Eighteenth Century Intellectualism

Article 2. Eighteenth Century Intellectualism

a) Leibnitz; b) English Idealism; c) Thomas Reid and The Scottish School. The Intellectualism originated by Descartes in the 17 century flourished throughout Europe in the 18. The Intellectualists agree that human knowledge is above the order of sensation, in fact and in origin, but they disagree very widely and variously in their explanations of it. They disagree also in their doctrine on the objectivity of human knowledge, some declaring that we know things as they are in themselves objectively, and others modifying this teaching or denying it outright. The chief Intellectualist in Germany during the 18 century was Leibnitz. In the British Isles, Berkeley, Hume, Thomas Reid and the Scottish School were the leading exponents of the Intellectualism of the time.

a) Got t fr ied Wil hel m Leibnit z (1646-1716).

Life: Leibnitz was born at Leipzig. He studied under Jacob Thomasius, who instructed him in the doctrines of the old Scholastics. Afterwards he read Plato, Aristotle, and Descartes. He was perhaps the most scholarly man of his age, being well schooled in theological doctrines, history, and mathematics. In the field of the last-named science he is forever memorable as the inventor of the Calculus. He was a man of great literary talent, and he was well and widely read.

Works: The following works of Leibnitz are important for philosophy : New Essays on Human Intelligence ; Essays on Theodicy; Principles of Philosophy ; the last-named book is also called Monadology, because it contains the author’s doctrine on monads, the basis of his natural philosophy.

Doctrine: Leibnitz was a conciliator. He declared for the eclectic principle that truth is scattered piecemeal among various disagreeing systems of philosophy, and that the work of the philosopher is to sift it out and bring it together in a unified body of doctrine. True to this principle, Leibnitz declares that he will offer no new doctrine. But he is not true to his principle in fact as he is in intention. In Natural Philosophy he presents original doctrine, and makes this the outstanding feature of his system. For the rest, he is largely a Scholastic, although it would be a grave mistake to call him such simply. He is listed as an Intellectualist because he taught that the intellect does not draw its ideas from sensation, but evolves them out of itself. We treat here of his Monadology, his Psychology, and his Theodicy. It is interesting to note in passing that he coined the name Theodicy (Natural Theology) to distinguish the science of natural or reasoned doctrine about God from revealed theology (Supernatural Theology, or Theology proper). i. Monadology.— Descartes had taught that the essence of bodily substance is extension by three dimensions. Leibnitz finds that this theory leaves unexplained the phenomena of natural inertia and of resistance. If body “a” strikes body “b,” for instance, “b” resists and even changes the direction of “a.” Therefore, there must be something essential in bodies in addition to pure geometric extension. Besides, Leibnitz perceives that the extension-theory contains the germ of pantheism and occasionalism : of pantheism, for extension demands a substratum and foundation, i. e., a thing extended; and it is easy to declare this one and divine, as Spinoza did; of occasionalism, because the extension-theory leaves the activities of bodies unexplained, and the Occasionalists had recourse to the immediate intervention of God to explain them. Therefore, Leibnitz rejects Descartes’ theory of extension as the essence of bodies. He also rejects the general Cartesian definition of substance as “that which so exists as to require nothing else for existence,” and offers as his own definition, “Substance is being endowed with the power of acting.” It is obvious that bodies are composed of parts, but the parts are not of infinite number ; in dividing a body one comes at last to elements or units that are not further divisible (i. e., are simple} and so are naturally indestructible. These indivisible units are monads. God created all monads at once, and they will eternally endure unless He annihilate them. Each individual monad has its own distinct and proper nature ; no two monads are of the same essence. Thus the monads have nothing fundamentally in common. One monad cannot transiently af-feet another monad, but each has the power of in-dwelling (immanent) activity and can variously transmute its own qualities. Hence, although each monad is simple, it acquires multiple affections, states, dispositions or transformations by its own immanent operation. But each variety or change which occurs in one monad is reflected by a parallel change in every other monad; and this nexus between and among monads is called perception; and the change from one intrinsic state to another in monads is appetition. Thus all monads, since they operate immanently, are entelechies; but not all are souls, for, though all have perception and appetition, not all have apperception, i. e., consciousness and memory. God wished to grade the monads on various levels of perfection, and hence created monads with unconscious perception, and monads with conscious perception (brute souls), and monads that have also the power of reflection and can form universal concepts (human souls). The human soul, like the brute soul, is a monad residing in a bodily organism (which is itself composed of monads) and differs from other monads only in that its perception attains the grade of rationality and reflection. Since one monad cannot act efficiently upon another, no monad-composed creature can produce an effect outside itself, i. e., transiently. And still there is a reciprocal action among the monads, for change in one is sufficient reason for change in all others. The cause of such change in others is God. Now, of monads so adapted by God, that is the more perfect (at least in the precise formality of the adaptation) which furnishes the sufficient reason for change in the others. A monad is perfect in the measure of the distinctness of its perceptions. Distinct perception in a monad is an evidence that God has found in it sufficient reason for determining parallel changes suited to the perception in other monads; confused perception indicates the contrary. Thus in the matter of the human composite, it is obvious that the body which is an aggregate of monads is adapted by God to the soul because of the distinct perceptions in the latter, and the soul is accommodated or subjected to the body inasmuch or when its perceptions are confused. In the first case the change of the soul is sufficient reason for a change in the body; and vice versa. In other words, God disposes the movements of the body according to the conscious acts of the soul, and, conversely, God regulates unconscious perceptions in the soul according to the motions or actions of the body. The harmony divinely established among monads so that the change of one is an adaptation to the change of others, or is sufficient reason for change in all others, is called the Law of Pre-Established Harmony. By this law each monad is so related to all the others that it reflects the whole universe of monads in itself as in a mirror. All things in nature are composed of Prime Matter and Substantial Form. Every individual existent is an aggregate of monads, of which one monad is a centre or nucleus retaining the others about it, and its modifications constitute the sufficient reason for parallel modifications in the others. The central monad is the dominant entelechy or the Substantial Form; the others constitute Prime Matter. The Form is an active, the Matter a passive principle. The dominant entelechy or Form may be unconsciously perceptive or consciously so (i. e., sentient) ; if unconsciously perceptive, the subject is a living thing ; if consciously perceptive or sentient, the subject is an animal. Thus, all things are alive; and some are animals. The Form (dominant entelechy) may continually take new Matter to itself (as in nutrition), and Matter so assumed becomes subject to the Form; and thus the Form of a being remains the same even though the organism be continuously renewed. The soul (i. e., Form, or dominant entelechy in sentient things) is never without its cluster of surrounding monads. And since all monads were created at once, every soul has had some sort of organism (body) from the beginning. When an animal is conceived, some matter of the parent organisms is separated and some sensitive monad of the separated matter becomes the dominant entelechy (Form) of the new organism. When an animal dies, its soul does not perish, but perseveres in existence surrounded by some clustering monads, and may enter another organism where it is subject to the existing Form until it is expelled by the generative process and again becomes a dominant entelechy or Form of a “new” organism. All this holds for men as for lower beings; but man’s soul (Form or dominant entelechy), which is only sentient (and not rational) at the beginning, becomes rational at the moment of conception. In other words, the human soul with its body-monads is a small animal existing within the organism of the parent; and when conception separates this animal from its union with and subjection to the parent organism, its soul becomes rational. When a man dies, his soul, keeping certain body-monads about it, does not lose its rational character, nor does it enter other organisms like the soul of brutes, but it enters the “spirit land,” the perfect monarchic society ruled directly by God. ii. Psychology.— Man is composed of a soul (a rational monad) and a body (an aggregate of monads). The union of soul and body results in a single individuality, but there is no mutual influence or interaction between soul and body: for Leibnitz denies all transient activity. Therefore, the perceptions of the soul are not caused by the body, and thought does not originate in sensation. Similarly, the actions of the body are not caused by the soul. Both soul and body act immanently and per se. But God, by Pre-Established Harmony, has disposed that a perception takes place in parallel correspondence to every change in the body, and for every volition of the soul there is a corresponding bodily action. Soul and body are like two clocks, keeping precisely the same time, yet independently. The soul evolves its ideas out of itself. Like other monads the soul mirrors the whole universe; but most of its perceptions in this vast field are so confused that it has no consciousness of them. All ideas are available to the soul, all are in the soul, but as man grows from childhood to maturity, and so through conscious life, the only ideas actually clear and usable are those which the soul clarifies by its own activity, or, more precisely, those which God, by His Pre-Established Harmony, has willed that the soul render clear. Appetition results from perception, and is conscious or unconscious according to the character of the perception. If conscious, the appetition is called volition, which may be described as an effort to lay hold of what is good and to avoid what is evil. The human will is free, because it regulates its volitions without outside influence. Although God’s Pre-Established Harmony has regulated our volitions from the beginning, this does not destroy freedom of will, since God has predetermined our free acts according to free nature, and from that nature the acts proceed freely {physical premotion’). iii. Theodicy.— The universe is contingent, i. e., it is not in its nature a being or collection of beings that must exist. We look beyond the world, therefore, for that being which must exist (necessary being), for that eternal, immutable substance which is the sufficient reason for its own existence and for that of the world, and which is the cause of the world. Such a being must be intelligent, for this world is contingent, and might have been made quite otherwise than it is; it is obviously the result of a selection, a choice, a determination: and a Being capable of such choice and determination is intelligent. Therefore, from the contingency of the world we rightly conclude to the existence of an intelligent substantial being, eternal and immutable, distinct from the world, and its first efficient cause. This is God. Leibnitz thus proves God’s existence a posteriori, i. e., reasoning back from effects to their cause. But he also believes that an a priori (ontological) argument can be offered for God’s existence. He revises the famous proof of St. Anselm in this fashion: A Being whose essence involves existence is, if it can exist, really existent. But God is a possible Being (i. e., one that can exist) whose essence involves existence. Therefore God is really existent. God is a simple, (indivisible), bodiless, all-perfect monad, the first principle and the sufficient reason of all. God produces all things from nothing by creation. Creatures depend on God both in existence and in operation. God moves the operation of creatures and immediately concurs with their activity, but in a manner comformable to the nature of each : He moves free creatures in a manner conformable to their free nature and hence does not destroy their free will. Leibnitz posits the origin of evil in the essence of creatures. He says that creatures are necessarily limited, imperfect, and, in so far, evil. This is metaphysical evil and is outside the will of God, except in so far as God, willing to create, must will to create finite beings. Metaphysical evil is the basis and principle of physical evil or lack of physical perfection, and of moral evil or sin. Metaphysical evil is independent of the will of God; physical and moral evil are permitted by God. No possible world excludes metaphysical evil, and therefore God, willing to create, implicitly wills and permits physical and moral evils. From the supreme perfection of God we can infer that He created the best possible world {optimism}. All possibilities have a right or claim to existence in the measure of their proper perfection; and therefore the things actually created had a greater grade of perfection than other possibles.

Remarks: In his Monadology Leibnitz finds fault with the Cartesian definition of substance, but his own definition of substance as “Being endowed with activity” is formally a definition of nature. Substance is that being which is fitted by nature for existence in itself and not for mere inherence in a subject or substratum. Bodily substance is a substance composed of matter and form naturally requiring local extension by the threefold dimension. The “activity” which Leibnitz makes an essential constituent of bodily substance is only a property of bodies. His “monad theory” makes him implicitly deny extension in bodies, for he says the monads are simple or indivisible, and hence not extended. Now a body made up of unextended units is itself unextended. Leibnitz also absurdly denies transient activity ; and he offers gratuitously his strange doctrine of the transformation of the sensitive soul into the rational soul in man. In Psychology Leibnitz’ dualism and Pre-Established Harmony theory is seen as the logical outcome of his doctrine on the solely immanent activity of monads. Here we perceive also how far Leibnitz was from the Scholastic doctrine of substantial union of body and soul, and from Hylomorphism, i. e., the substantial union of matter and form in bodies. Thus those critics greatly err who find Scholastic Hylomorphism in Leibnitz’ theories. In Theodicy, Leibnitz propounds much admirable doctrine if one excepts his ontological argument and his optimism. The latter is false for two reasons : ( 1 ) Possibilities are potentially infinite, and God can indefinitely go on conceiving more perfect worlds; (2) the actual choice of this or that world, before creation, is not dependent upon its perfection, but upon the will of God choosing a world to suit His divine purposes. In Leibnitz’ day (18 century) philosophers followed Cartesianism or the English Empiricism, and engaged chiefly in writing explanations of prominent philosophical doctrines for the non-scientific world. This “popularizing” movement among philosophers was a notable characteristic of the age. Before mentioning the popularizers of philosophy, we may name some admirers of Leibnitz, who, however, did not faithfully adhere to his system (if, indeed, they understood it) ; and also some opponents of his system. ( I ) Leibnitz’ admirers and followers : i. Christian Wolff (1679-1754) tried to make a systematic redaction of Leibnitz’ philosophy. He doubts the Law of Pre Established Harmony in the anorganic world, but admits it in man, and denies any mutual influence or interaction between body and soul. In the anorganic world he makes monads act by attraction and repulsion. He explains the extension of bodies by positing “vacuoles” or vacuum-intervals between the monads composing bodies. Wolff is memorable for a really good division of philosophy for practical pedagogy. ii. Bernard Bilfinger (1693-1750); iii. Théophile Hansch (1683-1752); iv. Philip Thuemning (1697-1728); v. Alexander Baumgarten (1714-1762); vi. Friedrich Meier (died 1777). (2) Adversaries of Leibnitz: i. Many Christian theologians who regarded his philosophy as incompatible with Christianity. Some asserted that his Monadology denied divine liberty. Others found his doctrine on the origin and nature of evil out of accord with the divine sanctity. ii. Many naturalists and exponents of physical science who disagreed with the monad theory. iii. Many Cartesians and Sensists, and also physicists, chief of whom was a certain Clarke, with whom Leibnitz had a long epistolary correspondence on the nature of bodies and of space. (3) Popularizers of current philosophies in Leibnitz’ time: i. Samuel Pufendorf (1632-1694), of Saxony, tried to conciliate the social philosophies of DeGroot and Hobbes. ii. Walter Tschirnhausen (1651-1708), a physician and mathematician, whose doctrines are sensistic and deistic. iii. Christian Thomasius (1655-1728) followed Pufendorf in social ethics, and attacked the Scholastics and Aristoteleans generally. iv. Hermann Samuel Reimarus (1694-1768); v. Johann Nicholaus Tetens (1736-1805);

vi. Moses Mendelssohn (1729-1786); vii. Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (1729-1781). (4) To the foregoing may be joined the members of the secret society called “The Enlightened” (“Illuminati”), which was founded in 1776 to popularize deistic, sensistic, and rationalistic doctrines, and to overthrow the Christian religion. This society was formed at Ingolstadt by Adam Weishaupt, an exJesuit. It had some resemblance to and received substantial support from Freemasonry. The society was suppressed by civil edict on March 2, 1785, and Weishaupt was degraded and banished. Even after its dissolution, members of the society continued to exert an evil influence in the world of thought. The philosophers mentioned in paragraphs (3) and (4) gave origin to the so-called “Enlightenment,” or popularization of spurious philosophy, which has continued in a measure to the present day.

b) Engl ish Ideal ism. Idealism is the doctrine which denies that there is in reality an objectivity perfectly adequated to our knowledge either in the sensitive or the intellectual order. Locke’s doctrines, diffused widely in England, contain the germ of idealism, for he denies the objectivity of secondary sense-qualities, and is vague in his exposition of the objectivity of substance. Besides he is obscure in his doctrine on efficient causality, a matter intimately concerned with the philosophy of sensation and intellection. It is therefore not surprising that followers of the Lockian philosophy soon developed its latent idealism. The chief idealists in England during the 18 century were : i. George Berkeley (1684-1753), an Irishman, Protestant Bishop of Cloyne. His chief work is The Principles of Human Knowledge. ii. David Hume (1711-1776), a Scotsman, who lived in France, Austria, and Italy. He wrote treatises on Human Nature, Human Understanding, A Natural History of Religion, and An Inquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals. Berkeley and Hume took up ex professo the question of the objectivity of human knowledge. Both distinguish knowledge as sensitive and intellectual; but neither rightly discerns the formal object in each field of knowledge. Hume admits two species of perceptions : impressions and ideas. Impressions are the more vivid and strong percepts (seeing, hearing, etc.), while ideas are weaker representations or images produced in us by remembrance of impressions previously received. Both Berkeley and Hume say that a certain natural impulse makes us regard the world around us as a real and objective complexity of different bodily things, but that, when we analyze our knowledge, we are forced to deny the truth of this naive view of things. What is immediately present to us, to our knowledge, is not a real and objective world, but a complex of impressions, ideas, and images. Who can prove that anything externally objective corresponds to these subjective states? Some say. that, unless things really exist as we perceive them, God deceives us, inasmuch as he has given us lying faculties. Hume retorts that doubt of the existence of the external world induces doubt of the existence of God. Others say that we must distinguish primary and secondary qualities of bodily things, in the manner of Locke, and that the former are objective, while the latter are not, or are, at best, doubtfully objective. Hume answers that if one rejects secondary qualities as objective, one has no right to affirm the objectivity of primary qualities, for it is by and through the secondary qualities that we perceive the primary. Does anything then correspond, in the world outside us, to our subjective knowing states? Hume answers negatively. Berkeley, however, is only partially idealistic. Berkeley says that the world as we perceive it does not exist, for what we perceive is our own impressions and not external bodily substances. Therefore any discussion of so-called substances is useless in the inquiry into the nature of human knowledge. Now we know by experience that sensations and ideas are of two kinds : those that are formed and varied at will (e. g., imagination images), and those that our will cannot control or vary (e. g., a thing is perceived by looking at it, and will not change its appearance, no matter how we will to have it change; or, we know what, for example, a circle is, and no effort of will can make us understand it as anything different from a continuous curved line every point of which is equidistant from the centre). For the sensations and ideas obtruded upon us without reference to our will some outside cause must exist. This is God, who exhibits to us the ideas we are to know. The constant order, the rules according to which God manifests to us the succession of ideas, are the Laws of Nature. Besides the revealing God, there must be really existent a recipient of His revelations. This is the spirit or soul. Individual men have individual souls. Thus Berkeley acknowledges only two really existent orders : God and souls. Hume not only denies the world ; he also doubts the spiritual order acknowledged by Berkeley. He says the existence of God cannot be proved, and that examination of our subjective states reveals only a succession of impressions and ideas. Nothing, then, can be said with certainty to exist except a succession of perceptions in the order of which there is nothing causal.

c) Thomas Reid and t he Scottish School . i. Thomas Reid (1710-1796), a native of Aberdeen and a professor at the University in that city, undertook the study of philosophy with the purpose of refuting Hume. He wrote An Inquiry into the Human Mind and An Inquiry into the Intellectual Powers of Man. Reid makes an analysis of sensations and traces out their relations to ideas. This analysis proceeds in the following manner : There are three distinctions to be made in each sensation. Suppose I perceive a colored object; I must distinguish, (i) this sensation itself as distinct from other sensations; (2) the act by which I judge and affirm that this sensation is in me as its subject ; (3) the act by which I judge and affirm that this sensation is produced in me by an external cause. Corresponding to these distinctions I have, therefore, three ideas which come into play implicitly in the experiencing of every sensation, viz., (1) the idea of sensation itself; (2) the idea of subject of sensation; (3) the idea of cause of sensation. Now we acquire the idea of sensation from observation and experience; but we do not so acquire the other two (i. e., the ideas, respectively, of szibject and of cause.) Whence come these ideas? They are not innate; they are not derived from sense experience; it remains that they must come from some instinct native to man. These two ideas mean that, by natural instinct, we have knowledge of the universal truths, “Every affection or modification requires a subject,” and “Every effect requires a cause.” The instinct here mentioned Reid calls The Faculty of Inspiration and Suggestion. By this faculty we hold as certain the existence of the bodily world; the existence and identity of our proper personality; the idea of substance, cause, and the universal truths upon which all science is founded. The Faculty of Inspiration and Suggestion gives us an inevitable certitude of the existence of these things. Reid sometimes makes the Faculty blind, and sometimes seems to make it operate by immediate objective evidence.

Remarks: Reid falls into the same confusion as that into which most philosophers of his time fell, that is to say, he does not accurately distinguish sensation and intellection. He errs in supposing universal truths as known to the mind antecedently to any experience. For the rest, his Faculty of Inspiration and Suggestion is to be rejected if blind; if, however, it means only the mental necessity of assenting to first principles made obvious by immediate objective evidence, he is pretty well in agreement with Scholastic dogmatism.

ii. The Scottish School is the name applied to the philosophers (mostly professors in Scottish universities) who followed Reid’s doctrine and developed it. Most of the members of this School understand Reid’s Faculty of Inspiration and Suggestion as a blind instinct of nature; hence they say that the truths evidenced by the Faculty are inexplicably held for certain by the natural constitution of our intellect. If “to know” means to grasp a thing mentally upon ezddence, then we do not know, but only believe the truths made certain in the mind by the Faculty of Inspiration and Suggestion. Here we see that the Scottish School contained in germ the Kantian Idealism which was to run rampant through the 19 century. We notice that this School, laudably intent upon refuting Berkeley and Hume, falls into the very error it sought to disprove. Members of the Scottish School were : i. Dugald Stewart (1753-1828), who makes a determinate and limited list of truths known by the Faculty of Inspiration and Suggestion; ii. James Beattie (1735-1803), who makes common sense the basis of certitude, morality, and religion. This common sense is but another name for Reid’s Suggestion Faculty; iii. Thomas Brown (1778-1820); iv. James Mackintosh (1764-1832) ; v. William Hamilton (1788-1856).

PHILOSOPHY OF THE NINETEENTH AND TWENTIETH CENTURIES The outstanding philosophy of the 19 century was that inaugurated by Immanuel Kant in the 18. Kantianism and reactions against Kantianism characterize the philosophy of the period here discussed. The present Chapter treats of the philosophy of the 19 and 20 centuries in the following articles: Article I. Kant and His Successors; Article 2. Reactions against Kantianism; Article 3. Other Recent Philosophical Movements; Article 4. Scholasticism in Our Time. Article i. Kant and His Successors

a) Kant; b) Fichte; c) Schelling; d) Hegel;

e) Other Kantian Philosophers.

a) Immanuel Kant (1724-1804).

Life: Immanuel Kant was born at Koenigsberg, Germany, and spent most of his life there. He studied mathematics, theology, and philosophy. From 1770 to 1796 he held the chair of philosophy at the University of Koenigsberg. He achieved great fame by his writings, especially by The Critique of Pure Reason, which appeared in 1781. He died convinced that he had discovered the true philosophy, and confidently predicted that posterity would acknowledge the truth of his doctrines.

Works: Kant wrote The Critique of Pure Reason; The Critique of Practical Reason; The Critique of the Faculty of Judgment.

Doctrine: The chief influences in the formation of Kant were Descartes, Wolff, and Hume ; Scholasticism he did not know at 330