lesson 17. MORALISM: 18C

17.01. War of all against all 17.02. Tabula Rasa 17.03. Project Mania 17.04. Virtue and Liberty 17.05. Morality as Aesthetics 17.06. Politics and Revolution

“So, today is Empiricism in the 18th century, isn’t it?”

Although some may call them so, the term is inappropriate. Kant wrongly named it to contrast with Rationalism.

“Namely, did Locke and Hume not call themselves so?”

Never. ‘Empiric’ meant a quack doctor depending only on experience without knowledge.

“That’s too disrespectful to medical practitioner Locke.”

Philosophers in the 18th century were rather speculative and didn’t necessarily value experience. However, that would be hard to understand from their books alone without knowing the historical context of that time.

“What did that mean?”

They sought a society to come by considering their own behavior. So, if we dare to name it, it would be Moralism.

“Ah-ha, they lived in the Age of Investment for the future that no one had experienced yet.”

17.01. War of all against all

Hobbes (1588–1679) was the same generation as Jansen (1585–1638) and Descartes (1596–1650), and served the old Francis Bacon as a secretary. It was the age of the Thirty Years’ War (1618–48) in Germany, so religious conflict also intensified in Britain. Some disillusioned Puritans emigrated, full of hope, as the Pilgrim Fathers to the New Continent in 1620. Still, it was a worse lawless-land fighting with the Native Americans and foreigners from Spain, France, and the Netherlands.

“It was too different from the scientific utopia Francis Bacon imagined.”

Against the Habsburgs, King James I (1566–1603=25) and his son, Charles I, (1600–25=49) supported the Protestants in Germany, but their attempts to levy a large tax provoked conflict with the Parliamentarians. Although Hobbes fled to Paris in 1640, the English Civil War began in 1642. In exile, Hobbes became the tutor of young Charles II (1630–60=85).

“As well as his master Francis Bacon, Hobbes would be close to the Royalists.”

In contrast to the optimistic Descartes, who believed that all we need is to use Reason correctly, Hobbes questioned human nature. Excluding judgments of good and evil, he regarded Passions as the motive of humans. The Passions are made in two ways: by the biological consciousness of desire and hate, and by the intellectual imagination of hope and fear.

“Here, we see he was not a mere Empiricist.”

No one is so powerful as to overpower everyone else. Therefore, when some desire the same thing, they fall into endless fighting. Hobbes described the brutal State of Nature as a “war of all against all.” However, we humans have intellect too, and we can expect greater safety by conceding to each other. But that is just a hope, so we also need a power that guarantees it as the contract for the Commonwealth. He published this Social Contract Theory as LEVIATHAN in 1651.

“However, what did the title mean? Leviathan was a sea dragon, wasn’t it?”

Yeah, some regarded it as a devil, but according to the Psalm, it was a mere creature that would die if God did not take care of it.

“It’s a rather weak beast. Actually, it was killed by the Puritans.”

17.02. Tabula Rasa

The Puritan Revolution ended with the incompetent rule of Lord Protector Cromwell’s son, and Charles II returned in the Restoration in 1660. The Whigs, led by Lord Ashley of Shaftesbury (1621–83), hated James II (1633–85=88–1701), Charles II’s Catholic younger brother, while the Tories sought to ally with Catholic France for the Anglo-Dutch War (1651–74).

“At that time, both Britain and the Netherlands were yet new emerging countries, and they were competing over expanding overseas.”

After the war, fueling theories of the Jesuit conspiracy, Lord Ashley and the Whigs tried to pass the Catholic Exclusion Act against James II. However, Filmer’s (c1588–1653) PATRIARCHA was published in 1680, which derived the Divine Right of Kings from Adam in the Bible. So, Lord Ashley was conversely accused of high treason and fell from grace. He went into exile in the Netherlands with his physician, Locke (1632–1704), where he died in 1683.

“Spinoza already died in 1677, so Locke could not see him.”

When James II ascended to the throne in 1685, he brought the Jesuits into his inner circle. However, his daughter was married to the Prince of Orange (1650–89=1702) in the Netherlands, and the Whigs called on her and her husband to invade England in 1688. James II fled to France without a fight. That was the Glorious Revolution.

“Following the wishes of the late Lord Ashley, Locke in the Netherlands must have orchestrated the revolution.”

Sure. Locke came back to Britain with the new queen and supported her husband, King William III, publishing TWO TREATISES OF GOVERNMENT and AN ESSAY CONCERNING HUMAN UNDERSTANDING in 1689 as a political principle of the new government.

“Wait, I understand that the former is political, but why is the latter also so?”

Due to his poor health, he perhaps rushed to publish the unfinished books. The first treatise of the former was a rebuttal to Filmer. Although Filmer insisted that the Divine Right of Kings comes from Adam, Locke criticized it, arguing that, as all are descendants of Adam, everyone is equally king. The problem is the second treatise. After Filmer, Locke assumed Adam’s State of Nature to be like the Garden of Eden, without any conflict, unlike Hobbes. It was ruled only by the Natural Law or God’s Providence.

“Then, there should be no need for any government. Was Locke an Anarchist?”

However, the interpretation of the Natural Law may be different depending on our understanding. So, he examined it like Descartes. As well as God’s Creation from nothing, he assumed the initial state as Tabula Rasa, namely, a whiteboard, without even the pure Reason in our mind nor the Divine Right in our society; and all we know is obtained only through our experience and reflection.

“It was so speculative, but the very Empiricism.”

In experience, we acquire the physical solidity, extension, motion, and so on of objects as Primary Qualities. At the same time, color, sound, taste, and so on are the powers of the object to make us sensations. Hence, they are Secondary Qualities and subjective. Furthermore, reflection is a subjective experience of our own inner sensation. When we feel several ideas simultaneously in direct experience or reflection, we make of them complex ideas. Thus, we anticipatively know what causes what. That is understanding.

“Understanding goes beyond experience, but is already subjective.”

Understanding teaches us what our action causes what results, so it makes us enable our Free Will. Although we do not know what is good and what is bad, some complex ideas involve Pleasure & Pain; thus, we learn and understand, under the Natural Law, what our actions work well and what does not. With trial and error, we internalize the Natural Law as our own Morality; furthermore, we establish it as our Common Law and Government by our Social Contract.

“In other words, we rebuild God’s Providence artificially as our Morality, Law, and Government.”

However, as mentioned, our understanding is already eroded by subjectivity. If we leave it all to the Government, it would do whatever it likes with its arbitrary understanding, as the Jesuits, friends of James II, did. Therefore, Locke proposed the separation of the Government into the Parliament and the Executive, in which the Parliament legislates Laws with debate about our understanding of the situation and the solution, while the Executive implements it. If the Executive won’t follow the Parliament, we reserve the Revolutionary Right to replace the Executive.

“Ah-ha, so, that was the justification for the Glorious Revolution.”

17.03. Project Mania

Although Lord Ashley III of Shaftesbury (1671–1713) was influenced by Locke, his grandfather’s physician, he was not an Empiricist, but a typical Moralist. In his INQUIRY CONCERNING VIRTUE in 1699 and so on, he posed Common-Sense, namely, the sensation of community. It is the human innate Passion to accept what people think and say without their own reflection or consideration. So, we act, not on our experience and understanding, but mindlessly for social Virtue. Against Hobbes, he said, even if we are wolves, wolves cooperatively work together in a pack, whether that is right or wrong.

“As a Moralist, he dared to use the words ‘Common-Sense’ and ‘Virtue’ ironically.”

In 1700, the king of the Spanish Habsburgs died without an heir. His two elder sisters had married Louis XIV of France, a Bourbon, and Leopold I of Austria, a Habsburg, so both houses began the War of the Spanish Succession (1701–14). Britain supported Austria and fought against France in the New Continent. As a result, Britain expanded its trading interests in Asia and the Atlantic as a world empire to replace the Habsburgs, leading to various projects and an unprecedented boom in stock investment. New inventions reported to Newton’s Royal Society supported it. Everyone gathered in the new fashionable coffee houses to hear rumors of money-making opportunities.

“There would be a lot of fraud stories among them.”

Young Berkeley (1685–1753) was an Anglican bishop in Ireland and an extreme Empiricist. In his PRINCIPLES OF HUMAN KNOWLEDGE in 1710, he regarded even the physical Primary Qualities as subjective. Everything is, in fact, just our sensation, so relative to our subjectivity as Immaterialism. He said, Esse est Percipi, namely, without perception, no existence.

“Certainly, even a movement may not exist before someone observes it in relation to himself. Conversely, when everyone perceives it, even a pipe dream without substance may be regarded as existing. However, was it not a collective Solipsism?”

We cannot choose our perception. It meant, according to him, that God makes us perceive the objects. Furthermore, we cannot exist unless God perceives us at any given time and place. We have no choice but to obey God even if unreasonable. He called it Passive Obedience.

“Although Berkley looked like Jansenism, what he wanted to explain would be the modern new God, our society. It forces us to recognize even what does not exist, and even if we oppose it, it would rather eliminate us.”

Project Mania flooded the town with Mushroom Millionaires, or Nouveau Riche, who quickly made big money and enjoyed extravagant luxury. By showing fighting bees make the hive bigger, a Dutch doctor in London, Mandeville (1670–1733), explained private vice brings public good in THE FABLES OF THE BEES in 1714, defending the greedy nouveau riche without public morality.

“It was also in 1714 that Britain invited the Duke of Hanover to become its king.”

Naturally, the book provoked a strong backlash. In addition, in 1720, the stock bubble burst, leaving many people bankrupt. Newton also lost most of his fortune and said: “The movements of celestial bodies can be calculated, but the madness of people is incomputable.” A Professor at Glasgow University in Scotland, Hutcheson (1694–1746), ironically said “without demand, no value” after Berkeley. He insisted that Virtue consists only when someone needs it, so we should have a reflective Moral Sense.

17.04. Virtue and Liberty

A Scottish philosophical writer, Hume (1711–76), regarded the mind as a temporal Bundle of Perceptions without even substance than Tabula Rasa in THE TREATISE OF HUMAN NATURE in 1739. According to Book 1: Understanding, perception is just a resemblance of the external impression and the internal idea. Simple ideas are made by the memory of past external impressions, but some associate with other ideas and become complex by resemblance, contrariety, degrees, and number of the ideas themselves, or by identity, place, and causality in our external experience. Among them, causality has, in fact, no experience responding to it. It is based just on past Constant Conjunction that we have repeatedly experienced. However, it is an abuse of Induction to assume the future is the same as the past.

“Hume was not an Empiricist but rather limited the need and significance of experience. If tomorrow were really all the same as yesterday, the stocks would have risen every day endlessly.”

In Book 2: Passion, he said that some associations relating to ourselves furthermore produce Pleasure or Pain sensations and move us as Passions. However, the Pleasure & Pain are at most anticipative because our understanding of what action causes what result is just our belief based on past repeated experiences, so it is uncertain. So, he concluded, in Book 3: Morals, that Morality is sensation. However, as long as we are just temporal Bundles of Perceptions, we cannot keep it, so we need a Government pursuing Virtues with a long-term perspective.

“Yeah, we certainly try to do good, but easily get bored and forget it all.”

In reality, the UK Government made poor Scotland, Hume’s homeland, suffer with heavy taxes to intervene in European conflicts. In 1745, while British troops were dispatched to Austria, the Catholic Jacobites, descendants of James II and his supporters exiled to France, landed in Scotland and started an uprising. The Stewart family had Scottish origins indeed since James I; however, even the Scots did not support them, so it failed.

“They would think the UK was a little better than the Catholics.”

A French noble, Montesquieu (1689–1755), also regarded the UK as better than the French absolute monarchy and published THE SPIRIT OF LAW anonymously in 1748. He did not speculatively assume a State of Nature but empirically thought the geographical climate determines the temperament and needs of the people of each country differently. So, he defined three political systems: despotic, monarchic, and republic.

“In the first place, those who talked about the State of Nature or the Natural Law, which no one has seen, could not be Empiricists by definition.”

According to him, under the despotic system, people are motivated by fear, under the monarchical system by love of honor, and under the republic by love of virtue or by prioritizing public interests over private ones. However, if forced, that cannot be the love of honor and virtue. Therefore, people need Political Liberty to act voluntarily; the Government should therefore guarantee our liberty.

“Namely, the Government should not do unnecessary things.”

In fact, the primary work of the Executive is to resolve everyday crimes and conflicts. So, even when we separate the legislative power from the Executive to the Parliament, as Locke does, the Executive can apply any Law to individual cases with an arbitrary interpretation. However, if the Parliament debates individual cases, the majority always prevails, suppressing the minority. Therefore, Montesquieu proposed an independent Judiciary and called for the improvement of criminal and civil laws.

“The police and trials under the absolute monarchy must have been extremely mad.”

17.05. Morality as Aesthetics

Baumgarten (1714–62), a professor at Frankfurt an der Oder University, studied the Sense of Beauty for Virtue in AESTHETICA in 1750. For him, beauty is not an objective idea, but a sensation. It is a harmonic sensing of plural images at three levels: the composite image, the object and the image, and the expression and the image. When it has its richness, greatness, truth, clarity, obviousness, and life, we feel it as beauty. Although conceiving beauty is the privilege of geniuses, it is transmitted to the audience through artworks, giving them a sense of Beauty and Virtue, like an inspiring speech. However, Baumgarten could not finish the latter part.

“Baumgarten thought on moral motivation by art. It would be almost Romanticism.”

Meanwhile, a French gigolo, Rousseau (1712–78), denied not only art but even science in his award-winning essay DISCOURSE ON THE ARTS AND SCIENCES in the same 1750. According to him, science and art are just a waste; moreover, they are the means of tyrants to tame people as intellectual slaves. In his next DISCOURSE ON INEQUALITY in 1755, he explained that people in the primitive State of Nature were self-sufficient with little relation to others. However, by getting Reason, we instead lost Morality. In deer hunting, we infer that if someone chases a rabbit and leaves his post, the hunt will fail. Therefore, fearing betrayal, everyone will chase a small rabbit, and we can no longer catch a big deer.

“In the deceptive Ancien Régime, everyone pursued small successes, making themselves small as well.”

Adam Smith (1723–90) studied under Hutcheson and succeeded him as a professor at Glasgow University in Scotland. In his THEORY OF MORAL SENTIMENTS in 1759, developing his master Hutcheson’s reflective Moral Sense depending on the needs of others, he made Sympathy the foundation of human nature. Although we cannot directly know what others think, we understand it through imagination by placing ourselves in their situation. However, Sympathy turns over again, bringing an understanding of how others evaluate our own actions. Thus, we internalize an Impartial Spectator watching our own actions. With it, we expect reward for good and revenge for evil; we will reward good and seek revenge for our own good and evil. Therefore, even if we act selfishly for the sake of expectation, rather than to realize a good society.

“That was the exact opposite conclusion to Rousseau’s. The public watching eye reeking of Freemasonry would be the modern version of Berkley’s God.”

The optimist Adam Smith thought that even the rich consume at most as much as the poor so that the surplus would benefit the latter too, but Rousseau saw there the evil domination that takes away even the human dignity of independence. So, he insisted on the need for a Government to guarantee the liberty and equality of people in THE SOCIAL CONTRACT in 1762. However, unlike Hobbes and Locke, he holds that the surrender of the individual’s inherent rights is nothing but servitude. Therefore, even when a Government is established, it should be rather subordinated to the sovereignty of the people, the General Will. The book was banned, and he fled to Hume in England.

“Rousseau was reckless to seek popular sovereignty under the absolute monarchy.”

17.06. Politics and Revolution

Adam Smith left Glasgow University to accompany Sir Henry Scott’s son on his Grand Tour in 1764, so Thomas Reid (1710–96) succeeded him, but Reid was critical of Smith. While Smith artificially constructed the Impartial Spectator in our respective subjectivities, Reid regarded it as our public Common Sense with reality in AN INQUIRY INTO THE HUMAN MIND in 1764. Because our innate Common Sense is the fundamental premise and format of Reason and Sensation, without it, we cannot think, nor even perceive anything. We also act rationally, not out of some private passion but for a concrete public aim, as members of society.

“He smells like something of Totalitarianism.”

After the failure of the Jacobite rising of 1745, many of them went to the New Continent and dreamed of dominating the pre-settled Protestants and re-establishing a Catholic England. a Scottish nobleman, James Steuart (1712–80), also joined the rebellion, fled to France, and remained there till 1763. After returning to the UK, he published THE PRINCIPLES OF POLITICAL ECONOMY in 1767, in which he regarded the role of Government as just to supply people with their needs stably. For this aim, he emphasized colonial exploitation and protective trade. However, British Mercantilism caused the American Revolutionary War (1775–83).

“They shallowly thought that enough food stops people from complaining.”

Adam Smith had already returned to Scotland in 1766, and against James Steuart, he showed in THE WEALTH OF NATIONS in 1776, that a nation’s wealth is made not of marginal profit between purchases and sales but of productivity itself. When each person strives to maximize his profit freely and selfishly, society will naturally be optimized by the Invisible Hand of God. So, he thought a minimal Government should be better.

“He was probably opposed to the governmental intervention in the New Continent. He was the origin of Limited Government Policy.”

The difficulty of ethical philosophy is that opposing theories can be drawn on the same issue. We cannot determine even whether we humans are rational or emotional, selfish or social.

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