Category Archives: Philosophy

Arts, History, Philosophy

Philosophy: On Reason and Experience

AGE OF REASON AND ENLIGHTENMENT

“Reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.” – George Washington (1732–1799)

IN the eighteenth century, the Age of Reason – characterised by thinkers such as Descartes, Hobbes and Locke during the seventeenth century – brought about a seismic shift in emphasis in philosophical thought. Massive advances were made in the natural sciences and this in turn led to a questioning of old certainties and a rush of new and often competing ideas concerning everything from how knowledge and truth can be acquired and tested to the first seedlings of notions of democracy, representation and civil liberties. The floodgates opened, characterised best by Kant’s imperative in his essay “What is Enlightenment?” The human mind was emerging from the darkness of infancy and maturing like that of an enquiring child, while Kant urged people to “dare to know”. Reason and experience became the watchwords in this new philosophy, which was more concerned with how things actually are rather than how they could or possibly should be.

However, not all enlightenment was positive. There were darker consequences of this new awakening, as evidenced by the reign of terror following the French Revolution and by the work of possibly the most morose thinker of all time, Arthur Schopenhauer, who once wrote in an essay that everyone should swallow a live toad for breakfast to guarantee they wouldn’t have to experience anything else quite as dispiriting again for the rest of the day. It would also be a mistake to think that the status quo embraced the new enlightenment with open arms. The preface quote for this article is taken from George Washington’s farewell address to the American people and illustrates that although there was an explosion in free-thinking in some quarters, the old guard – the protectors of religious-based morality – were deeply suspicious and frightened of these new ideas about how to live in and view the world.

Reading the great thinkers of reason and experience shouldn’t be difficult. Most of what they had to say seems pretty self-evident today, obvious even, yet somehow their arguments can be difficult to follow. This is largely due to the intellectual zeal with which they approached their investigations and their fervent search for one over-arching, all-encompassing system of thought. It didn’t help either that this spirit of competitiveness led to petty rivalries. The German philosopher Schopenhauer had a hatred of Hegel bordering on the pathological. This drove him to take up a position at the University of Berlin, where Hegel had a seat, just to try and prove his ideas were more popular with the students (but he failed spectacularly). Nonetheless, readers should appreciate that the philosophers of the ages of reason and enlightenment represent a pivotal point in the history of philosophy.

“Truth in philosophy means that concept and external reality correspond… Genuine tragedies in the world are not conflicts between right and wrong. They are conflicts between two rights.” – Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831)

HEGEL

Hegel was a major figure in German idealism. His historicist and idealist account of reality was revolutionary at the time and a major factor in the development of some radical threads of left-wing political thought.

Hegel was born on 27 August 1770, in Stuttgart, Germany. He studied philosophy and classics at Tubingen, and after graduation became a tutor and explored theology. Hegel taught at Heidelberg and Berlin, where he wrote and explored philosophical and theological concepts.

His major work, The Phenomenology of Spirit (or mind), was published in 1807 and his ideas developed in other deeply complex works until his death, from cholera, in 1831.

Almost everything that Hegel was to develop over the rest of his life is prefigured in the Phenomenology, but the work is far from systematic and generally accepted as difficult to read. The Phenomenology attempts to present human history, with all its revolutions, wars and scientific discoveries, as an idealistic self-development of an objective Spirit or Mind.

His mark on history has been profound, in that his influence has spread throughout both left- and right- wing political thought. In fact, the interpreters of Hegel split into “left” and “right” camps. Marx drew inspiration from Hegel by developing the idea that history and reality should be viewed dialectically and that the process of change – the struggle – should be seen as a transition from the fragmentary towards the complete. This is a skewed development of what Hegel tried to suggest in phenomenology. However, in practical terms it is likely that Hegel may have approved of Marx’s revolutionary interpretation, as he was witness at close hand to revolutionary Europe towards the end of the eighteenth century. It is even said that he celebrated Bastille Day every year.

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Arts, Philosophy

Philosophy: Purposes in nature

TELEOLOGY

Intro: According to Aristotle, everything that exists has a final cause, or purpose – what in Greek is called a telos. In other words, everything in nature exists to fulfil a goal.

EXPLAINING things in terms of their purposes was not unusual among classical Greek philosophers, but today it stands at odds with our modern, scientific understanding of the world. To our modern eyes it is quite normal to describe a man-made object, such as a tool, in terms of its function or purpose. A hammer, for example, exists for the purpose of pounding in nails. But this is an extrinsic purpose, one that is imposed upon it from the outside. What Aristotle proposed was that everything, including everything in the natural world, has an intrinsic purpose: that is, each thing exists in order to achieve its own ends – its internal purpose. For example, a seed’s purpose is to germinate and become a plant, and trees exist in order to produce fruit.

For Aristotle, it is not only living things that exist for a purpose. Rain falls in order to moisten the ground and enable plants to grow. It is the rain’s telos to water the earth, and the plants’ telos to grow. Their purpose or goal is the reason they have come into being.

More in line with our modern thinking is the Atomists’ assertion that natural things do not have an intrinsic purpose or “final cause”: instead, their existence is the cause of other things. Rain does not fall in order to water the plants; rather, the plants use the moisture that happens to have been provided by the rainfall.

. The Unfolding World

For Aristotle, the essential property of a seed is its ability to grow. That is also its intrinsic purpose: it exists to become a plant, which, in turn, exists in order to produce seeds. Living things are therefore characterised by their tendency to move or change, and to reproduce. And, since all terrestrial things are imperfect and impermanent, beings not only grow, but also eventually perish and decay.

. Causation

Aristotle’s theory of causation is based on his idea that everything has four causes. What we usually think of as a cause – that which makes a thing happen – is what Aristotle calls an “efficient cause”. For example, a person who pushes a rock downhill is the efficient cause of the rock’s movement. The purpose, or “final cause”, of its movement – why it goes downwards instead of up or sideways – is that it is seeking the centre of the Earth. The final cause of the action of pushing the rock is to see how far it will roll. The rock’s movement is also determined by formal and material causes.

Efficient Cause – in this example, the efficient cause is the person who pushes the rock. The rock moves because of the person’s actions.

Material Cause – This is the rock’s physical composition. The rock is made of earth, and so, because earthy things seek the centre of the Earth, it moves downwards.

Formal Cause – The shape of the rock’s trajectory is determined by the landscape. The rock’s rolling and bouncing are caused by the slopes and bumps of the hill.

Final Cause – The rock comes to rest when it reaches the closest it can get to the centre of the Earth – the bottom of the hill.

THE UNMOVED MOVER

Aristotle’s universe had no beginning, but he believed that something must have set the heavenly bodies in motion, since everything is caused by something else. However, this raises two questions: What caused that cause, and what moved the mover of the Universe? Aristotle proposed the idea of a first cause, an “unmoved mover”, responsible for all the motion in the universe.

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Arts, Christianity, Culture, History, Philosophy

Philosophy: Scholasticism and dogma

CHRISTIANITY AND PHILOSOPHY

Intro: Medieval European culture was dominated by the Church, and the classical philosophy of Plato and Aristotle was only gradually assimilated into Christian teaching

THE Church wielded considerable social and political power in medieval Europe, and also controlled access to learning. Education was provided by the Church and necessarily followed Christian doctrine, while institutions like libraries and universities were funded by the Church and staffed by monastic orders. Monks preserved and translated many ancient texts, mostly of Greek philosophy and latterly acquired from Islamic scholars and scribes.

Scholasticism was a method of tuition that used rigorous dialectical reasoning both to teach Christian theology and to scrutinise these texts. Clerics and academics used methods of reasoning developed by Plato and Aristotle to assess the compatibility of ideas with Christian doctrine. The theories of philosophers including Augustine and Thomas Aquinas were also carefully examined, and either adopted to defend Christian dogma or dismissed as heretical. Scholasticism played an important part in the integration of philosophical ideas into Christianity, remaining the prominent ethos for Christian education and theology until supplanted by humanist and scientific ideas during the Renaissance.

Existence of God: the ontological argument

With the rise of scholasticism and the Church’s embrace of Aristotelian logic in the 11th century came a renewed interest in reconciling matters of faith with reasoned argument. One of the founding fathers of the scholastic movement was Saint Anselm of Canterbury, best known for proposing the so-called ontological argument for the existence of God.

Anselm asks us to imagine the most perfect being possible. The logic and reasoned arguments pledged by him are difficult to interpret and understand, but it leads us to a conclusion that the most perfect being possible must exist – in Anselm’s words, “God is that, than which nothing greater can be achieved”. From that premise he methodically shows that if God exists in our imagination, then an even greater God is possible: one that exists in reality.

Yet, contemporaries of the time such as Gaunilo of Marmoutiers pointed out that the logic put forward by Anselm was flawed, because “his reasons could be used to prove the existence of anything.” Later philosophers, notably Thomas Aquinas and Immanuel Kant, showed that while the argument presented a notion of God’s essence, it was no proof of His existence.

Pascal’s wager

Today, it is generally agreed that there can be no logical proof either way for the existence of God, and that this is purely a matter of faith and belief. Philosophical speculation on the subject, however, continued well into the so-called “Age of Reason”. One novel take on the problem was raised by the distinguished mathematician Blaise Pascal in the 17th century.

“Pascal’s wager” examines whether, given that we have no proof of His existence, it is a better bet to believe in God or not. Pascal weighs up the pros and cons in terms of the consequences: if God exists and I deny his existence, I run the risk of eternal damnation; if He exists and I accept His existence, I earn eternal life in Paradise; but if He doesn’t exist, it will make no difference to me. Pascal devised a matrix in which different options are placed.

On balance, then, it is a safer bet to believe in His existence. Although Pascal’s wager is an interesting exercise in logic and rudimentary game theory, it is based on some unsound and shaky assumptions. For example, Aristotle’s idea of an “unmoved mover” or first cause is a direct challenge.

Creating Eternity

A major stumbling block for Christian philosophers trying to integrate Aristotelian ideas into Christian doctrine was Aristotle’s assertion that the universe has no end and no beginning. This contradicts the Biblical description of God’s creation of the world.

Thomas Aquinas, however, believed that since human reason and Christian doctrine are both gifts from God, they cannot be contradictory.  Using his ‘God-given’ reason, he argued that Aristotle was not mistaken in his concept of an eternal universe, but that God was indeed its creator: in the beginning, God created the universe, but could have also created a universe that is eternal.

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