre- sors of Aristotle and forced their ideas into deemable, especially in the light of the an Aristotelian framework. (J.L.A.) 378 Thomism

Thomism See AQUINAS, NEO-THOMISM. Transcendental Arguments Transcen- dental Arguments move from the premise Thomas of Sutton Thomas was one of that a certain kind of knowledge is possi- the Oxford Dominicans who rallied to the ble (say, arithmetic), to the conclusion support of Thomas AQUINAS; his early that certain A PRIORI ‘conditions of its writings, dating from about 1286, centre possibility’ must be fulfilled. The view as single substantial form of the that such arguments are crucial to philos- body; in his later writings, to about 1315, ophy is due to KANT’s proposal for a ‘tran- he confronted a new attack, from the scendental’ philosophy, ‘concerned not so developed Aristotelianism of SCOTUS, much with objects as with the mode of our becoming a resolute defender of the dis- knowledge of objects’. HUSSERL’s project tinction between essence and existence in of PHENOMENOLOGY can be seen as an finite beings. (T.G.) extended Transcendental Argument, as Toulmin, Stephen Edelston (1922– ) can WITTGENSTEIN’s case against the possi- The English philosopher bility of a private language. Indeed the worked mainly in the United States. His term can be applied to any argument Place of Reason in Ethics (1950) was the purporting to establish a proposition by earliest book on ETHICS from the viewpoint showing that if it were false, it would not of linguistic ANALYSIS. Philosophy of even be possible to discuss it: for example, Science: An Introduction (1953) gives an ARISTOTLE’s argument that the law of con- account of scientific theorizing as being tradiction must be assumed even by those more like the making of maps to enable who would argue against it. [J.R.] one to find one’s way about than the process of generalization which is Translation The philosophical interest described in the classical theories of induc- of translation is common ground between tion. His The Uses of Argument (1958) is various factions in modern philosophy, an attempt to redescribe the nature and from QUINE and DAVIDSON on the one hand function of arguments in terms more (mainly concerned with the translation revealing than those traditionally used in of simple experiential statements) to logic textbooks. He also wrote widely on HEIDEGGER and DERRIDA on the other the history of science, and produced a sys- (more interested in the translation of his- tematic treatise on Human Understanding tory-laden words like ‘being’ or highly (1972). (J.O.U.) wrought works of literary art). Indeed, if philosophy is (as often said) mostly about Transcendent The word ‘transcendent’ meanings, then it is inevitable that its pre- means going beyond, or exceeding. In this occupations should coincide in large part sense, individual things or SUBSTANCES can with those of the practice and theory be said to transcend our experience of of translation. Both philosophy and trans- them, and God to transcend the world, or lation could be defined as arts which take vice-versa. It is more or less systematically ready-formulated meanings and seek new opposed to transcendental which, in the ways of expressing them, and perennial Aristotelian tradition, refers to notions (like philosophical doubts about the existence one, good and true) which can be applied or accessibility of such invariant mean- across all categories of being, while in ings can be said to correspond to (or even KANT it signifies the A PRIORI conditions to translate) problems about the nature that make knowledge possible. {J.R.} and feasibility of true translations. Translation 379

But philosophy is entangled with best a second language even for those translation in less abstract ways as well. It who were completely at ease in it. (The is perhaps the most systematically multi- resulting linguistic alienation was perhaps lingual of all literary traditions, and many the most important barrier excluding of the books on any philosopher’s book- women from philosophy and making it shelf will be either translations, or works the most male-dominated of cultural in foreign languages, or both. Philosophy domains.) While DESCARTES is often is also the only secular discipline that can praised for turning a modern lay claim to an unbroken literary tradition into a medium for serious philosophy by of more than two thousand years, and its using French in his Discours de la continuity could not have been sustained Méthode of 1637, it is worth remember- without the labours, often unacknowl- ing that he returned to Latin for the edged, of philosophical translators. Even Meditationes five years later. Later the ancient Greeks, who are usually cred- philosophers who are famous for forcing ited with creating philosophy out of noth- their own languages into the service of ing, had an uneasy sense that their philosophy (from HOBBES and LOCKE to wisdom had been acquired, through KANT and HEGEL) were also conscious of THALES and other PRE-SOCRATICS, from the sacrificing a wealth of philosophical res- cultures and languages of Egypt and the onances, and were relieved when they East. The Romans in turn regarded phi- could return to the Latin or Greek lan- losophy as essentially Greek, preferring guages where philosophy seemed more to transliterate many of its key concepts at home. (such as dialectic, logic and indeed phi- The linguistic plurality that philoso- losophy itself) rather than devising Latin phy is heir to has sometimes been equivalents for them (see CICERO, SENECA, regarded as an unnecessary encumbrance etc.). The same applies to the Islamic that ought to be cast aside in the name of philosophers (AVERROES, AVICENNA, et al.) scientific progress. From LEIBNIZ to the who sought to convey the lessons of phi- LOGICAL POSITIVISTS, philosophers have losophy (or falsafa) in Arabic, and saved dreamt of an intellectually perfect many of its classic Greek texts from com- language that would transcend the often plete extinction. baffling and sometimes irrational com- For both the Arabic philosophers and plexities of ordinary natural languages. the Romans, philosophy’s mother tongue Such an immaculate language would per- was a foreign language, and their own haps be symbolic or graphic rather than philosophising had to take place in an linguistic and verbal, and it would no ambiguous territory where their native doubt be able to provide rigorous equiva- forms of speech were in some measure lents for certain existing concepts with a overshadowed or intimidated by the pres- modicum of technical or practical stabil- tige of ancient Greek. The old anxieties of ity – say three, triangle, syllogism, quan- philosophical multilingualism were exac- tification, transcendence, or water. But if erbated in the intellectual culture of it had to exclude everyday words like Western Christendom (see MEDIEVAL PHI- spirit, love, goodness, being, nature, LOSOPHY). Philosophers like AQUINAS death or end – exactly the kinds of terms were conscious of having no direct access that have traditionally been at the centre to the Greek that unmistakably haunted of philosophical discussion – it might their learned Latin, and Latin itself was at well be felt that the luxury of conceptual 380 Truth clarity was being purchased at an exorbi- consider the views of a philosopher who tant price. A rigorously transparent lan- does see and make the distinction; thus guage, purged of METAPHOR, irony, F. C. S. SCHILLER maintained that ‘true’ was allusiveness and ambiguity could have all an evaluative term, meaning something the proverbial horror of a wish come true, like ‘good to believe’, but as a PRAGMATIST its perfection leading not to an invigora- he maintained that the criterion of truth tion of philosophical thinking but to death was utility. through linguistic asphyxiation. For The two most famous theories of truth, whilst philosophy can be seen as a pro- the correspondence theory and the coher- longed quest for a perfect conceptual sys- ence theory, have usually been represented tem, it has also typically undertaken the as theories about the meaning of ‘true’. So more humdrum task of elucidating local interpreted the correspondence theory problems of knowledge or practice as asserts that ‘true’ means ‘corresponds to they crop up in everyday existence; and the facts’ and the coherence theory asserts its principal method has always been one that ‘true’ means ‘coheres with the body of of piecemeal, pragmatic and experimental accepted statements’. The most obvious paraphrase, either between languages or criticism of the coherence theory is that within them. It is striking that modern while it has considerable plausibility as a philosophical cultures which attempt to statement of one criterion of truth it hardly operate within the confines of a single gives the meaning of ‘true’; we do treat the language (mainly those in the English- coherence of a statement with what we speaking world since the middle of the already believe as one reason, though not a twentieth century) typically pay much sufficient reason, for accepting it as true; attention to the more or less formal vocab- but if coherence is a test of truth it cannot ularies of LOGIC, which enable them to be the same thing as truth. Criticism of the replicate the salutary experiences of inter- correspondence theory is more difficult linguistic translation without having to and complex; from one point of view it learn a real foreign language. It would seems that to say that truth is correspon- perhaps be possible to envisage a future dence with fact is a mere platitude, but we HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY that would be get into difficulties when we try to give a history not of would-be systematic clear meaning to ‘correspondence’ and thinking but of humble and fastidious ‘fact’. No doubt it is true that there are no translating. {J.R.} centaurs, and we may say that the state- ment that there are no centaurs corre- Truth Philosophers have been con- sponds with the facts; but it is hard to see cerned principally with two questions what sort of status the ‘fact’ of there being about truth, the first concerned with the no centaurs has and what sort of relation, meaning of ‘true’, the second with the cri- called ‘correspondence’, it can enter into terion or criteria by which we can decide with a statement. Thus the correspondence on the truth or falsity of statements. Most theory is liable to resolve itself into a mere commonly philosophers have failed to metaphor. distinguish these two questions and have Another much-noticed difficulty is offered as an answer to one of the ques- that the phrase ‘it is true that’ seems to tions what might be regarded as a possible add nothing to the meaning of sentences answer to the other. But it is easy to see in which it occurs; it is hard to see what that there is such a distinction if we extra value is added if, instead of saying Turing, Alan 381

‘the cat is on the mat’, we say ‘it is true the world designed to help us cope with it. that the cat is on the mat’. The real use of If we thus think of statements as interpre- the word ‘true’ appears to lie in such tations, we cannot divorce the question of expressions as ‘that is true’, where it their satisfactoriness from the question enables us to confirm a statement without whether they do the job that they are repeating it. These points have led some intended to do. TARSKI, in a celebrated philosophers, notably STRAWSON, to hold paper, defines ‘truth’ in a way that gives it that the word ‘true’ is rather a signal of a function in a calculus analogous to the assent, or concession, or admission, func- function of ‘true’ in ordinary language. It tioning more like the word ‘yes’, than like is quite certain that this definition cannot a word signifying a quality or relation. be applied directly to our ordinary notion Schiller’s view, mentioned earlier, that of truth; whether it has any relevance to ‘true’ is a term of evaluation is closely the philosophical problem of truth is a related to this view. highly technical and disputable question. Incautious pragmatists have some- Such views as Tarski’s are called semanti- times spoken as though they identified cal theories of truth. See also DAVIDSON. the meaning of ‘true’ with ‘useful to (J.O.U.) believe’, though cautious pragmatists like Schiller avoided this trap. In putting for- Turing, Alan (1912–54) The English ward utility as a criterion of truth, the logician and mathematician Alan Turing pragmatists were not wishing to say that if was an early theorist of computing, famous it would be pleasant if something were for suggesting that if a machine could true, we should count it as true; they respond to questions with replies that were rather wished to emphasize that systems indistinguishable from those supplied by a of human beliefs and the concepts human being, then the machine could be employed in them are interpretations of said to think. U

Universals Universals are, in the first some property or standing in some relation. instance, abstract objects such as quali- In other words, individual things fall into ties, relations and numbers – things which kinds, and the world exhibits recurrences cannot be straightforwardly located in and similarities. Clearly there are general space and time. They are contrasted with terms and they have meanings. But does it particulars and are sometimes defined as follow that there actually exist things the objects of thought, while particulars which are the meanings of general terms? are the objects of perception or sensation. Could one not say that there is one set of Particulars are sometimes identified with things, namely concrete objects, to which concrete objects in space and time, some- singular terms are related in one way times with that element of a concrete (each standing for one concrete thing) and object which individuates it, that is, dis- general terms related in another (each tinguishes it from everything else how- applying to many)? The difficulty with ever similar in character. It is perhaps this view (a form of NOMINALISM) is that preferable to retain the term ‘particular’ we can use general terms correctly with- for the latter idea and to call concrete out having been told in advance all the objects ‘individuals’, as being made up of things to which they apply. There are, that both a particular and universals. On this is to say, sets of things in which a few view a particular would be an uncharac- members of the set are representative of terized spatio-temporal position, the bare the rest. Positive theories of universals are possibility of an object. Some such idea is attempts to explain this peculiar and one of the roots of the traditional concept important fact. A predicative universal is of SUBSTANCE. what the members of a natural set of this Two main sorts of universals can be kind have in common. distinguished: predicative universals, the The existence of formal universals is properties and relations that are the mean- argued for on two related grounds: ing of general terms or predicates, and abstract reference and necessary truth. formal universals, the abstract entities of Some true statements (‘2ϫ2ϭ4’ and MATHEMATICS. The difference is that while ‘tuberculosis is decreasing’) refer not to predicative universals can and usually do concrete things but to entities that are have instances, formal universals are neither in space nor time. But what a true rather ideal limits to which actual things statement refers to must exist. Again, more or less closely approximate. The there are some truths which we know for existence of predicative universals (red- certain simply by the use of reason and ness, justice, betweenness etc.) is argued without any observation of the spatio- for as a necessary condition of the pred- temporal world (such as ‘axbϭbxa’ and icative use of general terms. We cannot ‘Red is a colour’). Universals, then, may think or speak without general terms: be thought of as the subject-matter of every statement contains at least one such necessary or A PRIORI knowledge; to use term as ‘red’ or ‘earlier than’, and we are one’s reason is to examine and elicit their never aware of anything except as having invariable qualities and relations. In Universals 383 recent times the argument from predication But to discern this fact of inherence has been employed more than the argu- I must be aware of the abstract universal ment from abstract reference and neces- Inherence and so on. This defect of sary knowledge. For it is widely held that Platonism, first formulated in PLATO’s all abstract reference is apparent rather Parmenides, led ARISTOTLE to say that than real and that the principle of refer- universals were not abstract and ‘sepa- ence does not apply to necessary truths. rated’ from the things they inhere in, but Contingent propositions with abstract to be found in the common world of space subjects must refer to existing things if and time along with particular objects. true. But what they refer to, and so pre- What this presumably means is that suppose the existence of, is ordinary con- Hardness is a vast fragmentary object, crete things. ‘Tuberculosis is decreasing’ cropping up here and there all over the really refers to tuberculosis sufferers, not place. If so it would be little suited to its to the disease itself. It is an idiomatic, and theoretical task, for people who know the potentially misleading way of saying meaning of the word hard perfectly well ‘fewer people suffer from tuberculosis are acquainted with only a minute portion nowadays’. Necessary propositions refer of this total object. They could only find to nothing, for they depend for their truth, out what the rest of it was composed of if not on the existence of anything, but on they already knew the meaning of the the meaning of the words used to express word. Furthermore universals with no them. ‘Mary’s husband is married to instances such as Ghost and Female Pope Mary’ is a necessary truth whether Mary would be one and the same universal, and is married or single. the two terms would have one and the The most famous account of our ability same meaning, which they plainly do not. to apply predicative general terms to The two traditional alternatives to things we have not come across before is realism are CONCEPTUALISM, which asserts REALISM, or, less confusingly, conceptual that we apply general terms to new things realism. On this view we can apply one through the use of some mental standard, general term to many things because we a concept or image, and nominalism, the are aware of the common property they view that the things to which a general possess. This common property cannot be term applies have no more in common in space and time since, if it were, it than the fact that men apply that general would exhibit the logically insufferable term to them. In practice neither of these characteristic of being in many different theories is often held in its full rigour. places at one and the same time. Without some basis in the nature of the Furthermore there would be many such things in question, the general correspon- properties in many places at the same dence between different people’s concepts time. This theory suggests that universals and linguistic practices would be an unin- are directly accessible to the mind in a telligible miracle. Thus conceptualists way that is not easy to accept. It also has like ABELARD and LOCKE say that concepts a formal defect common to all theories of are based on the similarities of things; and universals in seeming to generate an infi- nominalists like HOBBES and many con- nite regress. I can tell that this particular temporary philosophers explain the appli- thing is hard because I am aware of the cation of general terms by the similarity abstract universal Hardness and of the of the things they apply to either to one fact that the universal inheres in the thing. another or to some standard thing or 384 Urmson, J. O. group of things. Realists argue that since interest is in question...if that party be similarity is itself a universal these mod- the community in general, then the happi- ifications are no more than realism in ness of the community.’ Thus actions are disguise. to be judged only by the contribution they Apart from absolutely pure nominal- make to increasing human happiness or ism all theories of universals are exposed decreasing human misery. The moral to the . But this does not validity of a law or rule, or the value of an mean that what they say is false. It is institution, depends on the same consider- rather that what is really a repetition in ations. If the tendency of an action to other words of the puzzling fact of the increase the happiness of the community reapplicability of general terms has been is greater than any tendency to diminish it, misinterpreted as an explanation of it. To then it is ‘conformable to the principle of say that we can recognize hard things as utility’. Revelation, authority, tradition, hard because they all have the common conscience, contract and history are all property of being hard, or fall under the irrelevant: an action may pass such tests concept of hardness, is uninformative. To and still be wrong; the only pertinent con- be aware of the common property or to sideration is its contribution to happiness. possess the concept is simply to know Moreover happiness itself is simply a how to use the general term, above all in matter of pleasure and freedom from pain. the recognition and classification of Utilitarianism had its origins in Greek things. (A.Q.) thought, but in modern times it arose from certain views of HOBBES and LOCKE, Urmson, James O. (1915– ) The and was formulated by HUTCHESON in English philosopher J. O. Urmson is a 1726. A version of it was elaborated by compiler of posthumous editions of HUME as a purely descriptive account of works by AUSTIN, a sympathetic but criti- how moral judgments are made; directly cal historian of ANALYTIC PHILOSOPHY moralistic versions were given by Joseph (Philosophical Analysis, 1956; The Priestley and William Paley; and practical Emotive Theory of Ethics, 1968), the orig- applications in JURISPRUDENCE were inal editor of this Encyclopedia, and worked out by Helvétius in France and author of many articles in it and also of Beccaria in Italy. Jeremy Bentham drew Berkeley (1982). Although many of his upon all these sources to create a compre- writings focus on theories about the hensive theory with which he launched nature of philosophy, he holds that ‘on the his assault on the constitutional, eco- whole the best philosophy is little affected nomic, legal and social problems of his by theory; the philosopher sees what day. James MILL’s version is simpler and needs doing and does it’. [J.R.] more egotistical. J. S. MILL’s Utilitarianism Utilitarianism Utilitarianism is a the- (1863) is much more complicated, and ory of ethics based on a principle formu- re-introduces many factors which Bentham lated in BENTHAM’s Principles of Morals had painstakingly eliminated. Henry and Legislation (1789): ‘By the principle SIDGWICK and stand in of utility is meant that principle which the same tradition, but G. E. MOORE approves or disapproves of every action (Principia Ethica, 1903) made a funda- whatsoever, according to the tendency mental modification: he accepted the which it appears to have to augment or view that the rightness of an action diminish the happiness of the party whose depends on the good or bad consequences Utilitarianism 385 that follow it, but held that many sorts of rather than lower pleasures. ‘Pleasure and things apart from pleasures and pains are pleasure alone is good in itself’ has some good or bad in themselves. Rejecting the value as a war-cry, but it is bound to end original utilitarian view that nothing mat- up by expanding the meaning of ters except happiness or pleasure, he ‘pleasure’ to cover every object of desire. argued that the key question was what is The moral justification for the distinction good, which he held could be known by can hardly be that all pleasures are good; intuition. it is rather that persons should choose for 1 ‘Pleasure and pleasure alone is themselves – a doctrine which (however good in itself’. According to Bentham we congenial to Bentham as to Mill) lacks should call an object ‘good’ because of the ‘scientific’ quality which the calcula- the pleasure it brings and ‘bad’ because of tion of pains and pleasures was supposed the pain; it is only for the sake of such to introduce into ethics. pleasure that we should eat, or rest, or 2‘Actions are right in proportion as fight, and we should undertake to labour they tend to produce happiness, wrong as or suffer pain only for the sake of future they tend to produce the reverse of happi- pleasures. He insists moreover that the ness.’ In his account of utilitarianism, only way one pleasure can be better than G. E. Moore maintained that an action is another is if it is bigger. This ethical doc- right if its consequences would in fact be trine is often associated, though not to its better than those of any alternative action. advantage, with psychological HEDONISM. Since we can never be sure what all the Thus Mill appeals to the psychological consequences of an action will be, it doctrine in the hope of establishing that follows that we can never know what even a person who aims at knowledge or action is right. The earlier utilitarians, on virtue for its own sake is in reality still the other hand, took the more reasonable pursuing ‘pleasure’. They are (he says) view that ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ should be objectives which were once pursued as a decided by reference to probable conse- means to pleasure, but which (by associa- quences as they appear at the time of tion and habit) continue to be pursued decision. without reference to the original end. Moore also held (as did Bentham) that Saving money is one of Mill’s examples; when deciding whether a given action abiding by the rules of virtue at all costs, would be right, we should take account of is another. But this is a muddled argu- the consequences of that individual action ment; it treats as ‘pleasures’ things that considered on its own. This view offends are pursued by mere habit and without against common sense, however, which desire, or desired only by a confusion of thinks rather in terms of kinds of action: thought. some kinds (cheating or lying for Mill goes on to introduce a distinction instance) must never be performed; others between ‘lower’ and ‘higher’ pleasures, whenever opportunity arises; while with claiming that whilst the higher pleasures other kinds we must choose on the basis of may not be ‘greater pleasures’ in particular circumstances. Utilitarians may Bentham’s quantitative sense, they are reply by saying that actions like cheating nevertheless to be preferred. On this view and lying have got a bad name because it is a trivial point that only pleasure can they usually have bad consequences, so be desired for its own sake; what really that the moral rule against them should be matters is that we should choose higher regarded as a rule of thumb stating that 386 Utilitarianism such actions are to be avoided in the main. validity of the rule could be questioned on They will also say that social life would be utilitarian grounds. In the latter case Mill impossible if certain conventions – truth- clearly says that the proper procedure is to telling for example – were not generally appeal directly to ‘first principles’ – that followed. On a given occasion the imme- is, to test the consequences of doing or diate consequence of lying may be good; not doing the action in question. but there is a more distant consequence to Mill attached great importance to be considered: any breach of the conven- following moral rules even at great cost to tion is likely to lower public confidence in oneself. But can a utilitarian consistently it and hence weaken it, which might do recommend following a rule for its own grave damage to ‘general happiness’ in the sake? The situation is complicated in the long run. For this reason lying may be case of what Hume called the ‘artificial generally wrong even when its immediate virtues’ – justice, keeping promises, consequences are good. But in a case where telling the truth etc. – which, as he the consequences of telling a lie are not so showed, are possible only where certain bad as the consequences of not doing so, rules of conduct are generally followed. the utilitarian would favour telling the lie. One could not keep or break a promise It has been argued that the utilitarian- unless there was an institution of promis- ism of Mill’s essays is not the same as that ing; and one could not defraud a resid- of Bentham, Sidgwick and Moore. Mill’s uary legatee in a society which had no utilitarianism is said to be ‘restricted’ in practice of testation. Hence it would be that it recognizes that the test of the right- impossible to cultivate the artificial ness or wrongness of individual actions virtues if one were guided simply by the does not normally lie in their specific principle of doing whatever will have the consequences, but in the application of a best consequences. Irregular conduct moral rule, or what Mill calls a secondary would undermine the artificial virtues, principle. Morality consists of ‘rules and since the only reason for observing them precepts for human conduct’, and an act would be the expectation that everyone of theft, for example, is wrong because else will do the same. (This does not there is a rule against stealing. But these apply to Hume’s ‘natural virtues’, such rules are themselves subject to a utilitar- as kindness, generosity, or saving lives.) ian test: they are valid only if their obser- The argument may succeed in explain- vance will have better consequences than ing, on utilitarian principles, why rules their non-adoption. According to this about justice and promise-keeping interpretation, Mill would consider it should not lightly be ignored, but it cannot proper to follow the moral rule unless of course show that they must never be there was a conflict of rules, or unless the broken. (K.B.) V

Vaihinger, Hans (1852–1933) The belonged to the University of Vienna in German philosopher was the 1920s and 1930s. In 1895 a Chair of one of the founders of modern KANT-schol- Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences had arship. His interpretation of Kant placed been founded in Vienna for Ernst MACH. special emphasis on the regulative function Moritz SCHLICK was elected to this chair of Ideas, a doctrine which he bolstered with in 1922 and very soon an informal circle the help of such unlikely comrades as BEN- of colleagues and senior pupils formed THAM and NIETZSCHE to produce a general about him; they were united by a common doctrine of ‘Fictions’, according to which interest in the sciences and mathematics, we can only have access to truth if we are a general acceptance of the positivistic prepared to make certain assumptions outlook of Mach, and a recognition of the which we know to be untrue. His master- importance of the developing science of piece was The Philosophy of As-If (1911), mathematical logic. Among the more which had a wide influence on literature in important of these are Friedrich Waismann, English thanks to a translation made by Rudolf CARNAP, Otto NEURATH, Herbert C. K. Ogden in 1924. {J.R.} Feigl, Felix Kaufmann, Victor Kraft, Hans Hahn and Kurt Gödel. They were Vegetarianism See ANIMALS. deeply influenced by WITTGENSTEIN’s Venn, John (1834–1923) The English Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, but though logician John Venn taught philosophy at he was living in Austria at the time, and Cambridge, and is the author of three influ- a personal friend of some members of ential books on LOGIC. The Logic of Chance the group, he never joined it himself. In (1866) gives the first statement of the ‘fre- 1929 the Circle was given a more formal quency’ theory of PROBABILITY, which has status and a pamphlet was issued setting been extensively developed and criticized out its basic tenets and aims. In 1930 the since. Symbolic Logic (1881) is a thorough magazine Erkenntnis was founded as the survey of previous work in the field, organ of the group, and the Circle began notable for drawing attention to FREGE’s to arouse great interest both in Europe Begriffsschrift, then very recently pub- and in America. The group itself, how- lished. Principles of Empirical or Inductive ever, soon collapsed, because of the assas- Logic (1889) relies largely though not sination of Schlick in 1936, the hostility uncritically on the work of J. S. MILL, and of the Nazis, and finally the War in 1939. makes curiously little use of Venn’s own Many members of the group emigrated ideas about probability (D.J.O’C.) and it had its greatest influence outside the German-speaking countries where it Verification Principle The verification originated. (J.O.U.) principle is the thesis, central to LOGICAL POSITIVISM, that the meaning of a proposi- Vitoria, Francisco de (c.1490–1546) tion is the method of discovering whether it Born in Old Castile, Spain, Vitoria is true. became a Dominican Master at Paris, Vienna Circle The group of LOGICAL Valladolid, and Salamanca, and brought a POSITIVISTS (or logical EMPIRICISTS) who new dignity and warmth to the teaching 388 of scholastic philosophy. The founder of institutions and complex theories to match the great school of Spanish Thomists, he (see MACHIAVELLI), it became clear that took a leading part in the university people who cultivated personal virtuous- movement for promoting justice for the ness did not necessarily promote the happi- natives of Spanish America which earned ness or welfare of others. The extension of him the admiration of Dr Johnson. In his capitalist relations of production under- Reflectiones he criticized the NOMINALISM lined the point: as Bernard de Mandeville then prevalent in philosophy, but he is (1670–1733) put it in The Fable of the Bees most famous as the creator of (1714), private vices could (by stimulating International Law. He developed the productivity) prove to be public virtues. jurisprudence of Thomas AQUINAS, The notion was further developed in POLIT- extending the Jus Gentium (law of ICAL ECONOMY and UTILITARIANISM and the nations) of the Roman legal texts into an rule-based moral theory of KANT. Towards organic instrument of concord for the the end of the twentieth century, thanks to whole Respublica Humana (community initiatives originating in the work of of mankind) which allows for pacts ANSCOMBE, FOOT and many others, there between States but also appeals to a was a large and influential movement to go higher sovereignty. (T.G.) back to ARISTOTLE and CICERO and revive an ethics of virtue. {J.R.} Virtue Ethics In the ancient world ethi- cal theory was more or less co-extensive Voltaire, François-Marie Arouet with the doctrine of virtue, that is to say de (1694–1778) French dramatist of qualities of individual character. With and philosophical writer, see ENCYCLOPE- the rise of complex social and political DISTS. W

Ward, James (1843–1925) The her later works. She established her repu- English philosopher James Ward studied tation in France as a radical and icono- at Berlin and Göttingen and taught at clastic teacher of philosophy and Cambridge. He was once a Congregational revolutionary trade-union activist. She Minister, and his interests ranged from was schooled in the ‘activist’ biology to METAPHYSICS. His Naturalism Cartesianism developed by Jules Lagneau and Agnosticism (1899) recommends his- and her own teacher, Alain, and her phi- tory as a model of reality and is critical of losophy is marked throughout by a belief SPENCER and ‘physics treated as meta- in the importance of the individual quest physics’. The Realm of Ends (1911) fol- for knowledge and self-enlightenment. Its lows LEIBNIZ in developing a pluralistic particular character, however, derives system of minds (matter being composed from its synthesis of Marxist, Pre- of interacting mindlike monads), which is Socratic, Platonist, pacifist and religious intended to ‘leave room for’ a unifying arguments. THEISM. His work as a philosophical psy- One of her major concerns, made more chologist was of great historical impor- acute by her own experience as a factory tance. His Encyclopaedia Britannica worker, was the servitude and humiliation article on ‘Psychology’ (1886) was a blow of the industrial proletariat. Her positive to the old associationist psychology, philosophy of human dignity and humility which had attempted to reduce mental life was developed through a conception of to a system of experiences, or ‘presenta- ‘decreation’, which means a systematic tions’, mechanically interrelated by laws release of the self from the ‘personal’, like those which relate bodies in physics. modelled on God’s abdication of interfer- Ward maintained that there must always ence in the universe. Weil’s most important be a subject to which these presentations work of social philosophy, The Need for occur – a ‘Pure Ego’ which is not only Roots, published posthumously in 1949, aware of presentations, but feels pleased was written in an occupied and defeated and pained in consequence, and has the France. It is an extended indictment of the power of variously distributing attention politics which substitutes the pursuit of to the presentations, which form a contin- power and national glory for the realization uum at any one moment (a ‘field of con- of the more fundamental spiritual needs of sciousness’) and from one moment to the collectivity. Other principal writings another. The argument was elaborated in translated into English include: Gravity Psychological Principles (1918), but the and Grace (1947); Waiting on God blending of philosophy with empirical (1950); and The Notebooks of Simone psychology was attacked as confusion by Weil (1953, 1956). [K.S.] BRADLEY. (R.HALL.) Whewell, William (1794–1866) The Weil, Simone (1909–43) The French British philosopher William Whewell philosopher is best known taught at Cambridge and pioneered the for the Christian and mystical doctrine of study of scientific method, stressing the 390 Whitehead, A. N. importance of INDUCTION. In line with established’. Whewell was indeed the Kantian philosophy he regarded the ‘mys- champion of the established order in terious step’ from the observation of partic- every field. Whewell was probably the ular facts to the discovery of general most learned man of the early Victorian principles as dependent on IDEAS formed by age, when he was famous; as a philoso- the understanding. That is to say, for the pher of science he deserves more atten- production of a scientific theory the mere tion than Mill. See also PHILOSOPHY OF collection of facts is inadequate; what is SCIENCE. (R.HALL.) necessary is ‘a true colligation of facts by means of an exact and appropriate concep- Whitehead, Alfred North (1861– 1947) tion’. His main contribution to philosophy The English philosopher A. N Whitehead lies in his emphasis on the value of hypoth- was born in East Kent, where his father esis in science – in effect, the ‘hypothetico- was a vicar. His boyhood gave him a deductive’ method, or what he called strong sense of the continuity of the life ‘framing several tentative hypotheses and of a society over the generations, and of selecting the right one’. This led directly to RELIGION as intimately bound up with it. controversy with J. S. MILL. Whewell main- He went to Cambridge in 1880, and was tained that induction was no more than the subsequently elected to a fellowship in formation of an explanatory hypothesis, MATHEMATICS. Here he wrote a Treatise and that since the facts explained could on Universal Algebra (1903), and then be deduced from the hypothesis, Mill Mathematical Concepts of the Material was mistaken in regarding induction and World (1905), and began the collaboration deduction as different kinds of reasoning: with RUSSELL which led to the three ‘deduction justified by calculation what volumes of Principia Mathematica induction has happily guessed’. The dispute (1910–13). Whitehead held the chair was unreal, for Whewell was concerned of Applied Mathematics at Imperial with the method of discovery in science, College, London from 1910 until 1924, whereas Mill was interested in the logic of when he moved to , induction as a method of proof, or ‘process remaining in Cambridge, Massachusetts, of analysis’, proceeding from particular until his death. premises and usually terminating in a gen- Whitehead’s philosophy was an attempt eral conclusion. to combine (a) a logico-mathematical Whewell’s views on induction and interest in abstract relational systems, scientific method were expounded in with (b) ‘cosmology’, in the sense of an Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences interpretation of the world suggested by (1840). They rested on the immense store general notions underlying physical sci- of information in his earlier History of the ence; and (c) a moral, religious and aes- Inductive Sciences (1837), without which thetic interest in human relationships Mill, by his own confession, would have within societies. In his early logical work been unable to write the parts of his Logic he pursued the suggestion, originating dealing with induction and attacking the from FREGE, that mathematics is derivable later book. Whewell also defended intu- from certain formal logical relationships. itionism in mathematical and moral phi- These make possible the development of losophy, incurring Mill’s accusation that deductive systems which supply, as it he was turning philosophy into a support were, blank cheques of possible forms of for ‘any opinions which happened to be relations, some of which may be filled in Whitehead, A. N. 391 by ‘values’ in empirical applications. In more congenial than atomistic notions to his interest in the general ideas underly- the analysis of our basic experience; we ing the physical science of his time, he should start, he believed, not from clear was impressed chiefly by field theories in cut items, but from the sense of some- physics, and the notion of energy as he thing going on, with a spatio-temporal learnt it from J. J. Thompson, who spread. Whitehead at times claimed that regarded it as a vector magnitude, a his logical schemes could be reached by a measurable flux passing from one natural process of idealizing and abstracting from event to another. This notion, he thought, the crude data of experience. This seems implied that the physical ultimates should to underestimate the extent to which a be thought of as lines of force with a notion such as the Method of Extensive direction, not as particles of matter occu- Abstraction is a topological device for pying points of space at instants of time. defining points and straight lines, and This led him, as early as ‘Mathematical very unlike anything that can be derived Concepts of the Material World’ (1905), from sense experience. But in seeing the to an attack on classical Newtonian con- need to devise logical and topological cepts. The notion of lines of force over- notions to deal with structures within an lapping one another in ‘fields’ was seen indeterminate continuum, he was fasten- as analogous to the logico-topological ing on a genuine problem, even if his own device of ‘Extensive Abstraction’, a formulation of it was not sufficiently method he had devised by which geomet- clear to hold the interest of his contempo- rical elements such as points and lines are raries or immediate followers, most of defined not as real or ideal entities, but whom continued to work with logical relationally in terms of ways in which vol- notions related to the atomistic form of umes of different kinds, such as circles analysis. rectangles or ellipses, may systematically In the books of his last period – Science extend over or overlap one another. The and the Modern World (1926); Process and logical and epistemological notions con- Reality (1929); and Adventures of Ideas nected with this way of regarding the (1933) – Whitehead turned to the con- physical world were developed in the struction of a comprehensive metaphysi- three books of Whitehead’s ‘middle’ cal system, based on his earlier notions of period: The Principles of Natural ‘relatedness of nature’ and ‘Extensive Knowledge (1919); The Concept of Nature Connexion’, but centering in a specula- (1920); and The Principle of Relativity tive account of what it is to be an ‘actual (1922). Here he was concerned on the one entity’ in process of development within hand with framing deductive systems of nature. Here he presents a perspectival precise concepts, and on the other hand view of structures within the continuum with interpreting them in terms of the of natural events, each unified from its data of experience. ‘Experience’, he own centre, this centre being looked on as believed, comes to us in the first instance the locus of an active subject of experi- in the form of vaguely interconnected ence, forming itself from its interrelations continua of feelings, rather than clear-cut with the whole of its environment; in SENSE-DATA. Thus he considered that his Whitehead’s own terminology, it is a basic logical notions of the relations of ‘concrescence of prehension’. The nearest ‘Whole and Part’, systematic overlap- analogy among traditional metaphysical ping, and ‘Extensive Connexion’ were views would be LEIBNIZ’s monads; 392 William of Ockham

Whitehead’s ‘actual entities’ are, however, believed we find in our actual experience. not ‘windowless’, but in active interaction In this way he hoped to overcome the with each other throughout nature. ‘bifurcation’ between human beings and Whitehead looked on this as a generalized nature, and also the gap between general notion of organic interconnexion; indeed theory and actual experience. But in so he described his later work as a ‘philoso- doing he may have underestimated the phy of organism’. Its treatment in his later artificiality of general theories, and his books is complicated by the use of termi- phenomenology of actual experience nology drawn not only from biology but may at times be over-influenced by his from introspective psychology (e.g. the theoretical schemes. notion of ‘feelings’ is used in a highly Whitehead’s work is many-sided, and general sense). It is also complicated by has the faults as well as the virtues of a his attempt to combine logical, mathe- vast attempt to construct a comprehensive matical, physical, biological, psychologi- system which will ‘get everything in’. cal, and indeed aesthetic and religious Except for the great influence of his work notions within the same scheme, looking with Russell in Principia Mathematica, on these as all in various ways descriptive it has remained on the whole a self- of elements in real processes within contained form of thought with little nature, and also (he hoped) all finally to direct effect on contemporary philosophy. be seen as particular exemplifications of But some features of his view of organic certain very general ‘metaphysical’ prin- interconnexion, thought of in terms of ciples. He acknowledged that the attempt overlapping fields of relationships, have to reach these completely general princi- been drawn on in . And ples was unlikely to be successful, though certain of his books, notably Science and he hoped metaphysical schemes might be the Modern World, The Aims of Education produced which should approximate to and Adventures of Ideas are likely to be them. His belief in the importance of aim- read not only for their theoretical notions, ing at a comprehensive system led him to but for their wealth of humane, and some- try and produce such a scheme by gener- times witty and penetrating, observations alizing principles derived from varied on the history of ideas, society and human sources. These, however, may belong to life. (D.M.E.) different levels of abstraction or to differ- ent logical types, so that as Whitehead William of Ockham (c.1285–1347) presents them they do not readily cohere The English Friar and scholastic philoso- in a single system. In the earlier work he pher William of Ockham began to lecture had been concerned with logical devices at Oxford as a Bachelor about 1318 and by which orderly schemes of exact con- since he never proceeded Master became cepts could be connected with sensory known to his followers as Venerabilis experience, which is vague and fragmen- Inceptor. In 1324 he was summoned to a tary and also (he believed) qualitative, Papal commission at Avignon to reply to emotionally toned and teleologically criticisms of his teaching. After four years directed. In this later work there is a he threw in his fortunes with the Emperor gigantic attempt to bridge this gap by rep- Lewis of Bavaria who had just declared resenting the scheme of general notions Pope John XXII deposed, and from that time itself as derived by ‘descriptive general- on his pen was at the service of the Empire. ization’ from the kind of structure he He died in Munich while negotiations for Wisdom, John 393 his reconciliation with the were fullest autonomy, as indeed has God still in progress. himself. For Ockham the will is a power The influence of Ockham and his ‘ter- not of choosing between goods with minist’ school was immense and lasting. which it has a natural affinity, but of In EPISTEMOLOGY he discarded all theories self-determination in the face of isolated of abstraction or illumination and pro- beings towards which it has been given pounded an intuitive knowledge of mate- some arbitrary rights and duties. (I.T.) rial singulars which he held to act directly, naturally and infallibly on the mind so as Williams, Bernard A. O. (1929–2003) to produce a total impression of them- Witty but waspish English philosopher who taught at Oxford, Cambridge, selves. Ockham’s formal LOGIC exhibits a tendency to regard propositional logic as London and Berkeley; his first book was Morality (1972), followed by Problems of more basic than syllogistic. As for ONTOL- the Self (1973), Descartes (1978), Moral OGY, Ockham regarded the object of intu- ition as irreducibly singular, though often Luck (1981), Ethics and the Limits of composite. No common or universal Philosophy (1985), and Truth and nature was to be discovered in it, no dis- Truthfulness (2002). He also wrote the tinction of essence and existence, no prin- article on Descartes in this Encyclopedia. ciples of change on the Aristotelian Wilson, John Cook (1849–1915) The pattern, above all no relations. He admit- British philosopher and Oxford professor ted matter and form, but conceived of published little in his them as no less absolute and singular than lifetime; his one book, Statement and the singulars composed of them. ‘I say Inference (1926), was compiled from the then...that no natural reason can be lecture notes of his pupils after his death. found to prove that there is anything But his personal influence was immense; imaginable which is not absolute, and though brought up in the idealistic tradi- hence that no one thing depends on tion of the late nineteenth century he was another or postulates another, and con- regarded as the leader of the Oxford real- versely that the fact that some things ists, of whom PRICHARD and ROSS are coexist does not prevent each being other notable examples, in their opposi- absolute.’ tion to the hitherto supreme idealistic ‘Plurality is never to be posited with- movement represented by F. H. BRADLEY. out need’ is one form of the principle In particular he insisted that knowledge which – because he applied it frequently was a simple indefinable apprehension of and thoroughly – came to be known as the real in opposition to the idealistic con- ‘Ockham’s razor’. Change was a mere tention that the given was inevitably reshuffling of the singulars, and (con- affected by thought. He was also a notable trary to AQUINAS) the causality of the Aristotelian scholar, and deeply interested first cause remains wholly exterior to in the philosophy of mathematics, where them. This atomistic theory of knowl- he bitterly opposed the logistical theory edge and being is faithfully reflected in of RUSSELL.(J.O.U.) the moral order. The obligatory law of right reason was not rooted in the nature Wisdom, (Arthur) John Terence Dibben of God or the world, but imposed by an (1904–93) The work of the British inexplicable divine command. With philosopher and Cambridge professor regard to it every human will has the John Wisdom touched on an enormous 394 Wittgenstein, Ludwig variety of topics but was remarkably con- losophy; he had also undergone a deep sistent in method: he would follow up mystical experience while on the Eastern almost any philosophical assertion by front during the war, apparently as a result saying just the opposite, in order to see of reading Tolstoy. On his release after the what might come to light. One of his main war he consequently gave away the consid- theses was that philosophical statements erable fortune which he had inherited and are mere verbal recommendations, but he went to work as an elementary schoolmas- was quite prepared to say the contradic- ter in Austria; at this time also he began to tory since in this way both likenesses and lead the very simple life which he never differences would be brought out. He was abandoned. However, during the 1920s he heavily indebted to WITTGENSTEIN, not began to re-establish contact with philoso- least in rejecting traditional METAPHYSICS; phy; under the auspices of J. M. Keynes he but he still found traditional philosophy revisited Cambridge in 1925 and about the valuable because it expresses dissatisfac- same time he established personal contact tion with linguistic usages where they with SCHLICK and Waismann, two of the contain conflicting conventions or none at leaders of the positivist movement in all. He compared these conflicts with the Vienna. In 1929 he returned permanently to obsessional doubts of the neurotic, which Cambridge, and eventually became a also have a point; indeed, philosophy has British subject. During these years he was a therapeutic value in ridding us of per- gradually led, largely through self-criti- plexity, and is in some ways comparable cism, to a new position in philosophy to PSYCHOANALYSIS. (R.HALL.) which was extremely influential on Anglo- Saxon thought in the 1950s and 1960s. It Wittgenstein, Ludwig Josef Johann was first stated in the Blue and Brown (1889–1951) was Books, which are notes of lectures dictated by birth an Austrian of Jewish descent. He to pupils in 1933–5, widely circulated at the studied engineering at Berlin and then, time but not printed in his lifetime. He from 1908, at Manchester where he became Professor of Philosophy at became especially interested in aeroplane Cambridge in succession to G. E. MOORE in engines and propellers. The mathematical 1939; but on the outbreak of war he went to aspects of this work led Wittgenstein to work as a porter in a hospital. In 1947 develop an interest in pure MATHEMATICS he resigned his chair in order to devote and the philosophy of mathematics and he himself entirely to research; but his thus became aware of the work of RUSSELL health soon deteriorated and he died of and FREGE on mathematical logic. Conse- cancer in 1951. quently he moved to Cambridge where he He was an unusual man; even as a pro- spent the greater part of 1912–13 working fessor he invariably wore an open-neck with Russell, first as a pupil but soon as a shirt; his room in Trinity College, partner. Wittgenstein served in the Austrian Cambridge, was furnished by little more army in the First World War, being captured than a few deck-chairs; he never dined in Italy at the end. By this time he had com- at the High Table; his candour was so pleted his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus extreme that it could easily be regarded as which was published in Germany in 1921 rudeness; to the philosophical world in gen- and London in 1922. At this time eral he often gave the impression of being Wittgenstein believed that this work was a the high priest of a secret cult rather than definitive solution to the problems of phi- a fellow-worker. Wittgenstein, Ludwig 395

Wittgenstein’s work as a philosopher its purpose the stating of facts, which it divides clearly into two periods. The does by picturing them. By saying that definitive account of his earlier views is language pictures facts Wittgenstein contained in the Tractatus Logico- especially wanted to claim that language Philosophicus, written in 1914–18; he must have a structural similarity to what it himself published no account of his later describes; an informative statement will views, but we have an earlier version of be a picture of some possible state of them in the Blue and Brown Books and affairs in the same way as a sketch-map a later version in the Philosophical can picture a battle or the arrangement of Investigations (published 1953) which furniture in a room. This is true even contain his thoughts, constantly revised, though ordinary idiomatic language is so from the mid-1930s until his death. full of special conventions and ad hoc Remarks on the Foundations of Math- rules as to be hardly recognizable as a pic- ematics (1956), contains his most mature ture – just as a map of Australia might views on the philosophy of mathematics. have such a queer projection that we Many other posthumous publications would not recognize it intuitively as such. have followed. But a perfect language is imaginable and The Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus in principle constructible – a language in is without doubt a modern classic of phi- which, for example, the spatial relation- losophy; but it is a very difficult work, ship of objects will be pictured quite written in aphoristic style. It presents a clearly by the spatial relationship of their position in many ways similar to Russell’s names. The only fully significant use of LOGICAL ATOMISM; but it has been perhaps language is thus to picture facts; beyond too frequently interpreted in Russellian this there is a derivative but legitimate use terms, for Wittgenstein differed from of language for stating tautologies, of Russell on important points and adopted a which a simple example would be ‘It is much more extreme and consistent raining or it is not raining’, but which EMPIRICISM. Wittgenstein first states a Wittgenstein held to include the whole of metaphysic according to which the world logic and mathematics, which are vacu- consists entirely of simple facts, none of ously true and tell us nothing. Picturing which is in any way dependent on any facts and expressing empty tautologies other, these facts being the ultimate sub- were the only legitimate uses of language; ject-matter of empirical science. any attempts to use it otherwise would be Wittgenstein, unlike Russell, gives no nonsensical: in particular all ethical or examples of what he regarded as simple metaphysical utterances would be or elementary facts; he was convinced pseudo-propositions, nonsensical viola- there must be such, but was not prepared tions of the proper use of language. (Here to claim that he had identified any. we have a glimpse of what the LOGICAL However, he would presumably have POSITIVISTS were later to call the verifica- regarded John’s shouting at Johann as tion principle as a criterion of signifi- being more nearly a simple fact than cance.) By a famous but unavoidable Britain’s being at war with Germany, and paradox, Wittgenstein denounced his own would have regarded most of what are metaphysics and theory of language in the usually called facts as being in truth mere Tractatus as meaningless nonsense: to assemblages of elementary facts. say, for example, that language pictures Language, he held in the Tractatus, has as facts is to try to give a picture of the 396 Wittgenstein, Ludwig pictorial relation which holds between games in paragraph 23 of Philosophical statement and fact, which is absurd; this Investigations and ends with the remark: pictorial relation shows itself and what ‘It is interesting to compare the multiplic- shows itself cannot be said. Wittgenstein ity of tools in language and of the ways regarded his metaphysics as useful or they are used, the multiplicity of kinds of important nonsense because it could help word and sentence, with what logicians us to recognize it itself and all other non- have said about the structure of language sense for what it was. Our tendency to (including the author of the Tractatus talk nonsense, particularly in philosophy, Logico-Philosophicus).’ was caused by the complications of Though, in Wittgenstein’s opinion, we ordinary language, and Wittgenstein learn to play our language games by prac- devoted a great deal of attention to the tice rather than by theoretical instruction, technical problem of constructing an ideal we are liable to become overimpressed language which would not tempt anyone with one or two of the possible ways of to talk nonsense. But those who had using language, giving ourselves an over- understood the Tractatus would not wish simplified account even of these (as his to concern themselves with philosophy any own account of the language of science more, since it was neither empirical like had been oversimplified). Thus we think science nor tautological like mathematics; of a word as being always the name of they would abandon it, as Wittgenstein something, to be learnt by ostensive defi- himself did in 1918. nition or pointing (‘that is a cat’), and of Wittgenstein’s later philosophy received sentences as typified by ‘the cat is on the its most simple, general and intelligible mat’ or ‘Tom is fat’ – accounts of the way statement in the Blue Book of 1933. It is the world goes. It thus comes about that largely directed, though not explicitly, to when we reflect on uses of language showing why the whole way of thinking which are in fact quite different, and of adopted in the Tractatus is mistaken, which we are masters when we employ though it tends also to destroy all tradi- language unreflectingly in its proper con- tional approaches to philosophy. The basis text, we try to force them all into one pat- of the new approach is a new view of lan- tern. We may, for example, reflect on the guage; the old view in the Tractatus that language game of wishing or hoping and there is in principle the one perfect scien- try to force it into the pattern by taking is tific language with the sole task of describ- as ‘a description of my present mental ing the world is abandoned and language is state’; we may then introspectively seen as an indefinite set of social activities, attempt to isolate the special mental event each serving a different kind of purpose. of hoping or wishing. Wittgenstein sees Each of these distinct ways of using lan- here the main root of philosophical per- guage is called by Wittgenstein a language plexity and metaphysical paradox; philo- game. No doubt there is a use of language sophical puzzlement arises when we for describing the world, and there may be utterly misunderstand the functioning of one way of doing so which may reasonably some of our conceptual tools. We may be called ‘picturing’ as in the Tractatus; but talk as though our problem is of precisely there is a host of other uses of language – defining a hope or wish, as though we giving orders, asking, thanking, cursing, knew well enough roughly for ordinary greeting, praying. Wittgenstein gives a purposes but in philosophy needed considerable list of such different language greater accuracy; whereas, Wittgenstein Wittgenstein, Ludwig 397 held, what we need philosophically is to resemblance. Thus we may tend to look see that we are utterly misconstruing the for some psychic occurrence common to concept of hoping if we take ‘hoping’ as all cases of hoping or intending not only the name of some psychic process. because we think that the verbs ‘hope’ and Therefore to have a philosophical prob- ‘intend’ must name some process but lem is like being unable to find your way because we think there must be a common about a town through not understanding feature to all cases of each; Wittgenstein its plan, or like being a fly in a bottle, will then suggest that there may be only a buzzing against the side instead of flying family resemblance between them. out of the top; it is a bewitchment of the The bulk of Wittgenstein’s later work intelligence. What is needed in such a consists of the application of this method predicament is not a revelation, a theory of philosophy to a wide variety of prob- or an explanation, for these do not cure lems and tracing their interconnexion. He radical misunderstanding. The concepts will take a set of concepts, from mathe- which perplex us are ones over which, out matics or from ordinary conversation, set of our studies, we have complete mastery out the paradoxical things which we are (in railway travel the notion of time does inclined to say about them under the not perplex us). What we need, therefore, influence of philosophical puzzlement, are simple reminders of the purposes for and then attempt to banish the puzzlement which we make use of these concepts, by reminding us of the normal use of judiciously assembled so that we cease to these concepts, by inventing new lan- be blind to what ‘already lies open to the guage games which will be both reveal- view’. A well-arranged selection of such ingly similar and revealingly different, reminders will make us see how we always by description of actual and possi- employ the concepts in question, and thus ble uses of language in various contexts. remove the causes of our philosophical Given this view of philosophy as a fall puzzlement. into conceptual puzzlement from which Apart from our tendency to interpret one is rescued, or rescues oneself, by all uses of language in terms of one over- reminders of the use of these concepts in simplified model, Wittgenstein found their natural context, Wittgenstein could another important source of philosophical find no place for any philosophical theo- perplexity in the search for the feature ries, doctrines or opinions. He conceived common to all things called by the same his task to be to remind us of what lay on name. Thus we may try to find, and even the surface, not to express any opinions or invent, some feature common to all offer deep explanations. In his own words games, in virtue of which they are called (Investigations, 126 and 129): ‘Philosophy games. But Wittgenstein held that there simply puts everything before us, and nei- need be no such feature; if we call tennis a ther explains nor deduces anything...Since game it is easy to find similarities between everything lies open to view there is nothing it and bridge and between bridge and to explain...The aspects of things that are patience, and this is enough to explain the most important for us are hidden because of common name ‘game’ without our look- their simplicity and familiarity.’This makes ing for some feature common to both the actual content of Wittgenstein’s later football and patience and possessed by work quite impossible to summarize; there each and every game. In such a situation is no doctrine and no single method: one as this Wittgenstein spoke of a family must simply describe things in such a way 398 Wolff, Christian as to end the intellectual bewitchment of among analytic philosophers – between the perplexed. whom there is but a family resemblance – The influence of Wittgenstein on philo- Wittgenstein stands out as a great and orig- sophy, particularly in the English-speaking inal philosophical genius. See also MIND, countries, was very great. His Tractatus PHILOSOPHY OF MIND.(J.O.U.) Logico-Philosophicus was also of impor- tance for the growth of logical positivism Wolff, Christian (1679–1750) German in Continental countries, particularly protestant philosopher who adapted Austria. Very few analytic philosophers Leibnizian philosophy to the needs of uni- would accept Wittgenstein’s view that the versity education, laying the foundations whole object of philosophy is to banish for professional academic philosophy in puzzlement, but few would dispute that the . X

Xenophanes The Greek poet and Homer, stating that there was one single thinker Xenophanes lived at Colophon, deity, which was ‘in no way like men in 570–c.475 BC. Leaving Ionia when young, body or in thought’, but ‘shaking all things he travelled round the Greek world, partic- by the thought of his mind’. Later Greek ularly Sicily and the west, reciting his historians treated Xenophanes as the first poems, which ranged from banqueting- ELEATIC, because of the superficial resem- songs to speculations on physics. He sug- blance between his one god (which accord- gested that the heavenly bodies were ing to ARISTOTLE was coextensive with the ignited clouds; that all things were origi- world) and the Being of PARMENIDES. nally mud, because fossils of sea-creatures Xenophanes certainly stated that positive are found inland; and that the sea will dry philosophical certainty lay out of men’s up, and then the process will be reversed. reach: ‘seeming is wrought over all He also attacked the immoral gods of things’. See also PRE-SOCRATICS. Z

Zeno of Citium (c.333–262 BC) Greek argument against plurality. ‘(a) If there philosopher, founder of STOICISM, which are many, there must be just as many as was so named from the Painted Stoa there are and neither more nor less; but if (colonnade) where he taught. He came to they are as many as they are, they must be Athens from in 312–11, attended limited. (b) If there are many, existing the lectures of Polemo, head of the ACAD- things are infinite; for there are always EMY, studied dialectic under and other things between the things that are, Diodorus of the Megaric School, but was and again others between those; thus the most strongly influenced by Crates the things that are are unlimited.’ One of his CYNIC. The immense literary output and arguments against motion ran as follows: authority of CHRYSIPPUS, the third head of it is impossible to cross the stadium, for the School, has made it difficult to pene- you must first reach half-way across, and trate to Zeno. But the fundamental doc- before that quarter-way across, and so ad trines and the outline of the system are infinitum; thus the distance is infinite. certainly due to him. His philosophy pro- This and his other arguments (‘ ceeded from the Cynic base of the self- and the tortoise’, ‘the flying arrow’, and sufficiency of virtue, but he incorporated ‘the moving rows’) all assumed that space much from other sources, such as could be divided into portions which SOCRATES (probably through the works of could be correlated with portions of time. ANTISTHENES) and the Peripatetic develop- The PYTHAGOREANS believed that things ment of ETHICS. (I.G.K.) were composed of discontinuous units, and many scholars think that Zeno was Zeno of Elea Greek philosopher and attacking their kind of plurality in partic- follower of PARMENIDES, who flourished ular. His arguments seemed, nevertheless, in Greece c.450 BC. He defended to be valid against other pluralistic sys- Parmenides’ doctrine of single motionless tems in general, though in fact many of Being by arguing that plurality and them were fallacious. See also ELEATICS motion entailed logically contradictory and PRE-SOCRATICS. (G.S.K.) consequences. Fragment 3 gives a typical