Synthesis
Chapter 17: Understanding Nature and Misunderstanding Human Nature
The Reformation restored the Biblical-dramatic modes of thought and reclaimed knowledge of those aspects of human nature which were obscured by either the classical-medieval ontology or the classical identification of the self with its mind.
The Renaissance separated out the classical elements from the medieval synthesis. It therefore initiated all those forces and tendencies in modern thought which either equated mind with self and derived virtue from reason, or which tried to understand the self in the context of some ontological framework. Naturally the Renaissance also restored the capacities for rational discrimination which characterized a classical culture and which, expanded by modern
scientific technics have contributed so much to the modern man’s understanding of his world and of himself within the limits of the culture’s dogmas. However, the modern movement developed two characteristics which were not anticipated in the classical world view. The first is the idea of a temporal development of both nature and history. This progressive view had its rise in the optimism of the Renaissance which expected human reason to march to new
triumphs, once reason escaped from the prison house of ecclesiastical authority. This optimism was fed by a multitude of real and spurious causes until it became the dominant principle of interpretation for the understanding of both nature and human nature. The discovery of the growth of historical forms, implied in the thought of the Roman Lucretius but not able to break
through the cyclical dogma of the classical age, gave a great impetus to the idea of progress. It turned the cycles into spirals in early Renaissance historiography, thus transmuting the classical into the modern view of historical reality. The discovery of the development of historical forms was supplemented by the later discovery of development in biological structures. Darwin’s biology seemed to provide the final key for the understanding of the world.
It also accentuated a second characteristic of modern culture, not evident in the classical world- view which it ostensibly restored. That was the interest in nature and the consequent or at least ancillary conviction that nature as a system is the ultimate reality to which man must orient himself. A naturalistic ontology was a subordinate element in classical culture. But Plato and Aristotle triumphed over the early naturalists or "atomists," and naturalism never became a serious option for men throughout the history of Western culture until the phenomenal triumphs of modern science and its conquest of nature seemed to make it plausible. Man was understood as a part of nature. Thus modern culture marched inexorably toward the understanding of nature and the misunderstanding of man. For it not only tried to contain human freedom within an ontological framework but it conceived that framework in naturalistic terms, which is to say, in terms which denied the freedom of the self and falsified the drama of history more consistently than any other ontology. A special ironic touch is given to this development by the fact that it was partly due to the "empirical"method of modern science which was intended to ascertain the
"facts" by careful observation and to discount the "deductive" method which was based on confidence in the strict rationality of reality and upon the consequent validity of proceeding from the known to the unknown by rational deduction.
In the words of Francis Bacon, the father of modern empiricism "Our method is continually to dwell on things soberly. . .to establish forever a true and legitimate union between the
experimental and the rational faculty. . .Those therefore who are determined, not to conjecture or guess, but to find out and know; not to invent fables and romances of the world, but to look and dissect the nature of the real world must consult only things themselves."
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This empirical ambition, which is responsible for all the triumphs of the natural sciences, was directed equally by Bacon and his followers against both the Aristotelian rationalism and the Christianauthoritarianism in the medieval synthesis. It gave modern culture a special animus against
"dogma." But unfortunately it was not prepared to deal with the hidden dogmas in the
prescriptions of science itself. It was therefore not prepared for the illusions which spread in the name of "empiricism." It is important to consult the evidence of "things themselves." But
inquiries can not be undertaken without presuppositions or what President Conant defines as
"conceptual schemes." These conceptual schemes are the hidden dogmas. They are usually the more potent for being implicit rather than explicit. "Science," declares President Conant, "is an interconnected series of concepts and conceptual schemes, which have developed as a result of observation and experimentation, and are fruitful of further experimentation and observation."
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Conant’s regard for the necessity of "conceptual schemes" reveals the impossibility of
observing the "things themselves" without a frame of meaning for the inquiry. Among natural scientists these conceptual schemes are assumed to be limited and to be subject to constant re- examination in the light of empirical evidence; for empirical observation may prove the
tentative conceptual scheme to be at variance with the facts. Thus the first empirical science of the modern period, astronomy, invalidated the conceptual scheme underlying Ptolemaic and Aristotelian astronomy by the evidence of facts which pointed to a different astronomical order than had been assumed in the older pre-Copernican astronomy. From that day to this, it has been assumed that it is a fairly simple procedure to change conceptual schemes when the
evidence of the "facts" discredits them. But an "empirical" culture was not prepared to deal with the problem of wide, rather than specific, conceptual schemes, that is, with presuppositions of inquiry which referred not to a specific type of being under scrutiny, but with the very character of being itself. Ideally these conceptual schemes were subject to re-examination; but practically they proved themselves powerful enough to determine the evidence by which they were
supposed to be tested. Thus Professor John Dewey, the most typical of modern naturalistic philosophers, never tired of insisting that the "experimental method" must be rigorous enough to re-examine its own hypotheses. But it never occurred to him that his insistence that the
"methods of science" could be transferred from the field of nature to that of history, and that only the intrusion of irrelevant religious and political authority prevented this consummation, rested upon an erroneous and, unexamined presupposition. That was the universally held belief of modern culture that the realm of history was essentially identical with the realm of nature.
This belief reduced history to the realm of necessity and obscured the freedom of man and the reality of the drama of history.
Two figures dominated the thought of the seventeenth century and contrived between them in their diverse ways to develop Renaissance thought in the direction which finally resulted in modern culture. They were Thomas Hobbes and Rene Descartes. They had quite different views of human nature but both contrived to sow the seeds which flowered in later confusion about the character of the human self.
Thomas Hobbes did not share the confidence of modernity in "reason" as the source of human virtue. In that respect he was not typically modern. His realism, not to say cynicism, probably established the difference between the realism of our political sciences in contrast to the more prevalent illusions about human nature in social sciences. "Reason" in Hobbes’ esteem was the servant of the egoistic self. It was not therefore, as for all rationalists, the instrument of justice and the guarantor of universal, as contrasted with partial and parochial, values. It was "reason"
which made the difference between the harmonies of nature and the competitions within the human community. For reason was responsible for the inordinancy of all human desires. It justified men in following their interests with a consistency which made conflict with their fellow men inevitable and necessitated a tyrannical government in the interest of social harmony. We must postpone for the moment a consideration of the relation of realism with political conservatism in Hobbes, which has persuaded all typical children of the Enlightenment that it is necessary to encourage at least mild illusions about human nature for the purpose of
validating democracy. Our present concern is with Hobbes’ empiricism, and with the ancillary naturalism, not to say, "materialism" in his thought. Hobbes was more rigorous than any
eighteenth-century French materialist in reducing reality to corporeal dimensions and in
dismissing every other type of reality as "fantasy." He declares: "That a ‘man is a living body,’
we mean not that ‘man’ is one thing and ‘living body’ another thing and ‘is’ or ‘being’ a third;
but that ‘man and living body’ are the same thing . . .the consequence ‘if he be a man he is a living body’ is a true consequence, signified by the word ‘is’. . . Therefore ‘to walk,’ ‘to be speaking,’ ‘to see’; also ‘walking,’ ‘speaking,’ ‘sight,’ ‘life’ and the like signify just the same and are the names of nothing."
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Hobbes’ polemic against "fantasies" includes every kind of abstract concept or generalization which describes any "fact" of nature and history above the level of sense object, or discrete event. It fully reveals the ontological implications of a rigorous empiricism. Naturally every aspect of selfhood beyond the dimension of the "living body" is excluded from his system. So, too, are all historic generalizations which describe some pattern of history.
Descartes, the other and greater figure in the thought of the seventeenth century, was very
conscious of that dimension of selfhood which rose above Hobbes’ "living body." But he was as concerned as was Hobbes to banish religious fancies and credulities from the realm of
knowledge. This he did by rigorously separating the mind from the body, assuming that the depth of selfhood which was not contained in a mechanically conceived body would be described in the definition of "res cogitans." His "Cogito ergo sum" is obviously indebted to Augustine’s speculations about the certainty of self-knowledge. But the sum of Descartes’
thought comes out at a refurbishing of Aristotelian rationalism, in contrast to Hobbes’ rigorous anti-Aristotelian ism. In his Passions of the Soul in which he distinguishes the passions which have their origin in "animal spirits" and those which are subject to the mind, he reveals the difficulty of destroying the idea of the unity of the self, inherited from Hebraic-Christian culture so that the mind may be fitted into a system of rational coherence and the body take its place in a mechanically conceived "nature."
Naturally there is little more awareness of an integral selfhood than in Hobbes, and the type of knowledge which Descartes insists upon for the sake of certainty, as contrasted with credulous imaginings, could not grasp historical realities any more than Hobbes’ empiricism. Descartes however was typical and generative of two characteristics of modern culture. His passion for exact knowledge laid the foundation for the achievements of modern science; and his
confidence in the mind’s control over "passions" restored the classical idea of reason as a source of virtue. "Even those who have the weakest souls," he declares, "can acquire a very absolute empire over their passions, provided they employ sufficient skill in the management and guidance of them."5
The French Enlightenment managed to forget Hobbes’ realistic account of human self-interest,
to adopt his materialism and to compound it with Cartesian rationalism The result was a fanaticism in time name of "reason" and of "nature," which was to offer indubitable proof that the worship of "reason" as the source of virtue and of order both within the individual and in the community was certainly not conducive to that "reasonableness," which Montaigne extolled in skeptical reaction to Catholic rationalism. Nothing in Western history proves more conclusively that there is a great distinction between the use of reason for the sake of making discriminate judgements and the worship of "reason" as the source of virtue. Every error which infects a modern liberal culture in its estimate of the human situation — and most of the errors which reached a tragic culmination in modern totalitarianism in the name of "science" — were hatched in the French Enlightenment. History was simply equated with "nature" and regarded as subject to "nature’s laws." These laws were regarded as fixed and inviolable as anything in nature; and therefore subject to "reason’s" analysis. All the illusions of the type of social science which would destroy ideological taints in historical judgements by stricter scientific procedures, were anticipated in the Enlightenment. It had no awareness of the self’s capacity to influence the mind or of the inability of any mind to give a rationally compelling account of historical reality.
Therefore it equated "reason" and "nature" sometimes because it believed nature itself to be
"rational" and sometimes because it believed it to be subject to the rational control of man. It was only necessary for reason to discern the laws of nature to accomplish this object. This confusion led inter alia to the economy of the physiocrats, who not only believed that the knowledge of the laws of nature would free men of all irrelevant political control, but also that an enlightened despot might be necessary to accomplish this emancipation. All these confusions led to what has been defined as "totalitarian democracy."
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The irony of the fact that the worship of reason resulted in Jacobin fanaticism and cruelty; and that a nation which imagined itself emancipated from religious fanaticism should fall so quickly into a new fanaticism, informed by a very religious anti-religious rationalism, has not been fully appreciated by all post-revolutionary "liberalism." It still adheres to absurd notions about the perfectability of man, chiefly of his reason. It refuses to admit the plain evidence of history, that democracy is necessary because man’s reason is corrupt, that is, corrupted by his interests.
Therefore it is not possible to trust anyone with unchecked power or to allow any position in the community to remain unchallenged. The Enlightenment spawned every illusion which produced despotism in the name of liberty, civil war in the name of fraternity, and superstitious and
uncritical politics in the name of reason. Thus Condorcet criticized the classical age for its
"empiricism," and rejected Montesquieu’s relativism as being based too much on geographic factors and neglecting the immutable conditions or "necessities" of human nature and the
"rights" which were allegedly derived from them. Probably no era in modern history has been at once more insistent upon restoring the credos of a classical rationalism, and more engulfed in confusion about the nature of the human self and its dramas, than the period of the French Revolution. That is, among others, the reason why the promises of the French Revolution remain unfulfilled in France to the present day. The unhappy nation is still unable to find stability in the perpetual conflict between social forces which are informed by contrasting rationalistic illusions. The one force rejects, and the other accepts, the doctrine of man’s
perfectability. The one regards the Church, and the other holds reason, to be the fountain of truth. But neither is capable of that charity and accommodation to the other which makes community possible. So the French Revolution remains unresolved in France after more than a century of history. Evidently the abstract principles of the "dignity" of man and of his right to
"liberty" are not as fruitful in creating a free society as the wisdom which recognizes the
modicum of truth in error and the modicum of error in the truth of every political credo, and as the sense of community which overarches the political conflict in a healthy society and robs it of its venom.
The nineteenth century added little to the wisdom of the contrasting types of naturalists who both regarded history as identical with the realm of nature, the one believing that men should not interfere with its laws and the other seeing in sociology the power of a "scientific" mastery of history by man. Herbert Spencer was the proponent of the one theory and Auguste Comte of the other. Darwinian biology gave rise to a "social Darwinism" which seemed to give an added scientific prestige to the physiocratic theory, with the difference however that men were warned against interference not with the "harmonies" of nature but with the "struggle for survival." In America, William Graham Sumner was the most prominent proponent of the theory of social Darwinism, warning that "the law of the survival of the fittest is not man-made, and can not be abrogated by man."7 Lester Ward, on the other hand, propounded the philosophy, or rather sociology, of Comte, with equally absurd conclusions. He was convinced that a proper engagement of "disinterested intelligence and scientific investigation" would enable
"sociocracy" to replace monarchy, aristocracy and plutocracy. This rule of the "whole of the people," to be distinguished from the "majority of the people," which characterized
conventional democracy, would be made possible by the triumph of scientific intelligence over all partial and parochial viewpoints. Both Sumner and Ward abjured metaphysics. Yet it is apparent that the "scientific method" played the same role as the guarantor of the absolute as the Aristotelian nous. Modern empiricism, whether it regarded man as merely the creature or as the creator of history, evidently understood little about the endless competitions of interest in the drama of history and the impossibility of resolving these conflicts by the application of
"disinterested intelligence." In short, it had learned nothing from the refutations by history of the illusions of the French Enlightenment. Decades were required to deliver our social sciences from the naivete of this new empiricism, so ignorant of the real character of the human self and of time historical drama.
The idealistic reaction to the naturalism of the Enlightenment in the nineteenth century supposedly cherished the unique spiritual qualities of man in its "idealistic" ontology. Hegel, particularly, dominated the thought of the nineteenth century. He managed to create a very imposing system of thought which combined elements of classical rationalism, Christian piety and the modern idea of a progressive history. Hegel’s early writings reveal some awareness of what Kierkegaard defined later as the "existing individual"; his hopes, anxieties and
frustrations. Furthermore, a deposit of Biblical Christian awareness of selfhood, particularly of the uniqueness of the self’s self-consciousness, made it necessary for Hegel to go through