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Mind, Body, and the Moral Imagination in the Eighteenth-Century British Atlantic World

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Mind, Body, and the Moral Imagination in the Eighteenth-Century British Atlantic World University of Pennsylvania ScholarlyCommons Publicly Accessible Penn Dissertations 2011 Mind, Body, and the Moral Imagination in the Eighteenth-Century British Atlantic World Yaroslav Prykhodko University of Pennsylvania, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations Part of the History Commons Recommended Citation Prykhodko, Yaroslav, "Mind, Body, and the Moral Imagination in the Eighteenth-Century British Atlantic World" (2011). Publicly Accessible Penn Dissertations. 561. https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/561 This paper is posted at ScholarlyCommons. https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/561 For more information, please contact [email protected]. Mind, Body, and the Moral Imagination in the Eighteenth-Century British Atlantic World Abstract This dissertation deals with ideas and assumptions about human nature in the cultural life of the eighteenth-century British Atlantic world. Most scholars see in this period a decline of the traditional Western dualism in the understanding of human nature. Empiricist philosophy, we are told, increasingly denied the possibility of distinguishing between the body and reason, much less between the body and "soul." Moralists now tended to locate social and moral reactions in sensation and sensibility rather than in reason. The cultural status of physical pleasure was greatly enhanced. I challenge this wide consensus. I find in eighteenth-century British and colonial culture an alternative story of marginalizing the body and downplaying its role in moral and social life. I see persistent efforts to assert the soul as an independent source of feeling and action, with the activity of spirit defining specifically humanelations r at all levels from intimate to economic. I analyze eighteenth-century perceptions of love, marriage, and companionate family and find a wide-spread conception of essential difference between the spiritual emotion of love- friendship and physical desire. I argue that desire was often perceived to be a mechanical, secondary, and extrinsic component of love and marriage, rather than the genetic root of both. Since the family was commonly conceived as the foundation of social life, this segregation of desire was a crucial part of a wider social imaginary that did not include the body as an active structural component in interpersonal relations. Society, like marriage, could be seen as a compact of souls and minds, with the body being an object, rather than agent, of social relations. Finally, I interpret eighteenth-century conceptualizations of racial difference as attempts both to acknowledge and to eliminate the body as an agent in its own right. Constructing a progression of human bodies from a crude and active animal presence to a pliant and delicate instrument of the soul helped to assert the essential freedom of human spirit at the top of the hierarchy - in the white race. Degree Type Dissertation Degree Name Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) Graduate Group History First Advisor Michael Zuckerman Keywords British Atlantic World, early modern cultural history, early modern ethics, eighteenth century, mind-body dualism, the self Subject Categories History This dissertation is available at ScholarlyCommons: https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/561 MIND, BODY, AND THE MORAL IMAGINATION IN THE EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY BRITISH ATLANTIC WORLD Yaroslav Prykhodko A DISSERTATION in History Presented to the Faculties of the University of Pennsylvania in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy 2011 Supervisor of Dissertation Signature_________________________________ Michael Zuckerman, Professor Emeritus, History Graduate Group Chairperson Signature_________________________________ Antonio Feros, Associate Professor of History Dissertation Committee Antonio Feros, Associate Professor of History Julia Rudolph, Associate Professor of History, North Carolina State University Mind, Body, and the Moral Imagination in the Eighteenth-Century British Atlantic World © 2011 Yaroslav Prykhodko Моїй матері, з любов’ю і вдячністю iii ABSTRACT MIND, BODY, AND THE MORAL IMAGINATION IN THE EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY BRITISH ATLANTIC WORLD Yaroslav Prykhodko Supervisor: Michael Zuckerman This dissertation deals with ideas and assumptions about human nature in the cultural life of the eighteenth-century British Atlantic world. Most scholars see in this period a decline of the traditional Western dualism in the understanding of human nature. Empiricist philosophy, we are told, increasingly denied the possibility of distinguishing between the body and reason, much less between the body and “soul.” Moralists now tended to locate social and moral reactions in sensation and sensibility rather than in reason. The cultural status of physical pleasure was greatly enhanced. I challenge this wide consensus. I find in eighteenth-century British and colonial culture an alternative story of marginalizing the body and downplaying its role in moral and social life. I see persistent efforts to assert the soul as an independent source of feeling and action, with the activity of spirit defining specifically human relations at all levels from intimate to economic. I analyze eighteenth-century perceptions of love, marriage, and companionate family and find a wide-spread conception of essential difference between the spiritual emotion of love- friendship and physical desire. I argue that desire was often perceived to be a mechanical, secondary, and extrinsic component of love and marriage, rather than the genetic root of both. Since the family was commonly conceived as the foundation of social life, this segregation of desire was a crucial part of a wider social imaginary that did not include the body as an active structural component in interpersonal relations. Society, like marriage, could be seen as a iv compact of souls and minds, with the body being an object, rather than agent, of social relations. Finally, I interpret eighteenth-century conceptualizations of racial difference as attempts both to acknowledge and to eliminate the body as an agent in its own right. Constructing a progression of human bodies from a crude and active animal presence to a pliant and delicate instrument of the soul helped to assert the essential freedom of human spirit at the top of the hierarchy – in the white race. v TABLE OF CONTENTS INTRODUCTION……………………………………………………………………………...….1 CHAPTER 1. WILLIAM BYRD: PRINCIPLES, INCLINATIONS, AND THE NATURE OF THE SELF…………………………………………………………….12 1. The Heritage…………………………………………………………………………..….14 2. Patriarch and Lover………………………………………………………………………22 3. Soul and Body……………………………………………………………………………29 4. Flesh, Sex, and Power……………………………………………………………………38 CHAPTER 2. THE BODY IRREDUCIBLE: PATRIARCHY AND THE SEEDS OF DISORDER………………………………………...….41 1. The Pleasures of the Imagination…………………………………………………….…..41 2. One Flesh: Marriage and Society………………………………………………………...47 3. Account of the Evil: Fatherhood and Moral Order………………………………………55 4. The Band of Brothers “and Its Discontents”………………………………………….….63 CHAPTER 3. JOHN BOYLE, FIFTH EARL OF ORRERY: THE PROPER REALM OF THE MIND…………………………………………………….…..72 1. The Heritage………………………………………………………………………...……73 2. Early Familial Life, or Lack Thereof…………………………………………………….80 3. Between Affairs and Retirement…………………………………………………………87 4. The Return of Troubles and a Change of Mind…………………………………….……99 CHAPTER 4. THE BODY DISPLACED: EMOTION, MARRIAGE, AND THE NATURE OF INTIMACY………………………………………………………….103 1. The Trapped Soul…………………………………………………………………….…103 2. The Social Transmission of Humanity…………………………………………………106 3. Marriage beyond the Flesh…………….……………………………………………..…112 a. The Nature of Marriage……………………………………………………………113 b. The Nature of Love…………………………………………………………………118 c. The Union of Souls…………………………………………………………………128 CHAPTER 5. THE SOCIAL LIFE OF EDWARD LONG…………………………………..…133 1. The Heritage…………………………………………………………………………….134 2. Pursuits of Independence: The Economic Mind…………………………………..……144 3. The Propertied Animal………………………………………………………………….151 4. Human Society……………………………………………………………………….…157 CHAPTER 6. THE BODY TRANSPARENT: THE MORAL APPEAL OF RACE IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY…………………….163 1. Hierarchy and the Freedom of Spirit…………………………………………………...164 vi 2. Anti-Society: The Absence of Mind…………………………………………………....168 3. Design and the Perfection of Man…………………………………………………...…172 4. The Complexions of Mind…………………………………………………….………..179 5. Existential Implications………………………………………………………..……….187 CONCLUSION………………………………………………………………………………….191 BIBLIOGRAPHY…………………………………………………………………...…………..203 vii INTRODUCTION Reflecting on the pleasures we receive from the moral sense, Francis Hutcheson writes: “It may perhaps seem too metaphysical to alledge on this Subject, that other Sensations are all dependent upon, or related by the Constitution of our Nature, to something different from ourselves; to a Body which we do not call Self, but something belonging to this Self. That other Perceptions of Joy or Pleasure carry with them Relations to Objects, and Spaces distinct from this Self; whereas ‘the Pleasures of Virtue are the very Perfection of this Self, and are immediately perceived as such, independent of external Objects.’”1 From the textual point of view, this passage is not so much a statement of an idea, or even a brief glimpse of an inchoate assumption, but rather a moment in which Hutcheson’s reflection on the passions and affections spills onto a different level and hints at establishing
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