Ridling Zaine. Philosophy: Then and Now. A look back at 26 centuries of thought

Подождите немного. Документ загружается.

Ridling, Philosophy Then and Now: A Look Back at 26 Centuries of Thought

528

road to a mature philosophy, the product of a reason that is still under the

sway of feeling and imagination. This idea was taken up and applied with

learning and acuteness to the origins of Christianity by David Friedrich

Strauss (1808-74), who published in 1835, at the age of 27, a remarkable and

influential three-volume work, Das Leben Jesu (The Life of Jesus, Critically

Examined, 1846). Relying largely on internal inconsistencies in the Synoptic

Gospels, Strauss undertook to prove these books to be unacceptable as

revelation and unsatisfactory as history. He then sought to show how an

imaginative people innocent of either history or science, convinced that a

Messiah would appear, and deeply moved by a unique moral genius,

inevitably wove myths about his birth and death, his miracles, and his divine

communings.

Strauss’s thought as it affected religion was continued by the

philosophical historian Ernest Renan (1823-92) and as it affected philosophy

by the humanist Ludwig Feuerbach (1804-72) of the Hegelian left. Renan’s

Vie de Jésus (1863; Life of Jesus) did for France what Strauss’s book had done

for Germany, though the two differed greatly in character. Whereas Strauss’s

work had been an intellectual exercise in destructive criticism, Renan’s was an

attempt to reconstruct the mind of Jesus as a wholly human person – a feat of

imagination, performed with a disarming admiration and even reverence for

its subject and with a felicity of style that gave it a large and lasting audience.

Feuerbach’s Wesen des Christentums (1841; Eng. trans. by George Eliot,

Essence of Christianity, 1853) applied the myth theory even to belief in the

existence of God, holding that “man makes God in his own image.”

The fourth wave occurred in Victorian England, following the

publication in 1859 of Darwin’s Origin of Species. This book was taken as a

challenge to the authority of Scripture because there was a clear inconsistency

Ridling, Philosophy Then and Now: A Look Back at 26 Centuries of Thought

529

between the Genesis account of creation and the biological account of man’s

slow emergence from lower forms of life. The battle raged with bitterness for

several decades but died away as the theory of evolution gained more general

acceptance.

Status of Rationalism

Religious

With increasing freedom of thought and wider acceptance of scientific

views, Rationalism in religion has lost its novelty and much of its

controversial excitement. To the contemporary mind, it is too obvious to

warrant debate that reason and revelation cannot both qualify as sources of

ultimate truth for, were they to conflict, truth itself would become self-

contradictory. Hence theologians have sought accommodation through new

interpretative principles that discern different grades of authenticity within the

Scriptures and through new views of religious truth, existential rather than

cognitive, that turn from propositional dogmas to the explication of lived

human existence. Criticism of supernaturalism, however, is still carried on by

such societies as the Rationalist Press Association, in Great Britain, and the

Humanist Association, in the United States.

Ethical

Rationalism in ethics has suffered its share of criticism. Regarding its

lists of rules – on the keeping of promises, the return of loaned goods, etc. – it

has been argued, for example, that if they were specific enough to be useful

Ridling, Philosophy Then and Now: A Look Back at 26 Centuries of Thought

530

(as in the rule against lying or stealing), they would tend to have exceptions –

which no rule laid down by reason ought to have. On the other hand, if

without exceptions, they would often prove to be tautologies: the rule of

justice, for example, that we should give everyone his due would then mean

only that we should give him what is justly his. After enduring a period of

eclipse, however, during which noncognitive theories of ethics (emotive and

existential) and relativism had preempted the field, rationalistic views, which

agree in holding that moral standards do not depend upon the varying attitudes

of persons or peoples, were receiving renewed attention in the mid-20th

century. Prominent among these developments has been the “good-reasons”

approach taken by the broadly gauged scholar Stephen Toulmin, by Kurt

Baier, and others, which examines the contexts of various moral situations and

explores the kinds of justification appropriate for each.

Metaphysical

Typical of the ways of reasoning employed by Rationalists are two

approaches taken to the metaphysical doctrine that all things are connected by

internal relations: one a logical, the other a causal argument. An internal

relation is one that could not be removed without affecting the terms

themselves between which the relation holds. The argument runs: Everything

is related to everything else at least by the relation “A is different from B.” But

difference is itself an internal relation, since the terms could not remain the

same if it were removed. Hence everything is so connected with everything

else that it could not be what it is unless they were what they are. The appeal

to internal relations played an important part in the philosophies of Hegel,

F.H. Bradley, and A.N. Whitehead (1861-1947).

Ridling, Philosophy Then and Now: A Look Back at 26 Centuries of Thought

531

The other line of argument is causal. Every event, it is maintained, is

connected with every other, either directly or indirectly. Sir James Jeans

argued that if the law of gravitation is valid, a man cannot crook his little

finger without affecting the fixed stars. Here the causal relation is direct. It

can also be shown that seemingly unrelated events are joined indirectly

through their common connection with some remote historical event, by a

chain of events leading back, for example, to Columbus’ discovery of

America. But if this had been different, all of its consequences would

presumably have been different; thus an indirect and internal relation proves

to have been present.

Many Rationalists have held with Spinoza that the causal relation is

really a logical one – that a causal law, if precisely stated, would reveal a

connection in which the character of the cause logically necessitates that of its

effect; and if this is true, they maintain, the facts and events of the world must

thus compose a single rational and intelligible order.

In the 20th century, such Rationalism met with a new and unexpected

difficulty presented by quantum physics. According to the indeterminacy

principle, formulated in 1927 by the German physicist Werner Heisenberg, it

is impossible to discover with precision both the position and the velocity of a

moving electron at the same time. This implies that definite causal laws for

the behavior of these particles can never be attained, but only statistical laws

governing the behavior of immense aggregates of them. Causality, and with it

the possibility of rational understanding, seemed to be suspended in the

subatomic world. Some interpreters of the new physics, however, notably

Max Planck, Albert Einstein, and Bertrand Russell, sustained the hopes of the

Rationalists by insisting that what was excluded by the indeterminacy

Ridling, Philosophy Then and Now: A Look Back at 26 Centuries of Thought

532

principle was not the fact of causality in this realm, but only the precise

knowledge of it.

Indeed, some leaders of 20th-century science took the new

developments in physics as on the whole supporting Rationalism. Protons and

electrons, they contended, though beyond the reach of the senses, can still be

known; and their behavior, at least in groups, is increasingly found to conform

to mathematical law. In 1932, Sir James Jeans, an astrophysicist and

popularizer of science, said with a curious echo of Galileo, “the universe

appears to have been designed by a pure mathematician.”

Challenges to Epistemological Rationalism

At first glance the claim of Empiricism that knowledge must come from

sense experience seems obvious: how else could one hope to make contact

with the world around one? Consequently, Rationalism has been sharply

challenged – in the 19th century by the Empiricism of John Stuart Mill (1806-

73) and in the 20th by that of the Logical Positivists. Mill argued that all a

priori certainties are illusory: why does man believe, for example, that two

straight lines cannot enclose a space? Is it because he sees it as logically

necessary? No; it is because he has experienced so long and so unbroken a

row of instances of it – a new one whenever he sees the corner of a table or

the bordering rays of a light beam – that he has formed the habit of thinking in

this way and is now unable to break it. A priori propositions, Mill claimed, are

merely empirical statements of very high generality.

This theory has now been abandoned by most Empiricists themselves.

Its implication that such statements as “2 + 2 = 4” are only probably true and

Ridling, Philosophy Then and Now: A Look Back at 26 Centuries of Thought

533

may have exceptions has proved quite unconvincing. The Rationalist’s

rejoinder is that one cannot, no matter how hard one tries, conceive 2 + 2 as

making 5; for its equalling 4 is necessary. But a priori knowledge is also

universal. Neither of these two characteristics can be accounted for by sense

experience. That a crow is black can be perceived, but not that it must be

black or that crows will always be black; no run of perceptions, however long,

could assure us of such truths. On the other hand, a priori truths can be seen

with certainty – that if a figure, for instance, is a plane triangle within a

Euclidean space, its angles must and always will equal two right angles.

Perhaps the most formidable challenge to Rationalism has come in the

20th century from such Logical Positivists as the Oxford Empiricist A.J. Ayer

(1910- ) and Rudolf Carnap (1891-1970), who had been a central figure in the

Vienna Circle, where this movement first arose. Unlike Mill, they accepted a

priori knowledge as certain; but they laid down a new challenge – the denial

of its philosophic importance. A priori propositions, they said, are (1)

linguistic, (2) conventional, and (3) analytic: (1) they are statements primarily

of how one proposes to use words; if one says that “a straight line is the

shortest line between two points,” this merely reports one’s definition of

“straight” and declares one’s purpose to use it only of the shortest. (2) Being a

definition, such a statement expresses a convention to which there are

alternatives; it may be defined in terms of the paths of light rays if one

chooses. (3) The statement is analytic in that it merely repeats in its predicate

a part or the whole of the subject term and hence tells nothing new; it is not a

statement about nature but about meanings only. And since Rationalistic

systems depend throughout upon statements of this kind, their importance is

illusory.

Ridling, Philosophy Then and Now: A Look Back at 26 Centuries of Thought

534

To this clear challenge some leading Rationalists have replied as

follows: (1) Positivists have confused real with verbal definition. A verbal

definition does indeed state what a word means; but a real definition states

what an object is, and the thought of a straight line is the thought of an object,

not of words. (2) The Positivists have confused conventions in thought with

conventions in language. One is free to vary the language in which a

proposition is expressed, but not the proposition itself. Start with the concept

of a straight line, and there is no alternative to accepting it as the shortest. (3)

Some a priori statements are admittedly analytic, but many are not. In

“whatever is colored is extended,” color and extension are two different

concepts of which the first entails the second, but is not identical with it in

whole or part. Contemporary Rationalists therefore hold that the a priori has

emerged victorious from the Empiricists’ efforts to discredit such knowledge

and the Positivists’ attempts to trivialize it.

Utilitarianism

The fundamental principle of Utilitarianism, a tradition in ethics

stemming from the late 18th- and 19th-century English philosophers and

economists Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill, is that an action is right if it

tends to promote happiness and wrong if it tends to produce the reverse of

happiness – not just the happiness of the performer of the action but that of

everyone affected by it. Such a theory is in opposition to egoism, the view that

a man should pursue his own self-interest, even at the expense of others, and

to any ethical theory that regards some acts or types of acts as right or wrong

independently of their consequences. Utilitarianism also differs from ethical

theories that make the rightness or wrongness of an act dependent upon the

Ridling, Philosophy Then and Now: A Look Back at 26 Centuries of Thought

535

motive of the agent; for, according to the Utilitarian, it is possible for the right

thing to be done from a bad motive.

The Nature of Utilitarianism

Utilitarianism is an effort to provide an answer to the practical question

“What ought a man to do?” Its answer is that he ought to act so as to produce

the best consequences possible.

Basic Concepts

In the notion of consequences the Utilitarian includes all of the good and

bad produced by the act, whether arising after the act has been performed or

during its performance. If the difference in the consequences of alternative

acts is not great, some Utilitarians do not regard the choice between them as a

moral issue. According to Mill, acts should be classified as morally right or

wrong only if the consequences are of such significance that a person would

wish to see the agent compelled, not merely persuaded and exhorted, to act in

the preferred manner.

In assessing the consequences of actions, Utilitarianism relies upon

some theory of intrinsic value: something is held to be good in itself, apart

from further consequences, and all other values are believed to derive their

worth from their relation to this intrinsic good as a means to an end. Bentham

and Mill were hedonists; i.e., they analyzed happiness as a balance of pleasure

over pain and believed that these feelings alone are of intrinsic value and

disvalue. Utilitarians also assume that it is possible to compare the intrinsic

Ridling, Philosophy Then and Now: A Look Back at 26 Centuries of Thought

536

values produced by two alternative actions and to estimate which would have

better consequences. Bentham believed that a hedonic calculus is theoretically

possible. A moralist, he maintained, could sum up the units of pleasure and

the units of pain for everyone likely to be affected, immediately and in the

future, and could take the balance as a measure of the overall good or evil

tendency of an action. Such precise measurement as Bentham envisioned is

perhaps not essential, but it is nonetheless necessary for the Utilitarian to

make some interpersonal comparisons of the values of the effects of

alternative courses of action.

Methodologies

As a normative system providing a standard by which an individual

ought to act and by which the existing practices of society, including its moral

code, ought to be evaluated and improved, Utilitarianism cannot be verified or

confirmed in the way in which a descriptive theory can; but it is not regarded

by its exponents as simply arbitrary. Bentham believed that only in terms of a

Utilitarian interpretation do words such as “ought,” “right,” and “wrong” have

meaning and that whenever anyone attempts to combat the principle of utility,

he does so with reasons drawn from the principle itself. Bentham and Mill

both believed that human actions are motivated entirely by pleasure and pain;

and Mill saw that motivation as a basis for the argument that, since happiness

is the sole end of human action, the promotion of happiness is the test by

which to judge all human conduct.

One of the leading Utilitarians of the late 19th century, a Cambridge

philosopher, Henry Sidgwick, rejected their theories of motivation as well as

Ridling, Philosophy Then and Now: A Look Back at 26 Centuries of Thought

537

Bentham’s theory of the meaning of moral terms and sought to support

Utilitarianism by showing that it follows from systematic reflection on the

morality of “common sense.” Most of the requirements of commonsense

morality, he argued, could be based upon Utilitarian considerations. In

addition, he reasoned that Utilitarianism could solve the difficulties and

perplexities that arise from the vagueness and inconsistencies of

commonsense doctrines.

Most opponents of Utilitarianism have held that it has implications

contrary to their moral intuitions – that considerations of utility, for example,

might sometimes sanction the breaking of a promise. Much of the defense of

Utilitarian ethics has consisted in answering these objections, either by

showing that Utilitarianism does not have the implications that they claim it

has or by arguing against the moral intuitions of its opponents. Some

Utilitarians, however, have sought to modify the Utilitarian theory to account

for the objections.

Criticisms

One such criticism is that, although the widespread practice of lying and

stealing would have bad consequences, resulting in a loss of trustworthiness

and security, it is not certain that an occasional lie to avoid embarrassment or

an occasional theft from a rich man would not have good consequences, and

thus be permissible or even required by Utilitarianism. But the Utilitarian

readily answers that the widespread practice of such acts would result in a loss

of trustworthiness and security. To meet the objection to not permitting an

occasional lie or theft, some philosophers have defended a modification