Category Archives: Philosophy

Arts, History, Philosophy

(Philosophy): Voltaire

THE LIFE OF VOLTAIRE (1694-1778)

VOLTAIRE was the pen name of Francois-Marie Arouet, a prolific writer and philosopher whose vast oeuvre contained multiple literary forms including plays, poetry, novels, essays, historical and scientific works, over 21,000 letters and over 2,000 books and pamphlets. Many of his most popular prose works were in the form of swashbuckling, episodic, courtly romances. These were often written as polemics and contained scathing prefaces explaining the author’s motives.

Voltaire’s best-known work, Candide (1759), was constructed around a sustained and withering attack on the philosophy of Gottfried Leibniz and ironically satirises Leibniz’s particular brand of philosophical and moral optimism. Although regarded in some quarters as holding somewhat cynical views on human nature, Voltaire nonetheless believed that humans could find moral virtue through reason and that reason allied to observation of the natural world was sufficient to determine the existence of God.

Voltaire’s principal philosophical works are contained in his Dictionnaire Philosophique (“Philosophical Dictionary”), published in 1764, which was comprised of articles, essays and pamphlets attacking the French political establishment and in particular the Church. Among the many civil causes Voltaire advocated in his essays were the right to a fair trial, the freedom of the press, freedom of speech, and tolerance of other religions. He also sought to expose and denounce the hypocrisies and injustices he saw as inherent in the ancien régime, the social and political structure of France between the fifteenth and eighteenth centuries. The ancien regime, for Voltaire, was predicated on an imbalance of power, loaded firmly in favour of the clergy and noble aristocracy at the expense of the commoners and middle classes who were suppressed by crippling and corrupt systems of taxation. As the Church seemed to be not only complicit in this corruption and injustice but also a principal part of the state apparatus, the clergy naturally bore the brunt of Voltaire’s ire. Deeply opposed to organised religion, Voltaire was highly critical of the Church in Rome, and even held the view that the Bible was an outdated legal and moral reference guide, citing it was the work of man and not the inspired word of God.

There were, however, some curious inconsistencies in the radical positions that Voltaire chose to adopt. Capable of constructing impassioned and erudite arguments for the establishment of a constitutional monarchy in one essay, Voltaire would then reject the tenets of democracy for providing a voice to the ill-informed and ignorant masses in his next essay. Like Plato, Voltaire reviewed the role of the monarch in society from a position of modified absolutism – a system whereby the king or queen rules under the guidance of a group of appointed advisers who have the best concerns of the kingdom and its subjects at heart, for it is in the intertest of the monarch to ensure wealth and stability in society at large.

Voltaire’s oft-quoted assertion that “If God did not exist, it would be necessary to invent Him” has led to the misconception that he was an atheist. In fact, despite his opposition to the Church, Voltaire believed in God and built his own private chapel. The quote given is taken from one of Voltaire’s polemical poems, Epistle to the Author of the Book, The Three Imposters, and can be taken to mean that the central question of the existence of God is largely immaterial, as many civilisations have created gods to explain natural phenomena. As a follower of deism, Voltaire rejected the mysticism and strictures of religious teaching, believing that reason and nature provide the basis for spiritual beliefs: “It is perfectly evident to my mind that there exists a necessary, eternal, supreme, and intelligent being. This is no matter of faith, but of reason.”

Voltaire is best known for his memorable aphorisms. One of the most oft-cited quotations attributed to Voltaire about freedom of speech – “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it” – is, however, totally apocryphal. It was actually written by the English writer Evelyn Beatrice Hall in her 1906 biography of Voltaire, The Friends of Voltaire.

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Arts, History, Philosophy

(Philosophy): Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

1770–1831

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

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. His major work, The Phenomenology of Spirit (or mind), was published in 1807. Many of his ideas were 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. The book and text is far from systematic and is generally accepted as difficult to read. The Phenomenology attempts to present human history, with all its revolutions, wars, and scientific discoveries, as an objective and idealistic self-developing Spirit or Mind.  

Hegel is a notoriously difficult philosopher to understand. For a beginner with next to no grounding in the Greek logic of Aristotle and the later works of Descartes, Hume and Locke it is probably a forlorn task best left until the fundamentals of philosophy are mastered. Being able to comprehend what he writes requires a grasp of at least the basics. Hegel still causes frustration among academics and one of the philosophers that give the discipline its forbidding reputation.

For example, in his book Hegel, Edward Caird writes: “But the height of audacity in serving up pure nonsense, in stringing together senseless and extravagant mazes of words, such as had previously been known only in madhouses, was finally reached in Hegel… and became the instrument of the most bare-faced general mystification that has ever taken place, with a result which will appear fabulous to posterity, and will remain as a monument to German stupidity.”

To have any chance of understanding Hegel one must first come to terms with the principle of the dialectic method. This is a type of argument or discussion between two or more opposing viewpoints whereupon the outcome or truth can be distilled. As the mechanism for this process Hegel proposed variations on the three “classical laws of thought” – that is, the law of identity (essentially “truths” that are taken to be self-evident), and the laws of [non]contradiction and the law of the excluded middle. Paraphrasing these last two suggests respectively that contradictory statements cannot both be true but that either proposition must be true. This is the kind of difficulty that any student of philosophy will be faced with.

Hegelian dialectics is based upon four concepts:

. Everything is transient and finite, existing in the medium of time.

. Everything is composed of contradictions (opposing forces).

. Gradual changes lead to crisis or turning points when one force overcomes its opposing force (quantitative change leads to qualitative change).

. Change is helical (spiral), not circular.

In summary, Hegel believed that when our minds become fully conscious, awakened, or enlightened, we will have a perfect understanding of reality. In short, our thoughts about reality, and reality itself, will be the same. He argues this by showing that the mind goes through an evolution on its way to what he calls “absolute spirit”.

Because Hegel’s philosophy requires a journey it can be seen that it is the process and not just the result that is important. A struggle exists between one viewpoint (or thesis) to which there might exist one or more opposing viewpoints (or antithesis). A process of debate or connected dispute such as revolution or war might lead to a higher level of understanding (or synthesis) to which another antithesis might emerge and thus the process towards truth will continue. This is a Hegelian description of all history as an inevitable progression towards truth. It is complex and a difficult area of study.

Hegel’s mark on history has been profound, in that his influence has spread throughout both left- and right-wing political thought. Marx drew influence 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. Yet, 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.

. Hegel on Reason and Experience

“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.”

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Arts, Philosophy

Care more about how people feel

COMMON FEELINGS

THE French writer and philosopher Voltaire told how Saladin, “the Conqueror of the East”, bequeathed his fortune to the poor, regardless of whether they be Muslim, Christian or otherwise.

His thinking was that we should care less about what people believe and more about what people feel.

Our expectations of the next life might differ. But while we are here, we all feel hunger, satisfaction, fear, comfort, loss, love and so on.

If you want to know whether you should treat a stranger as a brother or sister, ask if they miss anyone, if they love anyone.

If they ever cried at night; if joy makes them laugh.

Then, in sympathy with all the feelings we have in common, understand that we are not so very different after all.

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