DOCSLIB.ORG

KE6215 Notes And.Indd

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
KE6215 Notes And.Indd 【Notes and Communications】 ＊ ‘As One of the Swinish Multitude’: A Note on Malthus’s Allusion to Burke’s Reflections Nobuhiko Nakazawa I In my previous article on Thomas Robert Malthus’s（ 1766-1834） political views during his early years（ Nakazawa 2012）, I demonstrated that he was an earnest sympathizer of Charles James Fox and his opposition Whig party, as well as a harsh critic of William Pitt’s administration, and discussed how this shaped his first Essay on the Principle of Population （1798）. At the same time, though his first Essay is widely known as a counter-revolutionary work, similar in some ways to Edmund Burke’s（ 1729/30-97） Reflections on the Revolution in France（ 1790）, I suggested the not insignificant ideological gap that existed between the two great thinkers. In my earlier paper, however, I refrained from exploring the details of that gap primarily because I was concerned that the clarity of my article would be compromised by further exposition. Through this small note, I aim to undertake a part of my work I chose to sideline in the previous article. Further, the problem that we are now facing arises because less direct reference regarding Burke or any of his writings has been noticed in Malthus’s officially published texts. As far as I can determine, the best point to overlap is that An Account of the European Settlements in America（ 1757）, which was co-authored by Burke and his cousin William Burke, was favoura- bly mentioned in the second and subsequent editions of the Essay （1803, 1806, 1807, 1817 and 1826） alongside other historical writings such as Abbé Raynal’s Histoire des deux Indes（ 1770） and William Robertson’s History of America（ 1777）. In other words, Malthus never explicitly mentioned Burke’s ＊ I am grateful to many who commented on drafts of this paper or provided other indis- pensable help, particularly Shin Kubo, Seiichiro Ito, Miriam Bankovsky, Fabio Petri and Tony Aspromourgos. I would also like to thank the journal editors and reviewers for their useful comments and suggestions. However, any errors and omissions are my re- sponsibility alone. This research was supported in part by JSPS KAKENHI Grant Num- ber 18K01536. Notes and Communications 79 post-revolutionary writings, such as Reflections, although whether this was intentional is unclear. Alongside the influence of a series of separate but similar attacks by Marx on both Burke and Malthus （Marx ［1867-1894］ 1976-1981, I, 766-77, 925-26）, lack of specific reference to Burke’s post- revolutionary output by Malthus has contributed to the two writers being view- ed as equally ideological reactionary conservatives, denouncing the democratic upsurge associated with the French Revolution and the impoverished masses （Himmelfarb 1984, 66-73, 100-32; McNally 2000, 435-36; Mizuta 1969; Okochi 1951, 116, 149-50）. II On this point, for example, Robert Mayhew, the author of the latest authorita- tive biography of Malthus, remarked that ‘Burke attracted notoriety in his own age and ever since for only one comment he made about population in the Reflections, the reference to the common people of France as “a swinish mul- titude”’（ Mayhew 2014, 46-47） and that ‘Malthus’s comments on “Nature’s mighty feast” were equivalent in their infamy to Burke’s “swinish multitude”’ （Mayhew 2014, 125）. In Reflections, Burke indeed referred to the starving French masses as the ‘swinish multitude’ when he warned readers of the perils of allowing the lower classes to gain political power. He thus wrote the following. Nothing is more certain, than that our manners, our civilisation, and all the good things which are connected with manners, and with civilisation, have, in this European world of ours, depended for ages upon two prin- ciples; and were indeed the result of both combined; I mean the spirit of a gentleman, and the spirit of religion. The nobility and the clergy, the one by profession, the other by patronage, kept learning in existence, even in the midst of arms and confusions, and whilst governments were rather in their causes than formed. Learning paid back what it received to nobility and to priesthood; and paid it with usury, by enlarging their ideas, and by furnishing their minds. Happy if they had all continued to know their indissoluble union, and their proper place! Happy if learning, not debauched by ambition, had been satisfied to continue the instructor, and not aspired to be the master! Along with its natural protectors and guardians, learning will be cast into the mire, and trodden down under the hoofs of a swinish multitude. （ Burke［ 1790］ 1989, 129-30） As an indicator of the established prejudice entertained by the upper class 80 経済学史研究 62 巻 1 号（The History of Economic Thought, Vol. 62, No. 1） against the lower orders, the phrase ‘swinish multitude’ soon became short- hand for any political philosophy defending and perpetuating a rigid social hierarchy. Interestingly, the phrase was consequently re-appropriated by many of his contemporary popular radicals, including Thomas Spence, an English pamphleteer known as a pioneer of socialist land-nationalization, and William Drennan, one of the founding members of the United Irishmen.1 Spence called his weekly periodical Pig’s Meat; or Lessons for the Swinish Multitude （1793-95）, precisely to parody Burke’s derogatory opinion of the lower orders-those who were neither of the nobility nor of the clergy and desired equity in areas such as education. In Ireland, Drennan was delighted to em- ploy this contemptuous phrase in that manner in a 1795 pamphlet, while the rebel army which marched to the Battle of Antrim against the British army on 7 June 1798 struck up a song, ‘The Swinish Multitude’（ Herzog 1998, ch. 12; Im 2018; McNally 2000, 435; Newman 2013, 139-40; Smyth 2010, 9-10; Thompson 1968, 98; Thuente 1998, 23-24）. In the second edition of Essay（ 1803）, in contrast, Malthus spoke of ‘nature’s mighty feast’ to stress his principled rejection of the poor’s right to subsistence. He thereby wrote the following. A man who is born into a world already possessed, if he cannot get subsistence from his parents on whom he has a just demand, and if the society do［ sic］ not want his labour, has no claim of right to the small- est portion of food, and, in fact, has no business to be where he is. At nature’s mighty feast there is no vacant cover for him. She tells him to be gone, and will quickly execute her own orders, if he does not work upon the compassion of some of her guests. If these guests get up and make room for him, other intruders immediately appear demanding the same favour. The report of a provision for all that come, fills the hall with numerous claimants. The order and harmony of the feast is disturbed, the plenty that before reigned is changed into scarcity; and the happiness of the guests is destroyed by the spectacle of misery and dependence in every part of the hall, and by the clamorous importunity of those, who are justly enraged at not finding the provision which they had been taught to expect. The guests learn too late their error, in coun- teracting those strict orders to all intruders, issued by the great mistress of the feast, who, wishing that all her guests should have plenty, and knowing that she could not provide for unlimited numbers, humanely 1 A radical nationalist group founded in 1791 in Ireland with the objective to reform Parliament and, if necessary, separate from Britain. Notes and Communications 81 refused to admit fresh comers when her table was already full. （Malthus［ 1803-1826］ 1989, II, 127-28; italics in original） A less widely known Robert Southey’s （1774-1843）, who was a romantic poet, vitriolic review of Malthus’s second Essay, found in the Annual Review of 1803（ but published in 1804）, has contributed decisively to the image of Malthus as a backward and reactionary person （Nakazawa and Ou 2019）. Southey’s review was, however, sharply contrasting to Malthus portrait as a moderate reformer in 1798 （discussed in more detail later）. According to Southey, the Essay is ‘the political bible of the rich, the selfish and the sensual’ （Southey［ 1804］ 1994, 129） and its author ‘calls for no sacrifice from the rich; on the contrary, he proposes to relieve them from their parish rates: he recommends nothing to them but that they should harden their hearts. He writes advice to the poor for the rich to read’（ Southey［ 1804］ 1994, 135- 36）. Southey considered that the folly and wickedness of this book was typi- cally represented in the ‘nature’s mighty feast’ metaphor-the entire paragraph of which he quoted in his review to show that this metaphor sanctioned those social evils he wished to eradicate. Southey’s hostile, but influential, review earned Malthus a level of notoriety that has persisted, although the referenced paragraph appeared only in the 1803 version of Essay and was deleted from 1806 onwards. Thus, as noted by Mayhew, Malthus was an unwilling recipient of the same stigma with which Burke had been marked. III Focusing on the phrase ‘swinish multitude,’ I hope to illustrate the sharp contrast between Burke’s and Malthus’s political terminology in the remainder of this note. Malthus’s library catalogue covers most of Burke’s major works, including Reflections, An Account of the European Settlements in America, Speech on American Taxation （1774）, Thoughts and Details on Scarcity （1795; posthumously published in 1800） and A Letter to a Noble Lord （1796）（ Jesus College, ed. 1983, 24-25）.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • L-G-0013245003-0036967409.Pdf
    A History of Romantic Literature BLACKWELL HISTORIES OF LITERATURE General editor: Peter Brown, University of Kent, Canterbury The books in this series renew and redefine a familiar form by recognizing that to write literary history involves more than placing texts in chronological sequence. Thus the emphasis within each volume falls both on plotting the significant literary developments of a given period, and on the wider cultural contexts within which they occurred. ‘Cultural history’ is construed in broad terms and authors address such issues as politics, society, the arts, ideologies, varieties of literary production and consumption, and dominant genres and modes. The effect of each volume is to give the reader a sense of possessing a crucial sector of literary terrain, of understanding the forces that give a period its distinctive cast, and of seeing how writing of a given period impacts on, and is shaped by, its cultural circumstances. Published to date Seventeenth‐Century English Literature Thomas N. Corns Victorian Literature James Eli Adams Old English Literature, Second Edition R. D. Fulk and Christopher M. Cain Modernist Literature Andrzej Gąsiorek Eighteenth‐Century British Literature John Richetti Romantic Literature Frederick Burwick A HISTORY OF ROMANTIC LITERATURE Frederick Burwick This edition first published 2019 © 2019 John Wiley & Sons Ltd All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, except as permitted by law. Advice on how to obtain permission to reuse material from this title is available at http://www.wiley.com/go/permissions.
    [Show full text]
  • Out of the Shadows
    Out of the Shadows Out of the Shadows: The Life and Works of Mary De Morgan By Marilyn Pemberton Out of the Shadows: The Life and Works of Mary De Morgan, by Marilyn Pemberton This book first published 2012 Cambridge Scholars Publishing 12 Back Chapman Street, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2XX, UK British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Copyright © 2012 by Marilyn Pemberton All rights for this book reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner. ISBN (10): 1-4438-4195-1, ISBN (13): 978-1-4438-4195-5 This book is dedicated to all women everywhere—past, present, and future—who live in the shadows cast by others, whoever they may be. Come out into the light, so that we may see you and hear you—you too have a story to tell, one that must be told. TABLE OF CONTENTS List of Tables.............................................................................................. ix List of Illustrations ...................................................................................... x Acknowledgements .................................................................................... xi Introduction ................................................................................................. 1 Mary De Morgan: Fairy-tale Writer, Social Worker or “Devil Incarnate”? Chapter One................................................................................................
    [Show full text]
  • Utilitarianism in the Age of Enlightenment
    UTILITARIANISM IN THE AGE OF ENLIGHTENMENT This is the first book-length study of one of the most influential traditions in eighteenth-century Anglophone moral and political thought, ‘theological utilitarianism’. Niall O’Flaherty charts its devel- opment from its formulation by Anglican disciples of Locke in the 1730s to its culmination in William Paley’s work. Few works of moral and political thought had such a profound impact on political dis- course as Paley’s Principles of Moral and Political Philosophy (1785). His arguments were at the forefront of debates about the constitution, the judicial system, slavery and poverty. By placing Paley’s moral thought in the context of theological debate, this book establishes his genuine commitment to a worldly theology and to a programme of human advancement. It thus raises serious doubts about histories which treat the Enlightenment as an entirely secular enterprise, as well as those which see English thought as being markedly out of step with wider European intellectual developments. niall o’flaherty is a Lecturer in the History of European Political Thought at King’s College London. His research focuses on eighteenth- and nineteenth-century moral, political and religious thought in Britain. He has published articles on William Paley and Thomas Robert Malthus, and is currently writing a book entitled Malthus and the Discovery of Poverty. ideas in context Edited by David Armitage, Richard Bourke, Jennifer Pitts and John Robertson The books in this series will discuss the emergence of intellectual traditions and of related new disciplines. The procedures, aims and vocabularies that were generated will be set in the context of the alternatives available within the contemporary frameworks of ideas and institutions.
    [Show full text]
  • The Science of Persuasion in Recent Discourse on T.R. Malthus: an Exercise in the Analysis of Rhetoric in Economics
    Portland State University PDXScholar Economics Undergraduate Honors Theses Economics 2008 The Science of Persuasion in Recent Discourse on T.R. Malthus: An Exercise in the Analysis of Rhetoric in Economics Laila Winner Portland State University Follow this and additional works at: https://pdxscholar.library.pdx.edu/econ_honorstheses Part of the Economic History Commons, and the Economic Theory Commons Let us know how access to this document benefits ou.y Recommended Citation Winner, Laila, "The Science of Persuasion in Recent Discourse on T.R. Malthus: An Exercise in the Analysis of Rhetoric in Economics" (2008). Economics Undergraduate Honors Theses. 4. https://pdxscholar.library.pdx.edu/econ_honorstheses/4 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access. It has been accepted for inclusion in Economics Undergraduate Honors Theses by an authorized administrator of PDXScholar. Please contact us if we can make this document more accessible: [email protected]. THE SCIENCE OF PERSUASION IN RECENT DISCOURSE ON T.R. MALTHUS: AN EXERCISE IN THE ANALYSIS OF RHETORIC IN ECONOMICS by LAlLA WINNER A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of BACHELOR OF ARTS WITH HONORS m ECONOMICS Portland State University 2008 Contents Introduction 1 A Project ofRehabilitation I. A.M.C. Waterman 6 II. Donald Winch 14 III. Samuel Hollander 22 IV. John Pullen 30 Conclusion 37 Reading Economics Bibliography 42 "So far, French policy-makers have often pursued a pessimistic, Malthusian approach to unemployment, relying on early retirement schemes and working time reductions. Admittedly, this approach has had some positive side-effects. As French ·output is produced by a comparatively small share of the adult population in a limited working time, the individual efficiency of workers is high." - "Beauty is not skin deep," FT Business, January 8 2008.
    [Show full text]
  • Malthus: an Essay on the Principle of Population Donald Winch Frontmatter More Information
    Cambridge University Press 978-0-521-41954-3 - T. R. Malthus: An Essay on the Principle of Population Donald Winch Frontmatter More information CAMBRIDGE TEXTS IN THE HISTORY OF POLITICAL THOUGHT T. R. MALTHUS An Essay on the Principle of Population © in this web service Cambridge University Press www.cambridge.org Cambridge University Press 978-0-521-41954-3 - T. R. Malthus: An Essay on the Principle of Population Donald Winch Frontmatter More information CAMBRIDGE TEXTS IN THE HISTORY OF POLITICAL THOUGHT Series editors RAYMOND GEUSS Professor of Political Science, Columbia University QUENTIN SKINNER Professor of Political Science in the University of Cambridge This series will make available to students the most important texts required for an understanding of the history of political thought. The scholarship of the present generation has greatly expanded our sense of the range of authors indispensable for such an understanding, and the series will reflect those developments. It will also include a number of less well-known works, in particular those needed to establish the intellectual contexts that in turn help to make sense of the major texts. The principal aim, however, will be to produce new versions of the major texts themselves, based on the most up-to-date scholarship. The preference will always be for complete texts, and a special feature of the series will be to complement individual texts, within the compass of a single volume, with subsidiary contextual material. Each volume will contain an introduction on the historical identity and contempo- rary significance of the text concerned, as well as such student aids as notes for further reading and chronologies of the principal events in a thinker's life.
    [Show full text]
  • A Political Reading of S. T. Coleridge's the Raven
    International Journal of Education and Research Vol. 2 No. 7 July 2014 A Political Reading of S. T. Coleridge's The Raven Marjan Amrollahi (Corresponding Author) Department of English, Vali-e Asr University of Rafsanjan, Kerman, Iran E-mail:[email protected] Dr. Anita Lashkarian Department of English, Maybod Branch, Islamic Azad University, Yazd, Iran E-mail: [email protected] Abstract: Samuel Taylor Coleridge (1772-1834) is famous as the English poet who wrote The Rime of the Ancient Mariner (1798) and Kubla Khan (1816) but today is almost forgotten as one of the greatest political thinkers of his time. His political orientation can be traced in many of his poems, political pamphlets and journalistic writings. Many of his poems such as The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Kubla Khan are studied from a political point of view but the contribution of Coleridge's political beliefs to the poem The Raven has not been studied. Although a few studies have been done on this poem, it has been neglected to a great extent by scholars. This study tends to explore the symbolism manifested in The Raven in order to illustrate the political dimensions implicit in this poem. Certainly 'The Raven' has none of the political allusions and this has led most critics to concur that the poem exhibits a total lack of politics. Yet given the circumstances which gave rise to 'The Raven" as a political poem, is the very absence of political content which is itself political. Key Words: Samuel Taylor Coleridge; The Raven; Political Poetry; Symbolism 149 ISSN: 2201-6333 (Print) ISSN: 2201-6740 (Online) www.ijern.com 1.
    [Show full text]
  • Bbm:978-1-349-26582-4/1.Pdf
    Notes Place of publication is London unless otherwise cited. Introduction I. See for example, Lee Ho\combe, Wives and Property. Reform of the Mar­ ried Women's Property Law in Nineteenth Century England (Toronto: Toronto University Press, 1983); Philippa Levine, Victorian Feminism 1850- 1900 (Hutchinson, 1987); Diana Mary Chase Worzala, 'The Langharn Place Circle: The Beginnings of the Organized Women's Movement in England 1854-1870', (PhD thesis, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1982). 2. The principle studies which mention the existence of these early feminists include Olive Banks, Faces of Feminism. A Study of Feminism as a Social Movement (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1981), pp. 30-1; Francis E. Mineka, The Dissidence of Dissent. The Monthly Repository 1806-1838 (Chapei Hill: University of North Carolina, 1944), pp. 284-96; Joan Perkin, Women and Marriage in Nineteenth Century England (Routledge, 1989), pp. 212-13; Jane Rendall, The Origins of Modem Feminism: Women in Britain, France and the United States 1780-1860 (Chicago: Lyceum, 1985), pp. 114-16,247, 309-10. 3. Carl Ray Woodring, Victorian Sampiers: William and Mary Howitt (Law­ rence: University of Kansas Press, 1952), p. 115; Richard Garnett, The Life of W. J. Fox. Pub/ic Teacher and Social Reformer, 1786-1864 (lohn Lane, 1909), pp. 118-19, 158-70; F. B. Smith, Radical Artisan. William James Linton 1812-1897 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1973), pp. 11-17. See also Ann Blainey, The Farthing Poet: a Biography of Rich­ ard Hengist Horne 1802-1884. A Lesser Literary Lion (Longman, 1968), pp. 58-68 in particular. J. F. C. Harrison has examined the work of some of these radicals in Learning and Living 1790-1960.
    [Show full text]
  • Malthus and the Philanthropists, 1764–1859: the Cultural Circulation of Political Economy, Botany, and Natural Knowledge
    social sciences $€ £ ¥ Article Malthus and the Philanthropists, 1764–1859: The Cultural Circulation of Political Economy, Botany, and Natural Knowledge J. Marc MacDonald Department of History, University of Prince Edward Island, 550 University Avenue, Charlottetown, PE C1A 4P3, Canada; [email protected]; Tel.: +1-902-569-4865 Academic Editor: Bryan L. Sykes Received: 16 July 2016; Accepted: 3 January 2017; Published: 10 January 2017 Abstract: Modernity does not possess a monopoly on mass incarceration, population fears, forced migration, famine, or climatic change. Indeed, contemporary and early modern concerns over these matters have extended interests in Thomas Malthus. Yet, despite extensive research on population issues, little work explicates the genesis of population knowledge production or how the process of intellectual transfer occurred during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. This paper examines the Delessert network’s instrumental role in cultivating, curating, and circulating knowledge that popularized Malthusian population theory, including the theory’s constitutive elements of political economy, philanthropy, industry, agriculture, and botany. I show how deviant, nonconformist groups suffered forced migration for their political philosophy, particularly during the revolutionary 1790s, resulting in their imprisonment and migration to America. A consequence of these social shifts was the diffusion and dissemination of population theory—as a pursuit of scientific knowledge and exploration—across both sides of the Atlantic. By focusing on the Delesserts and their social network, I find that a byproduct of inter and intra continental migration among European elites was a knowledge exchange that stimulated Malthus’s thesis on population and Genevan Augustin Pyramus Candolle’s research on botany, ultimately culminating in Charles Darwin’s theory of natural selection and human evolution.
    [Show full text]
  • Unitarian Radicalism: Political Rhetoric, 1770-1814
    Stuart Andrews. Unitarian Radicalism: Political Rhetoric, 1770-1814. New York and Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003. xii + 232 pp. $65.00, cloth, ISBN 978-0-333-96925-0. Reviewed by Don Duhadaway Published on H-Ideas (October, 2003) Unitarian Radicalism government refusal to ease their civil disabilities-- Stuart Andrews presents an intriguing study reignited earlier anticlerical debates" (pp. ix-x). of the connection between Unitarianism and po‐ Andrews foreshadows the main combatants litical radicalism in his 2003 book Unitarian Radi‐ in the book's frontispiece by including quotations calism: Political Rhetoric, 1770-1814. Andrews, a from the Reverend Doctor Joseph Priestley's Re‐ long-established historian and author of several flections on the Present State of Free Enquiry in other books including The British Periodical Press This Country (1785) and Edmund Burke's Speech and the French Revolution, 1789-99 and Eigh‐ on the Petition of the Unitarians (1792). Perhaps teenth-Century Europe, comes directly to his cen‐ Burke and others did not "play the patriotic card" tral concern in the preface to his latest work: against the Unitarians, but Andrews goes to con‐ "Was Unitarian Radicalism significant as a poten‐ siderable lengths to defend Unitarian Joseph tially destabilizing force? This study tries to an‐ Priestley, the most prominent of the Unitarian swer that question by examining the confronta‐ polemicists, at least in this study, against attacks tional rhetoric of Unitarians and the political es‐ of that sort. Priestley was a millenialist who un‐ tablishment, as reflected in pamphlets, published wisely summoned up memories of Guy Fawkes sermons and parliamentary debates" (p.
    [Show full text]
  • Samuel Taylor Coleridge
    / I o?V SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE A NARRATIVE OF THE EVENTS OF HIS LIFE BY JAMES DYKES CAMPBELL ILonDon MACMILLAN AND CO. AND NEW YORK 1894 bin ; C3:>' PREFACE This Memoir is mainly a reproduction of the bio- graphical sketch prefixed to the one-volume edition of Coleridge's Poetical Works^ published last spring. Such an Introduction generally and properly consists of a brief summary of some authoritative biography. As, however, no authoritative biography of Coleridge existed, I was obliged to construct a narrative for my own purpose. With this view, I carefully sifted all the old printed biographical materials, and as far as possible collated them with the original documents I searched all books of Memoirs, etc., likely to Coleridge contain incidental information regarding ; and, further, I was privileged by being permitted to make use of much important matter, either absolutely new, or previously unavailable. My aim had been, not to add to the ever- lengthening array of estimates of Coleridge as a poet and philosopher, but to provide something 1 The Poetical Works of Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Edited, with a Bio- graphical Introduction, by James Dykes Campbell. London : Macmillan and Co. 1893. SAMUEL TA YLOR COLERIDGE which appeared to be wanting—a plain, and as far as possible, an accurate narrative of the events of his life ; something which might serve until the appearance of the full biography which is expected from the hands of the poet's grandson, Mr. Ernest Hartley Coleridge. In preparing the present reprint of the ' Bio- graphical Introduction ' I have spared no effort towards making it worthy of separate publication, and of its new title.
    [Show full text]
  • Joseph Priestley and the Intellectual Culture of Rational Dissent, 1752
    Joseph Priestley and the Intellectual Culture of Rational Dissent, 1752-1796 Simon Mills Department of English, Queen Mary, University of London A thesis submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, 2009 I confirm that this is my own work and that the use of material from other sources has been fully acknowledged. 2 Abstract Joseph Priestley and the Intellectual Culture of Rational Dissent, 1752-1796 Recent scholarship on the eighteenth-century polymath Joseph Priestley (1733-1804) has focused on his work as a pioneering scientist, a controversial Unitarian polemicist, and a radical political theorist. This thesis provides an extensive analysis of his comparatively neglected philosophical writings. It situates Priestley’s philosophy in the theological context of eighteenth-century rational dissent, and argues that his ideas on ethics, materialism, and determinism came to provide a philosophical foundation for the Socinian theology which came to prominence among Presbyterian congregations in the last decades of the century. Throughout the thesis I stress the importance of rational debate to the development of Priestley’s ideas. The chapters are thus structured around a series of Priestley’s engagements with contemporary figures: chapter 1 traces his intellectual development in the context of the debates over moral philosophy and the freedom of the will at the Daventry and Warrington dissenting academies; chapter 2 examines his response to the Scottish ‘common sense’ philosophers, Thomas Reid, James Beattie, and James Oswald; chapter 3 examines his writings on materialism and philosophical necessity and his debates with Richard Price, John Palmer, Benjamin Dawson, and Joseph Berington; chapter 4 focuses on his attempt to develop a rational defence of Christianity in opposition to the ideas of David Hume; chapter 5 traces the diffusion of his ideas through the syllabuses at the liberal dissenting academies at Warrington, Daventry, and New College, Hackney.
    [Show full text]
  • Wordsworth's Empiricist Poetic and Its Influence in the Twentieth Century
    1 Wordsworth’s Empiricist Poetic and its Influence in the Twentieth Century Jeffrey Side SUBMITTED IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY THE UNIVERSITY OF LEEDS THE SCHOOL OF ENGLISH SEPTEMBER 2006 THE CANDIDATE CONFIRMS THAT THE WORK SUBMITTED IS HIS OWN AND THAT APPROPRIATE CREDIT HAS BEEN GIVEN WHERE REFERENCE HAS BEEN MADE TO THE WORK OF OTHERS. THIS COPY HAS BEEN SUPPLIED ON THE UNDERSTANDING THAT IT IS COPYRIGHT MATERIAL AND THAT NO QUOTATION FROM THE THESIS MAY BE PUBLISHED WITHOUT PROPER ACKNOWLEDGMENT. 2 Abstract Wordsworth’s Empiricist Poetic and its Influence in the Twentieth Century This thesis has two connected aims. Firstly, it claims that it is meaningful to describe Wordsworth’s aesthetic, and his beliefs about the subject-object relationship, as substantially empiricist. However, it is not claimed that Wordsworth is consistently empiricist in the way that a philosopher might aspire to be: indeed, there is a place to be found within this argument for the recognition of his transcendentalism. While it is granted that the word “empiricist” is not always used in the most rigorous philosophical sense, the influence of philosophical empiricism on Wordsworth naturally figures in the argument. Secondly, the thesis demonstrates that the continued influence of Wordsworth in the twentieth century has to be understood primarily as the influence of his empiricist aesthetic. The thesis concludes by suggesting that there are wider possibilities for poetry than are encouraged by this aesthetic. The importance of undertaking this project does not lie only in objections to Wordsworth’s theory or practice, but arises also from a consideration of his continuing influence.
    [Show full text]