Andrew S. Curran on Diderot

Andrew S. Curran, author of the acclaimed Diderot and the Art of Thinking Freely (Other Press, 2019), was the guest speaker in a virtual meeting of the Greater Boston Humanists on 22 November 2020 titled 'Enlightenment, Atheism, and Race'. 

From today's perspective Diderot can be seen as more progressive than Voltaire and Rousseau. The concept of the 'Radical Enlightenment' was discussed, as well as the origins and causes of modern racism. This was an excellent presentation with exceptionally intelligent audience participation.

Curran is also the author of The Anatomy of Blackness: Science and Slavery in an Era of Enlightenment (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2013).

Max Horkheimer on Montaigne

Max Horkheimer's take on Montaigne is far harsher than that of Ivan Sviták. (See previous post and Sviták's essay on Montaigne.)

Horkheimer, Max. "Montaigne and the Function of Skepticism" (1938), in Between Philosophy and Social Science: Selected Early Writings, translated by G. Frederick Hunter, Matthew S. Kramer and John Torpey (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 1993), pp. 265-311.

Horkheimer sees skepticism, especially in the bourgeois period, as fundamentally conservative. He lays out the contemporaneous situation viz. the rising bourgeoisie, intensification of labor exploitation, the rise of Protestantism and its effect on Catholicism, the indictment of Montaigne by fellow-reactionary Pascal. Horkheimer analyzes skepticism as bourgeois inwardness, religion as the indispensable irrationalist undergirding of bourgeois rationalist existence, Hume's skepticism as liberal bourgeois status quo, the skeptical ego (290) esp. from the early bourgeois to the imperialist epoch, skepticism's adaptation to tyranny, transformation of skepticism into conformism, nationalism and fascism in 1938, hatred of the masses and celebration of Montaigne in the 19th century, Nietzsche's admiration for Montaigne (303-4), Dilthey's conservatism and advocacy of Montaigne, D.F. Strauss's demythologization of Christianity and its compatibility with authoritarianism, Hegel's dialectics as a way out, materialist dialectics vs. the unity of thought and history.

Here are a few choice quotes:

 "Just as bourgeois individuals reserve philosophy for their leisure hours and thus turn it into idle thought, knowledge and critique are isolated in the society as particular aspects of business." [p. 289]

"The idiocy of the notion that an individual or collectivity can save itself or the world by conciliation with the spreading rule of violence has now become so patently obvious that it can only be understood as a thinly veiled sympathy with that rule, or as an anxiety about sunk capital." [p. 293]

"The further society develops, the more obviously this principle [bourgeois equality], and with it that of bourgeois freedom, reveal their internal contradictions. The continued dominance of this principle, the skeptical rejection of revolutionary activity, and the hostility toward critique of the totality thus have something cynical about them. They reveal subordination to irrational relations, not integration into rational ones." [p. 295]

"Skepticism is a pathological form of intellectual independence: it is immune to truth as well as to untruth." [p. 307]

Conclusion:

"To be sure, it is typical of skepticism, as well as of the dominant character as such, to ascribe the vulgar motives--according to which alone the rulers of the world act--not to them and their principle, but to the idea of humanity itself. The difference here is that the critical theory which we espouse, in contrast to skepticism, does not make an antitheoretical absolutism of the insight into the inadequacy of things as they are and the transitoriness of cognition. Instead, even in the face of pessimistic assessments, critical theory is guided by the unswerving interest in a better future." [p. 311]

For noteworthy philosophical generalizations see esp. pp. 270-4, 278-9, 284-5, 290, 295.

Ivan Sviták on Montaigne

Once again:

Sviták, Ivan. The Dialectic of Common Sense: The Master Thinkers. Washington, DC: University Press of America, 1979.

This volume covers Montaigne, Voltaire, and Holbach (also published separately). I have added a link to the essay on Montaigne, which comprises pp. 1-42 of this book. The link is to a PDF file consisting of images of the text rather than true text.

It is a curious take on Montaigne, both praising him to the skies and analyzing the historical context and obsolescence of his philosophy. I am sure that this reflects Sviták's predicament under Stalinism. The extreme intellectual measures undertaken to escape reification remind me of Merab Mamardashvili in the USSR in a certain respect.

Ivan Sviták on Baron D'Holbach et al

New on my website:

Sviták, Ivan. Baron d’Holbach, Philosopher of Common Sense, translated by Jarmila Veltrusky. Chico: California State University, 1976. 76 pp. (Translated from Filosof zdravého rozumu, Holbach.)

In April I found this monograph on Holbach written by the dissident Czech Marxist philosopher Ivan Sviták (1925-1994) apparently just prior to the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968. I've now read it, following up on Philipp Blom's A Wicked Company, and here it is. This is an excellent analysis of both Holbach's historically innovative perspective and his limitations as a bourgeois revolutionary thinker. Svitak takes up where Blom leaves off conceptually. Note also that Sviták has a sophisticated historical perspective on religion.

Sviták, Ivan. The Dialectic of Common Sense: The Master Thinkers. Washington, DC: University Press of America, 1979. ii, 217 pp. (Front matter only.)

This volume includes studies of Montaigne, Voltaire, and Holbach. The Holbach study is the same as the aforementioned monograph on Holbach.

Both publications include information on the persecution of Sviták at the hands of the Stalinist Czech government. Sviták found refuge at California State University, Chico.

See also:

• The Perspectives of Philosophy (1956) by Ivan Sviták
• “The Sources of Socialist Humanism” (1963) by Ivan Sviták
• "Anthropological Conditions of Modern Culture" (1964): Conclusion by Ivan Sviták

Wicked Company: Holbach's salon, Diderot, & friends (4)

This is the final installment of my review of A Wicked Company: The Forgotten Radicalism of the European Enlightenment by Philipp Blom.

As chapter 18 ends, we find Diderot and Holbach fortunate to die before the onslaught of the French Revolution for which their writings helped pave the way.

Both Diderot and the baron were interred in the ossuarium, a cryptlike room underneath the same altar, together with other famous Frenchmen, such as their friend Claude-Adrien Helvétius, the grand salon hostess Marie-Thérèse de Geoffrin, the great landscape artist André le Nôtre, and the dramatist Pierre Corneille.

During the Revolution, the burial place was ransacked, and the remains were torn from their resting places and scattered across the room. The rebels of the 1871 Paris Commune repeated this blasphemous ritual, and while the bones are still lying in the ossuarium, it was judged impossible to determine the parts of the individual skeletons.

After this chapter comes the "Epilogue: A Stolen Revolution." While Jonathan Israel has advanced the notion of the Radical Enlightenment in a series of scholarly works, Blom has told the story in a popular format. His Epilogue makes his intervention even more radical. This book should be put into as many hands as possible, but it also provides food for thought for more erudite readers.

I lack a detailed knowledge of the French Revolution beyond scattered facts, so Blom provides for me at least quite a revelation and quite an important one. Maximilien Robespierre is unequivocally condemned as a betrayer of the Radical Enlightenment. Considering the complex political mess of the revolutionary period, I won't comment on Robespierre's role in the dictatorship and Terror. Of interest in Blom's account is the emphasis that the most ruthless and violent acts, including those against the Catholic establishment, were not carried out by atheists, and that atheists themselves were executed for being such. Catholicism was supplanted not by atheism but by deism, Robespierre's Cult of the Supreme Being. In the process Robespierre practically deified Rousseau. Robespierre established elaborate festivals in honor of the Goddess of Reason. These details are most revealing:

With an immense flair for classicist bombast and ideological kitsch, the painter Jacques-Louis David, the chief decorator of the Revolution, designed huge, papier-mâché statues of Virtue, Liberty, and Nature—the latter endowed with multiple breasts that dispersed refreshing water, which was drunk out of a common chalice by eighty-six old men symbolizing the departments of France. On 20 Prairial Year II of the new calendar (June 8, 1794, to the uninitiated), Robespierre held a public ceremony for the Supreme Being in the Tuileries gardens. Attended by a crowd of thousands, it included not only a lengthy sermon by Robespierre but also the ritual burning of a statue of Atheism, the charred debris of which revealed an effigy of Truth—unfortunately blackened by smoke.

Implementing his new religion, Robespierre brooked no opposition, even from the dead. On December 5, 1792, the very day on which he was to give his famous speech demanding the execution of King Louis XVI, he had ordered the removal and smashing of a bust of Helvétius, which had been standing in the Jacobin Club next to an effigy of Rousseau. Helvétius had been celebrated by some Revolutionaries as a proponent of reasonable, republican government.

Note also:

After Robespierre’s fall and execution in 1794, the fortunes of Holbach, Helvétius, and Diderot were revived very briefly by the left-leaning Gracchus Babeuf, whose political thinking would today be described as egalitarianism, perhaps even Socialism. But Babeuf’s attempt to gain control of the reeling ship of state, the “Conspiracy of Equals,” was betrayed, and so was he. During his trial in 1797, he frequently cited Diderot as an inspiration, to no other effect than that Denis was regarded posthumously as a dangerous enemy of the people.

Diderot's posthumous reputation was subject either to neglect or calumny. Adulterated versions of his work were published. Uncorrupted versions of his texts saw light in the latter part of the 19th century. Other unpublished manuscripts remained hidden until well into the 20th century. Aside from the fragmentary publication of Diderot's works, the conditions under which he worked also fostered fragmentation.

His work remained eclectic, partly because he was as much an author of fiction and a talker as he was a systematic writer. Both of these factors conspired against Diderot’s recognition as an important thinker. The nineteenth century was the period of great systematic works, of Kant’s Critiques, Hegel’s grand expositions, Marx and his Capital. Diderot simply did not fit the mold: His best thoughts are to be found in his letters, his fiction, his writings on art, and his essays on other works.

Diderot published no great work of systematic philosophy that could have established his reputation in a climate obsessed with all-embracing answers. In addition to the heterogeneity of his writings, his constant, teasing ambivalence makes it impossible to read the philosophe as a dogmatic author. His work sparkles and often provokes—ultimately leaving the reader alone to make up her own mind. As a result, even historians and philosophers who should be his natural allies have too often overlooked him. The French writer Michel Onfray, for instance, has created a publishing sensation with his Contre-histoire de la philosophie, which concentrates on materialist and atheist authors. In his book Les ultras de lumières (The “Ultras” of the Enlightenment) he devotes entire chapters to personal heroes such as La Mettrie, Meslier, Helvétius, and Holbach—but not Diderot.

Holbach's work was systematic, but having appeared under various pseudonyms under the threat of repression, the establishment of authorship did not come quickly or easily. Holbach's unremitting atheism and materialism kept him out of the philosophical canon. He remained generally obscure, though he had his admirers such as Marx.

The Soviet Union pulled the radical Enlighteners—Holbach, Diderot, and Helvétius—out of the shadows and made them prominent figures of honor. Blom sees the Soviet social order as having had more in common with Rousseau than with the Radical Enlightenment.The fall of the Soviet bloc on top of the rise of postmodernism again relegated Holbach to obscurity. Blom reiterates that philosophical historiography initiated in the 19th century followed that century as the age of German idealism—Kant and Hegel. The Radical Enlightenment continues to be sidelined.

Here Blom interjects his most radical thesis:

The Enlightenment applauded and required by the capitalist and imperialist nineteenth century was a moderate version represented by Voltaire, who had always known on which side his bread was buttered, and by the exponents of Idealism, particularly Immanuel Kant. The question at issue here was skepticism. The Enlightenment radicals had argued that there is no grand, metaphysical Truth and that consequently the only valuable knowledge is based on evidence: Do what is useful; avoid what is harmful to yourself or others.

While this moral teaching had the advantage of being simple and easily understood, it was a thorn in the side of Europe’s and America’s burgeoning capitalist societies and their colonial empires. Implacably opposed to the “conspiracy of the priests and magistrates,” to national claims of superiority, to the exploitation of the poor and the oppression of peoples on foreign shores, the radicals stood against the intellectual tide of the century.

The nineteenth century needed a philosophical tradition that justified the colonial enterprise as well as the industrial exploitation of cheap labor, and it turned to the moderate, rationalist Enlightenment to provide it by giving a philosophical justification of religious faith. Meslier, Diderot, and Holbach had pointed out how organized religion leads to an unholy union of priests and magistrates, and the great bourgeois societies of the nineteenth century drew their authority and their social hierarchy out of precisely this union. Historians of philosophy on both sides of the Atlantic therefore emphasized an ultimately deist, religious eighteenth century, with Kant and Voltaire as its greatest exponents.

In this model of history, Immanuel Kant fulfilled a similar function for the eighteenth century as René Descartes had for the seventeenth: His grand metaphysical investigation left open a door through which God could be introduced back into philosophy. Kant argued that our senses determine how the world appears to us and that we may never be able to perceive things as they really are, the “things in themselves.” But instead of accepting that we cannot know anything beyond our perception and that it makes no sense to talk about what we cannot know, he conjectured a purely essential, spiritual reality that is inaccessible to human understanding, a reality in which we might imagine a deity beyond the grasp of the senses. One can read Kant safely without compromising one’s religious beliefs, which can always be safely tucked away among the “things in themselves.” Voltaire, the wit and critical commentator opposed to religious excess, fitted equally well into the designs of a civilization that saw itself as scientific and rationalist, without being antireligious or unpatriotic.

It is worth understanding this idea of rationalism, of scientific reason in harmony with the possibility of religious faith, which still dominates our understanding of the Enlightenment. Kant’s idea of pure reason not only was a field of philosophical research but also represented a cultural ideal: If only we could rationalize the world in its entirety, if only we could rid ourselves of animal instinct and unreasoning impulse, the world would be a better place.

Wow! In this scenario, the Radical Enlightenment has been virtually wiped out of historical memory. Blom sees the Moderate Enlightenment (and deism with it) as an idealized rationalism akin to theology, while the Radical Enlightenment not only strips teleology from the universe but expresses severe skepticism about the ultimate rationality of human beings.

The soft Enlightenment of Voltaire and Kant was highly commensurate with bourgeois values. Reason was celebrated but confined to science, where it did not threaten to violate the sacred grove of religion. Ideally, the human mind was seen as abstract and pure. Merged with faith, it formed the heavy trap door under which the continual guilt of desire and passion was shut away once again in a distasteful souterrain of human nature.

And there's more:

After all, the goal of industrialization was to rationalize society as far as possible; to optimize manufacturing processes, such as division of labor and the assembly line; and to achieve the increasingly efficient planning and control of everything from transport and leisure to sex, punishment, and entertainment. The era that built the greatest railway stations and factories also erected the largest prisons, all according to the same organizing principles of tightly managed production and supply. When the twentieth-century Marxist scholars Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno published their Dialectic of Enlightenment in 1947, they had witnessed (and escaped) the most monstrous travesty of this logic: the fully industrialized murder of human beings in Nazi extermination camps.

Wow and wow! I will comment on this forthwith, but one final quote on the Radical Enlightenment, from the sixth final paragraph of the Epilogue:

The radical humanism emanating from their works was read and understood by a small band of exceptional minds, among them not only the poets Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (who loved Diderot but detested Holbach), Heinrich Heine, and Percy Bysshe Shelley, but also Karl Marx, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Sigmund Freud.

Stephen Eric Bronner, I, and others have had problems with Dialectic of Enlightenment. As Bronner has argued, the work supplants concrete historical analysis with an abstract, metaphysical historical perspective which also does injustice to the Enlightenment, which Bronner has defended most notably in his book Reclaiming the Enlightenment: Toward a Politics of Radical Engagement. Amazingly, Blom leaves the thesis of Horkheimer and Adorno untouched, but lays the blame on the Moderate Enlightenment! This is quite a radical statement, cutting through the prevailing ideological climate of our time.

It is possible, as critics of Jonathan Israel have asserted, that the political alignments and cleavage between the Radical and Moderate Enlightenment are too neatly schematized. Yet the emphasis on the social values of the Radical Enlightenment cannot be underestimated, given the attacks on the Enlightenment not only by the theocratic fascists of the right, but by the left bourgeois ideologues of the identity politics of our neoliberal era.

I should note nonetheless that the assimilation of Holbach, Diderot, and company into our awareness within the strict area of the discipline of philosophy bears certain limitations. The various dimensions—the scientific ideas and orientation as well as the progressive social values—of the Radical Enlightenment have been so thoroughly absorbed into the progressive tendencies of our time, that the only reason to read Holbach for example (Diderot on the other hand remains relevant from a literary standpoint) would be the same as the reason to read Newton—out of historical rather than current interest. Science has long moved on. The Radical Enlightenment is light on epistemology, which is of central interest to philosophy even when one removes skepticism and foundationalism as a focus of concern.  Still, reading the Radical Enlightenment back into the general historiography of philosophy can alter our historical perspective on its biases, contours, and development.

Here are some additional links. On my website:

• Diderot, Interpreter of Nature: Selected Writings, translated by Jean Stewart and Jonathan Kemp
• Denis Diderot by Tamara Dlugach, translated by Catherine Judelson
• Intellectual Life in Society: Bibliography: The Enlightenment
• Theodor W. Adorno & Critical Theory Study Guide

On other sites:

• Denis Diderot Archive at Marxists Internet Archive
• Critical Battle Against French Materialism, in The Holy Family by Friedrich Engels & Karl Marx
• "Dialectics at a Standstill: A Methodological Inquiry Into the Philosophy of Theodor W. Adorno" by Stephen Bronner

Wicked Company: Holbach's salon, Diderot, & friends (3)

I finally finished reading this 384-page saga: A Wicked Company: The Forgotten Radicalism of the European Enlightenment by Philipp Blom. What an adventure!

It is written for the general reader and is the most effective argument for the Radical Enlightenment I have seen, particularly the Epilogue following the account of the deaths of Holbach and Diderot, the heroes of the book, esp. Diderot. The final chapter alone is radical.

A recap of the contents:

Dedication
Introduction

FATHERS AND SONS
CHAPTER 1 - CITY OF LIGHTS
CHAPTER 2 - JOURNEYS
CHAPTER 3 - ENCYCLOPÉDIE: GRAND AMBITIONS
CHAPTER 4 - CHEZ M. HOLBACH
CHAPTER 5 - AUDACITY
CHAPTER 6 - CHRISTIANITY UNVEILED
CHAPTER 7 - ONLY THE WICKED MAN LIVES ALONE

MARVELOUS MACHINES
CHAPTER 8 - LE BON DAVID
CHAPTER 9 - A NATURAL PHILOSOPHY
CHAPTER 10 - SHEIKHS OF THE RUE ROYALE
CHAPTER 11 - GRANDVAL
CHAPTER 12 - THE BEAR

THE ISLAND OF LOVE
CHAPTER 13 - CRIME AND PUNISHMENT
CHAPTER 14 - THE MOST UNGRATEFUL DOGG IN THE WORLD
CHAPTER 15 - FAME AND FATE
CHAPTER 16 - THE EMPRESS AND THE BEAN KING
CHAPTER 17 - SEX IN PARADISE
CHAPTER 18 - FIFTY HIRED PRIESTS

EPILOGUE
A GLOSSARY OF PROTAGONISTS
A VERY SELECTIVE BIBLIOGRAPHY
NOTES
INDEX

My previous post on this book sketchily covered up through part 2 (chapter 12). Chapter 13 begins with Cesare Beccaria's argument against capital punishment, which, curiously, did not impress Diderot. Diderot was not a systematic thinker, and he was skeptical of the possibilities of both ideal government and rational administration. Unlike other skeptics, though, Diderot was not attracted to conservatism. He developed progressive views on specific issues, notably women's rights and education.

The subject of chapter 14--"the most ungrateful dogg"--is Rousseau, who turned against all his friends, including Diderot.

Chapter 15 is about the triumph and subversive nature of the Encyclopédie. The subversion, of course, had to be slyly embedded in various entries. The common theme of Diderot's cohort was the advocacy of reason, but each person had a different orientation to its role and potential. Diderot was more skeptical about the possibility of the actualization of reason in the world.

Diderot’s greatness as a philosopher lies partly in the constant, pulsating tension between rationality and instinct. In contrast to Enlightenment thinkers such as Voltaire and Kant, who suggested a totally rational world order that would free individuals from the troubling influence of irrational forces within themselves, Diderot wrote about a complex, contradictory, and essentially dark human nature illuminated only rarely by the sunlight of reason. Holbach believed that life must be liberated from superstition and oppression, but he was essentially serene in his belief in reason; for Diderot, life was always marred by error and destruction because human beings can never be purely rational.

And:

For Diderot, the body was everything there was, and reason was a bodily function with a tendency to transcendental megalomania. True insight lay not in fighting, ignoring, or sublimating physical desire, but in building a life in which it had its place. The tension between reason and instinct appeared at precisely this moment. As a philosopher who wanted to change the general way of thinking, he had to believe in the power of persuasion and of virtue, but at the same time his materialist conviction made him uncertain of both.

Chapter 16 details Diderot's experience of Empress Catherine of Russia, who took up his offer to buy his library on condition that he become its librarian and visit her in St. Petersburg. Life in France was becoming dangerous for heretics, and despite Diderot's wariness about people in power, he reluctantly accepted. Catherine feted him and received his ideas with great enthusiasm, accepting his unconventional manner and lack of toadying . . . up to a point. He got overly absorbed in his role:

Diderot backed up his irrepressible stream of ideas with a series of memoranda on different aspects of modernizing the Russian empire according to Enlightened principles, including the importance of tolerance, the promotion of manufacturing, a complete overhaul of the administration, a draft constitution, and a plan for a new university system. Despotic rule and total authority would inevitably lead to a society marked by servility, superstition, and lack of initiative, he told his hostess, the most absolute of absolute monarchs.

He was not prepared for the rebuff that followed. He realized that he was being used to polish the public image of a despot. Returning home in ill health, he contemplated the question of whether one can be more in a deterministic world, resuming working on his Sterne-inspired novel, Jacques the Fatalist and His Master.

Chapter 17 provides some vital information new to me. Report of the encounter of Europeans with the very different mores of the people of Tahiti made Diderot a firm opponent of colonialism. His 1772 essay Supplement to Bougainville’s Journey, or Dialogue Between A and B About the Disadvantages of Attaching Moral Ideas to Certain Physical Acts Which Do Not Call for Them roundly condemns European Christian mores and the European mission of conquest. Nothing is more strikingly different in the two cultures than their sexual views and practices. In his Unconnected Thoughts on Painting Diderot contrasts European sexual prudery with its uninhibited, explicit depiction of violence, blood, and gore. Diderot at least thinks that art can tell us how to improve.

The creativity of art is nothing else than the erotic life of the mind, a common ritual allowing us to accept nature, pleasure, and pain. The greatest, the deepest pleasure of all, erotic love, is the best incentive for creating a society more in tune with our nature and ultimately with nature’s drive towards the survival of the species.

Diderot does not romanticize the Tahitians in the European mold of the 'noble savage', emphasizing that the Tahitians thought that sex should result in fertility. It seems then, that Diderot emphasizes the relativity of customs rather than an absolute ideal. However, the Tahitians lived more rationally in accord with nature than the Europeans. Diderot was far from irreproachable in his depiction of non-European peoples, however he drew egalitarian conclusions in his writings, and his view of sexuality and human nature was at the opposite pole from Rousseau's. Above all, Diderot was vehemently opposed to slavery.

Diderot was an admirer of the United States. Blom deliberates on the possible meetings of the representatives of the American Enlightenment (Jefferson, Franklin) with Holbach's circle.

Chapter 18 depicts Holbach and Diderot in their old age as they wind down toward death. France's own aristocrats shunned Holbach's circle, but foreign aristocrats flocked to it. Holbach and Diderot remained no less suspicious of the aristocracy. Diderot's friend Grimm had turned reactionary. Diderot dreaded the publication of Rousseau's Confessions and became increasingly concerned with his reputation, the only 'immortality' he believed in. In his old age, Diderot was running out of energy and friends. Holbach was still alive, but the two communicated less and less. Diderot died in 1784, Holbach in 1789.

Diderot, Holbach, and their circle had made history, redefining the terms of the debate between religion and science, of politics and morality. Their only judge, they thought, would be posterity. They had no idea just how right they were, no means of knowing how posterity would treat them, and they would have been appalled to think that, having weathered and triumphed over the storms of their own time, their legacy would be all but obliterated by what was to come. They would be practically forgotten for over a century.

Wicked Company: Holbach's salon, Diderot, & friends (2)

I am past the halfway mark through the incredibly detailed, highly readable volume A Wicked Company: The Forgotten Radicalism of the European Enlightenment by Philipp Blom. There are a number of interesting characters in it, and the contrast of characters, styles, philosophies, and behaviors is most interesting. There is the cooperation as well as temperamental and stylistic differences between the heroes of the book, Holbach and Diderot, at the center of the Radical Enlightenment. I also take note of the different perspectives and social roles of Rousseau, Voltaire, and David Hume.

All of the Frenchmen had their shortcomings when it comes to applying their principles to their wives and/or mistresses. Diderot is portrayed as more passionate, more bold in his rejection of traditional morality, and livelier in his writing style than his friend Holbach. (He edited much of the lead out of Holbach's prose.) Both are the heroes of the book, but Diderot comes off as more well-rounded and vital, though Holbach's literary output was prodigious as was his table. Both sought to re-ground morality casting aside not only the repressive morality of Catholicism but all theistically based notions. Nature is the basis of their rational world view and the fulfillment of pleasure combined with cooperation the basis of their morality. Diderot nevertheless was totally unrestrained in his advocacy of sexuality, casting aside whatever inhibitions (Stoical tendencies) that might still be found in Holbach's perspective. (Note though Diderot's disdain for La Mettrie.)

Rousseau was a piece of work. A product of malformed sexuality and upbringing, his paranoia and persecution complex poisoned all of his relationships with his friends, some of whom he also attacked in his writings. While a product of the same Enlightenment intellectual heritage as the Radical Enlightenment, he gave all of these ideas a reactionary spin once he opposed the atheism and sensualism of Holbach and Diderot, whom he grew to detest. He was a proto-Romantic, rebelling against Enlightenment rationalism, attacking the notion of civilizational progress, and equating the uncorrupted state of nature with godliness (though human nature is judged as corrupted by desire), essentially duplicating in modern form the Christian morality the Radical Enlightenment rejected. Despite Rousseau's critique of inequality, his social world view, including his conception of the general will and his views of education, censorship, religion, and political rule, is seeded with authoritarianism. His ideal society has all the features of a police state. Hence Rousseau effectively erases his incipient dialectical notion that man is born free but is everywhere in chains. Blom effectively relates Rousseau's ultimately regressive social vision and his spiteful philosophical betrayal of his former friends to his personal history and pathology.

Voltaire is presented largely as an opportunist, pursuing his own wealth, status, and reputation, and despite his problems with clerical and aristocratic despotism, attacked the Radical Enlightenment for his own ends. (As a deist he attacked atheism.)

David Hume was received as a superstar in France. Feted there, he had the time of his life, but philosophically he was quite at a distance from his hosts despite their enthusiasm for him. Hume was a skeptic rather than an atheist and he lacked that sharp polemical opposition to the social order exhibited by the Radical Enlightenment. Of note in this account is that the French materialists bypassed the epistemological preoccupation with certainty, skepticism, and justification that would drive so much of modern philosophy. For Holbach, who contributed mightily to the development of a scientific world view, science, based on empirical engagement with the world, provided the source for knowledge. No other justification was needed. Hume's philosophical preoccupation was quite foreign to him. And Holbach was quite prescient in his scientific ideas. I think that this was the main way forward at this point, though the epistemology behind it was not finely developed from what I can tell--the nature of concept and theory formation, etc. Hume was innovative in bringing to light fundamental issues that would devastate traditional a priori metaphysics, and it was too early at that point to see clearly what a dead end skepticism as the dogmatic inverse of dogmatism would become.

Generalizing the narrative so far, Blom insists that the Radical Enlightenment has been gravely misrepresented. "Passion is crucial to the radical Enlightenment." (Their moral theory on the positivity of sensual enjoyment, empathy, etc., is detailed, in contradistinction to both Christian morality and nihilism.) But also the Radical Enlightenment's view of Reason is the polar opposite both of Rousseau's repressive world view and technocratic rationalization.

So much of the Enlightenment was or was represented as a cult of “pure reason” (in Immanuel Kant’s key phrase) that it is still common in our day to think of this great philosophical paradigm shift as being concerned merely with making life more rational, more efficient, and less superstitiously medieval. This may be partly true for moderate, often deist thinkers such as Leibniz, Montesquieu, Voltaire, and Kant, and even for Diderot’s friend Helvétius, but it was never true of the radical Enlightenment around Diderot and Holbach.

To the Enlightenment radicals, reason is merely a technical faculty of analysis, part of our material constitution. But while moderate thinkers wanted to create a life governed less by the passions and more by rational behavior, a life purified of physical desire and instinctive acts, Holbach and particularly Diderot wanted to create a society in which individuals could live as far as possible in harmony with their desires and fulfill them. Reason was simply a tool for a life that was essentially passionate and governed by vital drives, by pleasure and pain.

Now whether or not this world view is sufficiently well articulated in hindsight is less important than the facile assumptions indiscriminately attributed to the Enlightenment. My first thought is to refer here to Dialectic of Enlightenment by Horkheimer and Adorno, which I have always disliked. As it happens, at book's end Blom does refer to it, and he lays all the blame for instrumental reason critiqued therein on the moderate Enlightenment!

There is no mention of William Blake in the book, but while Blake's aversion to much of the Enlightenment (though he had engaged it earlier in life, e.g. via Wollstonecraft and Paine), links the imperial capitalist order Blake opposed to empiricism proximately and materialism somewhat more remotely--specifically the figures of moderate English/Scottish and French Enlightenment, the Frenchmen targeted being Voltaire and Rousseau. Blake could never have been congenial to the materialism of the Radical Enlightenment, but perhaps earlier in life he could have accommodated aspects of it as he accommodated Thomas Paine.

Baron D'Holbach on the terror in religious belief

"The idea of such powerful agencies has always been associated with that of terror; their name always reminded man of his own calamities or those of his fathers; we tremble today because our ancestors have trembled for thousands of years. The idea of Divinity always awakens in us distressing ideas ... our present fears and lugubrious thoughts ... rise every time before our mind when we hear his name. [. . . .] When man bases morality on the not too moral character of a God who changes his behaviour, then he can never know what he owes to God nor what he owes to himself or to others. Nothing therefore could be more dangerous than to persuade man that a being superior to nature exists, a being before whom reason must be silent and to whom man must sacrifice all to receive happiness."

-- Baron D'Holbach, System of Nature

Ludwig Feuerbach 11: culture vs. religion

Christianity came into the world long after the invention of bread, wine, and other elements of civilization, at a time when it was too late to deify their inventors, when these inventions had long since lost their religious significance. Christianity introduced another element of civilization: morality. Christianity wished to provide a cure not for physical or political evils, but for moral evils, for sin. Let us go back to our example of wine in order to clarify the difference between Christianity and paganism, that is, common popular paganism. How, said the Christians to the heathen, can you deify wine? What sort of benefit is it? Consumed immoderately, it brings death and ruin. It is a benefit only when consumed in moderation, with wisdom, that is, when drunk in a moral way; thus the utility or harmfulness of a thing depends not on the thing itself, but on the moral use that is made of it. In this the Christians were right. But Christianity made morality into a religion, it made the moral law into a divine commandment; it transformed a matter of autonomous human activity into a matter of faith.

In Christianity faith is the principle, the foundation of the moral law: "From faith come good works." Christianity has no wine god, no goddess of bread or grain, no Ceres, no Poseidon, god of the sea and of navigation; it knows no god of the smithy, no Vulcan; yet it has a general God, or rather, a moral God, a God of the art of becoming moral and attaining beatitude. And with this God the Christians to this day oppose all radical, all thoroughgoing civilization, for a Christian can conceive of no morality, no ethical human life, without God; he therefore derives morality from God, just as the pagan poet derived the laws and types of poetry from the gods and goddesses of poetry, just as the pagan smith derived the tricks of his trade from the god Vulcan. But just as today smiths and metalworkers in general know their trade without having any particular god as their patron, so men will some day master the art of leading moral and happy lives without a God. Indeed, they will be truly moral and happy only when they no longer have a God, when they no longer need religion; for as long as an art is still imperfect, as long as it is in its swaddling clothes, it requires the protection of religion. For through religion man compensates for the deficiencies in his culture; and it is only from lack of culture that, like the Egyptian priest who makes sacraments of his rudimentary medicines, he makes sacraments of his moral remedies, makes sacred dogmas of his rudimentary ideas, and makes divine commandments and revelations of his own thoughts and emotions.

In short, religion and culture are incompatible, although culture, insofar as religion is the first and oldest form of it, can be termed the true and perfect religion, so that only a truly cultivated man is truly religious. This statement, however, is an abuse of words, for superstitious and inhuman notions are always bound up with the word “religious”; by its very nature religion comprises anticultural elements; for it strives to perpetuate ideas, customs, inventions that man made in his childhood, and to impose them as the laws of his adult age. Where man needs a God to tell him how to behave—as He commanded the Israelites to relieve themselves in a place apart—man is at the religious stage, but also at a profoundly uncivilized stage. Where man behaves properly of his own accord, because his own nature, his own reason and inclination tell him to, the need for religion ceases and culture takes its place. And just as it now seems ridiculous and incredible that the most natural rule of decency should once have been a religious commandment, so one day, when man has progressed beyond our present pseudo culture, beyond the age of religious barbarism, he will find it hard to believe that, in order to practice the laws of morality and brotherly love, he once had to regard them as the commandments of a God who rewarded observance and punished nonobservance. 

— Ludwig Feuerbach, Lectures on the Essence of Religion, translated by Ralph Manheim (New York: Harper & Row, 1967), 23^rd Lecture, pp. 212-213

Ludwig Feuerbach 8: Lectures

Where all good things come from divine goodness, all evil must necessarily stem from diabolical malice. The two notions are inseparable. But to blame an evil will for the natural phenomena that are opposed to my egoism is an obvious sign of barbarism. To convince ourselves that this is so, there is no need to go back to Xerxes, who, according to Herodotus, punished the Hellespont with three hundred lashes in his rage at the disobedience of the sea; there is no need of a trip to Madagascar, where babies who give their mothers trouble and pain during pregnancy and childbirth are strangled, since they must obviously be evil. Right before our eyes we can see how our barbarous and ignorant governments put the blame for every historical necessity and human development that is not to their liking on the ill will of individuals; we see ignorant boors mistreat their cattle, their children, their sick, simply because they take the failings or peculiarities of nature for willful obstinacy, and everywhere we see the rabble gleefully attributing a man’s natural failings, which he cannot possibly help, to his ill will. Accordingly, it is also a sign of men’s ignorance, barbarism, egoism, and their inability to look beyond themselves, when they attribute the benefits of nature to a good or divine will.

Diflerentiation—I am not you, you are not I—this is the basic condition and principle of all culture and humanity. But the man who attributes the workings of nature to someone’s will fails to differentiate between himself and nature, and consequently his attitude toward nature is not what it should be. The proper attitude toward an object is an attitude consonant with its nature and its dissimilarity to myself; such an attitude is not a religious one, but neither is it irreligious as is supposed by the vulgarians, learned or common, who are able only to distinguish between belief and unbelief, religion and irreligion, but are unaware of a third and higher principle above them both. Kindly give me a good harvest, dear earth, says the religious man; “whether the earth wants to or not, it must yield me fruit,” says the irreligious man, Polyphemus. But the true man, who is neither religious nor irreligious, says: The earth will give me fruit if I give it what is appropriate to its nature; it does not will to give, nor must it give—“must” implies reluctance and coercion—no, it will give only if I for my part have fulfilled all the conditions under which it can give, or rather produce; for nature gives me nothing, I myself must take everything, at least everything that is not already a part of me—and moreover I must take it by extreme violence. With intelligent egoism we forbid murder and theft among ourselves, but toward other beings, toward nature, we are all murderers and thieves.

Who gives me the right to catch a rabbit? The fox and the vulture are just as hungry as I, just as much entitled to exist. Who gives me the right to pick a pear? It belongs just as much to the ants, the caterpillars, the birds, the four-footed animals. To whom then does it really belong? To the one who takes it. Is it not sufficient that I live by murder and theft—should I in addition thank the gods? How foolish! I have reason to thank the gods if they can show me that I really owe them my life, and this they will not have done until pigeons fly ready roasted into my mouth. Did I say roasted? No, that is not enough; I should say chewed and digested, for the tedious and unaesthetic operations of mastication and digestion are unbefitting the gods and their gifts. Why should a God who at one stroke makes the world out of nothing in a twinkling need so much time to provide me with a bit of chyme? Here again it becomes evident that the Godhead consists as it were of two components, one originating in man’s imagination, the other in nature. “You must pray,” says the one component, the god differentiated from nature. “You must work,” says the other, the god who is not differentiated from nature and merely expresses the essence of nature. For nature is a worker bee, while the gods are drones. How can I derive the image and law of industry from drones? To derive nature or world from God, to maintain that hunger comes from satiety, need from abundance, gravity from levity, work from sloth—is attempting to bake common bread from ambrosia and to brew beer from the nectar of the gods.

Nature is the first God, the first object of religion; but religion does not look upon it as nature; religion views it as a human being, characterized by emotion, imagination, and thought. The secret of religion is “the identity of the subjective and objective," that is, the unity of man and nature, but this unity is arrived at in disregard of their true character. Man has many ways of humanizing nature and, conversely (for man and nature are inseparable), of objectifying and externalizing his own being. Here, however, we shall confine ourselves to two of these ways, to the metaphysical form and the practical-poetic form of monotheism. The latter is characteristic of the Old Testament and the Koran. The God of the Koran as of the Old Testament is nature or the world, its real, living being as opposed to artificial, dead, man-made idols.* He is not any part of the world or fragment of nature, such as the stone which the Arabs before Mohammed worshiped, but all nature, immense and undivided. In the tenth Sura of the Koran, for example, we read: “Say: ‘Who provides food for you from the earth and the sky? Who has endowed you with sight and hearing? Who brings forth the living from the dead, and the dead from the living? Who ordains all things?’ They will reply: ‘Allah.’ Say: ‘Will you not take heed then?’” Or the sixth Sura: “Allah splits the seed and the fruitstone. . . . He kindles the light of dawn. He has ordained the night for rest and the sun and the moon to measure time. Such is the ordinance of Allah, the Mighty One, the All-Knowing. . . . He sends down water from the sky and with it we bring forth the buds of every plant, green foliage and close-growing grain, palm trees laden with clusters of dates, vineyards and olive groves and all manner of pomegranates. Behold their fruits when they ripen. Surely in these there are signs enough for true believers.” And the thirteenth Sura: “It was Allah who raised the heavens without resting them on visible pillars. . . . It was He who spread out the earth and placed upon it rivers and unchangeable mountains. He gave all Plants their male and female parts and drew the veil of night over the day. . . . It is He who makes the lightning flash upon you, inspiring you with fear and hope, and makes the clouds heavy with rain. The thunder sounds His praises and the angels too for awe. He hurls His thunderbolts and crushes whom He pleases. Yet the unbelievers wrangle about Allah. Stern is His punishment.”

Thus the signs or effects of the true God—the original God as opposed to His copies the idols—are the workings of nature. An idol cannot bring forth living things, tasty fruits, fruitful rain, or terrible storms. This can be done only by the God who is not fashioned by man but is God by nature, and who therefore not only appears to be but is a real living being. But a God whose signs and works are the works of nature is nothing more than nature. Yet, as we have said, He is not a part of nature which is in one place and not another, which is here today and gone tomorrow and which for that very reason man makes eternally present in an image; He is the whole of nature. “When night drew its shadow over him [Abraham],” we read in the sixth Sura, “he saw a star. ‘That,’ he said, ‘is my God.’ But when the star faded into the morning light, he said: ‘I will not worship gods that fade.’ When he beheld the rising moon, he said: ‘That surely is my God.’ But when it, too, set, he said: ‘If Allah does not guide me, I shall surely go astray.’ Then, when he beheld the sun shining, he said: ‘That must be my God: it is larger than the other two.’ But when it, too, set, he said to his people: ‘I am done with your idols. I will turn my face to Him who has created the heavens and the earth.’”

Thus eternal omnipresence is a hallmark of the true God; but nature, too, is everywhere. Where there is no nature, I am not, and where I am there is also nature. “Whither shall I go” from thee, O Nature? “And where shall I flee” from thy being? “If I fly heavenward, Nature is there. If I bed myself in hell, Nature is there too.” Where there is life there is nature, and where there is no life, there too is nature; everything is full of nature. How, then, would you escape from nature? But the God of the Koran, as of the Old Testament, is nature and at the same time not nature, for He is also a subjective, i. e., personal being, knowing and thinking, willing and acting like man. As an object of religion, the works of nature are at the same time works of human ignorance and imagination, the being or cause behind them is a product of human ignorance and imagination. Man is divided from nature by a gulf of ignorance; he does not know how the grass grows, how a child forms in the womb, what causes rain, thunder and lightning. “Hast thou perceived the breadth of the earth?” we read in Job. “Declare if thou knowest it all. . . . Hast thou seen the treasures of the hail? . . . . Hath the rain a father? . . . . Knowest thou the ordinances of heaven?”

Because man does not know what the works of nature are made of, where they come from and under what conditions, he regards them as the works of an absolutely unconditioned and unlimited power, to which nothing is impossible, which even brought forth the world out of nothing, just as it continues to bring forth the works of nature from nothing, the nothing of human ignorance. Human ignorance is bottomless, and the human imagination knows no bounds; deprived of its foundations by ignorance and of its limits by the imagination, the power of nature becomes divine omnipotence.

*Jalal-ud-din relates that Mohammed sent a zealous Mohammedan to convert an unbeliever to Islam. “What manner of being is your God?” the unbeliever asked him. “Is He of gold, silver, or copper?” Lightning struck the godless man and he was dead. This is a crude but convincing lesson on the difference between the living God and the man-made god.

— Ludwig Feuerbach, Lectures on the Essence of Religion, translated by Ralph Manheim (New York: Harper & Row, 1967), Additions and Notes, pp. 315-320.

Ludwig Feuerbach 7: Lectures

Thus, because religion rules over life and death, heaven and hell, because it transforms laws into the commandments of an all-powerful being—the essence of all human wishes and fears—religion gains control of, or is favored by, human egoism and so exerts a terrible power over man, especially uncivilized man, a power beside which the power of ethics, especially of abstract, philosophical ethics, pales to nothingness, and which for this reason seems indispensable.

But no one can fail to see that religion exerts this power through the imagination alone, that its power resides solely in the imagination; for if the power of religion were anything more than imaginary, if religion were really the positive foundation and support of justice and ethics, the promises and punishments of religion would have sufficed for the founding and preservation of states, men would never have devised all the many exquisitely cruel punishments they employ for the prevention of crime. Or if you will, we acknowledge that religion is the foundation of states, but with this limitation: only in the imagination, in belief, in opinion, for in reality states, even Christian states, are built not on the power of religion, though they have used it too (i. e., credulity, man’s weak point) as a means to their ends, but on the power of bayonets and other instruments of torture. In reality men act out of entirely different motives than their religious imagination leads them to suppose. In his chronicle of Louis XI, the pious Philippe de Commines writes: “All evils or transgressions come from lack of faith; if men firmly believed what God and the Church tell us about the eternal and terrible torments of hell, they could not do what they do.”

But whence comes this weakness of faith? From the fact that the power of belief is nothing other than the power of imagination, and that reality is an infinitely greater power, directly opposed to the imagination. Like the imagination, faith is hyperbolic; it moves only in extremes, in exaggerations; it knows only of heaven and hell, angels and devils; it tries to make more of man than he should be, and consequently makes less of him than he could be; it tries to make him into an angel and consequently, given the opportunity, makes him into a true devil. Faced with the resistance of prosaic reality, the hyperbolic fantasies of faith shift into their direct opposite! Human life would be in a bad way if law and ethics had no other basis than religious faith, which so easily turns into its opposite, because, as even the greatest heroes of faith have confessed, it flies in the face of sensory evidence, natural feeling, and man’s innate tendency to disbelief. How, indeed, can anything built on constraint, on the forcible repression of a sound inclination, anything exposed at every moment to the mind’s doubts and the contradictions of experience, provide a firm and secure foundation? To believe that the state—I mean of course the state as such, not our artificial, supranaturalistic political edifices—cannot exist without religious faith is to believe that our natural legs are not sufficient for man to stand or walk on, that he can only stand and walk on stilts. And these natural legs, the support of ethics and law, are love of life, self-interest, egoism.

Accordingly, nothing is more groundless than the fear that the distinction between right and wrong, good and evil, must vanish with the gods. The distinction exists and will continue to exist as long as there is a difference between me and thee, for this is the source of ethics and law. My egoism may permit me to steal, but my fellow man’s egoism will sternly forbid me; left to myself I may know nothing of unselfishness, but the selfishness of others will teach me the virtue of unselfishness. My masculine egoism may be inclined to polygamy, but feminine egoism will oppose my inclination and champion monogamy: I may be unaware of the beam in my own eye, but the merest mote in it will be a thorn in the critical eye of others. In short, though it may be of no concern to me whether I am good or bad, it will always be a matter of concern to the egoism of others.

Who has always been the ruler of states? God? Good heavens, no! The gods rule only in the heavens of the imagination, not on the profane ground of reality. Who then? Egoism and egoism alone, though not simple egoism, but the dualistic egoism of those who have devised heaven for themselves and hell for others, materialism for themselves and idealism for others, freedom for themselves but servitude for others, enjoyment for themselves but resignation for others—the egoism of those who as rulers punish their subjects for the crimes they themselves have committed, who as fathers visit their own crimes on their children, who as husbands punish their wives for their own weaknesses, who in general forgive themselves all offenses and assert their egos in all directions, but expect others to have no egos, to live on air, to be as perfect and immaterial as angels. Not the limited egoism to which the term is ordinarily confined but which is only one variety, though the most common; but the egoism which comprises as many varieties as there are aspects of human nature, for there is not only a singular or individual egoism, but also a social egoism, a family egoism, a corporate egoism, a community egoism, a patriotic egoism. True, egoism is the source of evil, but it is also the source of good, for what else but egoism gave rise to agriculture, commerce, the arts and the sciences? True, it is the source of all vices, but also the source of all virtues, for what gave rise to the virtue of honesty? Egoism, through the prohibition of theft! What molded the virtue of chastity? The egoism of those who did not wish to share their beloved with others, through the prohibition of adultery. What produced the virtue of truthfulness? The egoism of those who do not wish to be deceived and cheated, through the prohibition of lying.

Egoism was the first lawgiver and promoter of the virtues, though only out of hostility to vice, only out of egoism, only because what opposes my egoism strikes me as a vice—just as conversely, what to me is a blow against my egoism is to others an affirmation of theirs, and what to me is a virtue is to them a benefit. Moreover, vices are just as necessary, if not more so, for the preservation of states, at least of our despicable, unnatural and inhuman states, as are virtues. To cite an example that is close to me because I am writing on Bavarian soil, though not in a Bavarian spirit (or in a Prussian or Austrian spirit either, for that matter): if Christianity in our country were anything more than a clerical phrase, if the spirit of Christian asceticism and subjugation of the senses should take hold of the Bavarian people, leading them to abstain from beer drinking, or only from immoderate beer drinking, what would become of our Bavarian state? And despite its “substantial faith,” the Russian state finds its chief source of revenue in poison—in vodka. Without beer, then, there would be no Bavaria, and without distilled liquor no Russia or even Bo‑Russia.*

* The Latin form of “Prussia.”—TR.

— Ludwig Feuerbach, Lectures on the Essence of Religion, translated by Ralph Manheim (New York: Harper & Row, 1967), Additions and Notes, pp. 302-304.

Ludwig Feuerbach 6: Lectures

THE OBSERVATION that intelligence in certain spheres of life can exist side by side with the most unintelligent superstition, political freedom with religious servitude, scientific, industrial progress with religious stagnation and even bigotry, has led some to the superficial view and contention that religion is without bearing on life, and especially on public, political life, and that consequently our only goal in this connection should be absolute freedom to believe what we wish. To this I reply that a state of affairs in which political freedom is combined with religious prejudice and bigotry is not satisfactory. I for my part don’t care a farthing for a political freedom that leaves me enslaved to my religious prejudices and imaginings. True freedom is present only where man is also free from religion; true culture is present only where man has become master over his religious prejudices and imaginations. But the state can have no other aim than to form complete, authentic men, though of course this is not meant here in any Utopian sense; consequently a state whose citizens, while enjoying free political institutions, are not free in a religious sense, cannot be a truly human and free state. The state does not make men, men make the state. As men are, so is their state. Once a state exists, to be sure, the individuals who by birth or immigration become its citizens, are molded by it; but what is a state in relation to the individuals who come to it if not the sum and combination of the people who already constitute it, who through the means at their disposal, through the institutions they have created, mold newcomers to their spirit and will? Thus, where men are politically free but unfree in religion, the state is not perfect or not yet complete.

As to the second point, freedom of faith and conscience, the first condition of a free state is indeed that “every man may be saved in his own way,” that every man may believe what he likes. But this is a secondary and empty freedom; for it means nothing more than each man’s freedom or right to be a fool in his own way. True, the state, in the present sense of the word, can do no more than refrain from all intervention in the field of faith—than grant unrestricted freedom in this respect. But man’s task in the state is not only to believe what he wishes, but to believe what is reasonable, not only to believe, but to know what he can and must know if he is to be a free and cultivated man. Here no barrier to human knowledge can excuse us. In the realm of nature, to be sure, there are still many things we do not understand; but the secrets of religion spring from man himself, and he is capable of knowing them down to their remotest depths. And because he can know them, he ought to know them. Finally, it is an utterly superficial notion, refuted every day by history and even by daily life, to suppose that religion is without influence on public life. This view has originated only in our own day, when religious faith has ceased to be anything more than a chimera. Obviously, where religious faith has ceased to be a truth in man, it can have no practical consequences, it no longer inspires deeds of world-shaking importance. But where this is the case, where faith has become a mere lie, man is involved in the ugliest contradiction with himself and the consequences of faith are at least morally disastrous. Modem theism is just such a lie. The elimination of this lie is the condition for a new, energetic mankind.

The above-mentioned observation that piety in the common sense of the word is often combined with diametrically opposed traits, has led many to suppose that man has a special organ of religion, a specific religious feeling. We should be more justified in assuming the existence of a specific organ of superstition. Religion, that is, the belief in gods, in spirits, in so-called higher invisible beings who rule over man, has been said to be as innate in man as his other senses. Translated into the language of honesty and reason, this would only mean that, as Spinoza has already maintained, superstition is innate in man. But the source and strength of superstition are the power of ignorance and stupidity, which is the greatest power on earth, the power of fear and the feeling of dependency, and finally the power of the imagination.

— Ludwig Feuerbach, Lectures on the Essence of Religion, translated by Ralph Manheim (New York: Harper & Row, 1967), 24th lecture (excerpt), pp. 218-220.

Ludwig Feuerbach 5: Lectures

What then has faith in common with love, religion with ethics? Nothing; they have no more in common than have the God to whom man is bound by faith and the fellow man with whom he is united by love; for according to religious faith, there is the most violent opposition between man and God: God is a nonsensuous being, man a sensuous being, God is perfect, man is wretched, pitiful, worthless. How then can love flow from faith? It cannot, any more than wretchedness can spring from perfection, want from abundance. Yes, ethics and religion, faith and love are exact opposites. He who has once loved a God can no longer love any human being; he has lost his feeling for mankind. But the converse is also true: he who has once loved man, truly and from the bottom of his heart, can no longer love a God, he can no longer permit his living humanity to seep away in a vacuum of infinite objectlessness and unreality.

— Ludwig Feuerbach, Lectures on the Essence of Religion, translated by Ralph Manheim (New York: Harper & Row, 1967), Additions and Notes, p. 298.

Ethics as Metaphysics & Ideology

“Wrong life cannot be lived rightly.” – Theodor W. Adorno [1]

Ethics as a philosophical or ideological subject is both social and individual. Its purview is the regulation of individual behavior under an assumed social context. It may also involve a critique of the social context in so far as reality does not live up to ideals. But the ideals are as a rule predicated on existing social reality even when critical of it.

Marx’s & Engels’ dictum that in class society the ruling ideas are the ideas of the ruling class holds here. The virtue ethics of an Aristotle or Confucius presupposes and justifies the repressive institutions of the existing order. Presumably some concepts of use may be extracted from them, but only selectively, shorn of their metaphysical and sociopolitical obfuscations.

In bourgeois society ethics undergoes certain transformations. Kant is a superb example of an individualistic ethics which both criticizes pragmatic social reality and reflects the presuppositions of emerging bourgeois society. Self-submission to an abstract concept of duty, irrespective of circumstance or inclination, the illusion that one can actually live as if others could be regarded as ends and not used as means, as if this were an individual matter, represents the quintessence of bourgeois illusion, of fairness and strict accounting in the marketplace, even as it criticizes the actual by reference to the ideal.

We could go through the various systems of ethics and unearth the tacit assumptions behind each—utilitarianism or any ethical calculus being the most obvious correlate to the quantifying tendencies of the capitalist marketplace and the money economy.

Ethics at this historical stage goes hand in hand with the secularization of society. What about ethics postulated as the basis of a movement or institutionalized philosophy? Here the secularization of religion comes into play.

Consider the Ethical Culture movement initiated by Felix Adler. Adler, raised in the rabbinical tradition, was philosophically a Neo-Kantian and politically a social reformer. If we move ahead to the forging of the first Humanist Manifesto of 1933, we see also an inclination towards social reform as well as the secularization of religion: the Unitarian influence in the formation of this humanist movement was considerable. [2] We have here, as in other instances, a transition from theology to philosophy and a liberalization of religion to the point of jettisoning its supernaturalist baggage.

In the ensuing decades we have seen episodic issuings of new manifestoes, publication of books enunciating the principles of humanism & delineating secular ethics, endless regurgitation of the same generalities, with varying specifics in laundry lists of social concerns. [3] The abstract principles of liberal democracy and individual human rights have been laid claims to along a spectrum of political positions, from libertarianism to anti-Stalinist Marxism. [4] To the extent that abstract humanistic principles serve as rallying points to focus attention and forge coalitions in differing social situations, they may be useful, though hardly resulting in a full-fledged sociopolitical world view as is often claimed.

Once one speaks of creating a new ethical system to be formulated and promulgated as a doctrine, especially as general principles have been enunciated time and time again and are already part and parcel of the moral arsenal of liberal democratic values, we see how little advance has been made in the past two centuries to transcend idealistic metaphysics. Whether it is individual ethics or a planetary ethic, what could be more pointless and ineffectual in the absence of a serious social movement that provides a comprehensive social analysis and platform? [5] For all the prating about the scientific method and scientific morality, a secular ethics is pure ideology, a metaphysical massage for the upper middle class intelligentsia and assorted entrepreneurs, a superimposition of a schema of platitudes onto social reality concomitant with a numbing of any serious analysis of class society, and absent serious linkage to reform movements in the manner of the mid-19th to mid-20th centuries.

Ethics as a new religion or religion-substitute had its time as a stage in the liberalization of religion and the reforming instincts of a “liberal class”, useful up to a point even with its limitations. But what it represents is long obsolete, actually retrograde by comparison with today’s needs and apparently progressive only with respect to right-wing religious revanchism. Religious humanism apes the institutional structures and moralistic sermonizing practices of its supernaturalist forbears. Secular humanism forgoes religious humanism’s obvious mimicking of religiosity (albeit in attenuated, watered-down forms), but preserves the ideological ornamentation of middle-class respectability: “we’re nice people and we have an ethical catechism to prove it.” Such earnest naïveté has lost its charm. [6]

[1] From Minima Moralia (1951). See also Wikipedia entry and Lambert Zuidervaart, Review of Deborah Cook (ed.), Theodor Adorno: Key Concepts. The standard translation by E.F.N. Jephcott is available in hard copy. Another translation can be found online: Minima Moralia, translation by Dennis Redmond (2005).

[2] Edwin H. Wilson,  The Genesis of a Humanist Manifesto.

[3] See my bibliography, Secular Humanism—Ideology, Philosophy, Politics, History: Bibliography in Progress.

[4] See for example Tolerance and Revolution: A Marxist-non-Marxist Humanist Dialogue, edited by Paul Kurtz and Svetozar Stojanovic (1970) and Humanist Ethics: Dialogue on Basics, edited by Morris B. Storer (1980).

[5] Paul Kurtz still adheres to a social liberal, social democratic perspective and his condition of manifestoitis is chronic. See Humanist Manifesto 2000: A Call for a New Planetary Humanism and Neo-Humanist Statement of Secular Principles and Values: Personal, Progressive, and Planetary (2010).

[6] The ideological limitations of humanism were criticized by anti-Stalinist Marxists a half century ago and more. I have blogged twice about George Novack (William F. Warde, pseud.), “Socialism and Humanism” (1959) and Paul Mattick, “Humanism and Socialism” (1965), criticizing both. Mattick’s application to this post is more diffuse. Novack never updated his analysis from the 1930s, when Trotskyism and the liberal humanist movement were serious ideological contenders and competitors. Neither Novack nor Mattick seriously address the need for specific secularist campaigns and coalition politics even in their time, a lapse now especially obvious in the absence of the left wing working class movements of yesteryear. 

Paul Kurtz and Marxist humanism (3)

In previous posts I began to document Paul Kurtz's interaction with the Yugoslav Praxis School, particularly Svetozar Stojanović. This time we will feature another leading light of the Praxis School, Mihailo Marković. He also happens to be the Praxis philosopher with whom I am most familiar. In other contexts I prefer to highlight his brilliant philosophical contributions rather than his political degeneration later in life; for example, on my web site:

“Marx and Critical Scientific Thought”

"The Concept of Critique in Social Science"

Dialectical Theory of Meaning: Part One (Extracts)

Dialectical Theory of Meaning: Part Two: Linguistic Meaning (Extract)

Dialectical Theory of Meaning: Part Three: General Definition of Meaning: The Interrelationships of the Individual Dimensions of Meaning

There are numerous books by Marković and Stojanović and at least one by Gajo Petrović in English, as well as several essays by these and other Praxis philosophers in English in print and on the Internet, not to mention the secondary literature. (See for example the Praxis Group in the Marxists Internet Archive.) I just want to mention these books:

Crocker, David A. Praxis and Democratic Socialism: The Critical Social Theory of Marković and Stojanovic. Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press; Brighton, Sussex: Harvester Press, 1983.

Marxist Humanism and Praxis, edited, with translations, by Gerson S. Sher. Buffalo, NY: Prometheus Books, 1978.

Sher, Gerson S. Praxis: Marxist Criticism and Dissent in Socialist Yugoslavia. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1977.

The Praxis School is compared with related philosophical dissidents in Poland, Hungary, and Czechoslovakia in:

Satterwhite, James H. Varieties of Marxist Humanism: Philosophical Revision in Postwar Eastern Europe. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1992. (Series in Russian and East European Studies; no. 17)

But back to the philosophical interaction between Marković and Kurtz. I refer now to an interesting volume which contains the contributions itemized below:

Humanist Ethics: Dialogue on Basics, edited by Morris B. Storer. Buffalo, NY: Prometheus Books, 1980.

Comment by Mihailo Marković on Kurtz [“Does Humanism Have an Ethic of Responsibility?”], pp. 31-33.
Reply by Paul Kurtz to Marković, pp. 33-35.
“Historical Praxis as the Ground of Morality” by Mihailo Marković , pp. 36-50.
Comment by Paul Kurtz on Marković Article, pp. 51-54.
Reply by Marković, pp. 54-57.

When I am able to secure the full text, I will report in greater detail.

Crocker, who incorporates analytical philosophy into his analysis of Marković and Stojanović, devotes some space to a critique of “Historical Praxis as the Ground of Morality.” In a couple of places he mentions disagreement between Marković and Kurtz:

It must be admitted that Marković appears to have two minds about what this “appeal to history” amounts to. On the one hand, he says that three normative attitudes to the course of history are possible and that if soft procedures fail to bring consensus, then “discrepancy in value judgments cannot be overcome” (HP 40). Moreover, in responding to Paul Kurtz, who takes Marković to be trying to deduce the Ought of praxis from the Is and Was of history. [44] Marković says, “It [Praxis] cannot be derived from any factual judgment (which would constitute the naturalistic fallacy) but it is linked with a basic factual assumption—'Praxis is enente of history,' or more clearly: ‘Praxis is the specific necessary condition of all historical development’” (HP 57). On the other hand, both in HP proper and in his response to Kurtz, Marković appears to have something close to hard justificatory intentions. In the latter Marković claims that ethical pluralism gives rise to the need for “a foundation of ethical values” (HP 55). That is, because “various groups or individuals have genuine moral convictions with implicit claims to universal validity,” and because “these convictions are different or even incompatible,” one must ask oneself, “What is the ground on which his implicit claim to universal validity rests?” (HP 55). [p. 214]

. . . with this footnote:

44. Kurtz charges, “Marković seems to be committing one form of the naturalistic fallacy by defining as intrinsically ‘good’ one aspect of human history (praxis) and then reading that into the process as a ground for his preferences.” “Comment,” in Humanist Ethics: Dialogue on Basics, ed. Morris B. Storer (Buffalo, N.Y.: Prometheus Books, 1980), p. 52. [p. 223]

And here is the other comment:

Because people are used to a dichotomous either‑or (or to compromise positions), they (like Paul Kurtz) are likely to construe Marković’s procedures in terms of the dichotomy [of relativism and absolutism/dogmatism]. To the hard justificationist and skeptic, Markovic’s approach will look like no justification. To the absolutist, Markovic’s soft procedures will appear relativistic. After all, Marković does not demonstrate praxis and proceeds on the assumption that there is no way to get conclusive proof that one ethical outlook should hold for all people at all times. Moreover, what else is relativism but an unhappy compromise that weds skepticism to the view that each moral outlook is true (for its group)? And do not Marković’s procedures entail that any group (or individual) that employs them will emerge with what is ethical truth for it (him and/or her)? [p. 219]

These are, of course, only fragments of Crocker's presentation. In Storer's volume itself there are main essays by both Kurtz and Marković, and exchanges between the two on both of them. I will save further commentary for a future post.

Douglass' Women, Douglass' secular humanism, Douglass' politics

My discovery of this novel this morning perked up what otherwise started out as a rotten day:

Douglass' Women: A Novel
by Jewell Parker

There was a real-life intellectual and romantic liaison between Frederick Douglass and German-Jewish emigré Ottilie Assing. She even lived with the Douglass family on Cedar Hill, something you won't learn when you visit the Douglass house today. Naturally, Douglass' wife was not thrilled at this arrangement, but there you go.

Assing claimed in a letter to Ludwig Feuerbach that Douglass was an atheist, but she was likely exaggerating. You can read the letter for yourself on my web site:

Letter to Ludwig Feuerbach from Ottilie Assing about Frederick Douglass

We shall see how Parker handles the freethought aspect of their relationship.

This liaison is actually in the news, connected to the question of Douglass as freethinker. Here is a recent news story:

Douglass a Secular Humanist? by Hector Avalos, Ames Tribune, Saturday, February 5, 2011.

The Douglass-Assing relationship is the linchpin of Avalos' article. Avalos puts Douglass in the company of Dawkins and Hitchens. It's hardly a stretch to identify Douglass with secular humanism; this does not prove Douglass to be an atheist, Avalos admits such as assertion to be an exaggeration, but it would still be more accurate to specify what is knowable about the degree of overlap between Douglass' undeniable secularism and humanism, and the hardcore atheism of Dawkins and Hitchens.

This rather insufferable Christian rebuttal is ridiculous in rendering Douglass' 1883 "It Moves" speech consistent with Christianity, but the blogger is correct that Douglass' statements in themselves do not prove a disavowal of theism per se.

Deeper historical contextualization is mandated, if not in an occasional newspaper piece, then in further investigation of the subject.

I have always had doubts as to where Wilson Moses is coming from, but he has authored several books engaged in in-depth historical analysis of 19th century black nationalism. Note his treatment of Douglass here:

Afrotopia: The Roots of African American Popular History by Wilson Jeremiah Moses

Moses addresses the tensions within Douglass' politics, principally between his advocacy of the black cause and his integrationism. "His hostility to the traditionalism and institutional structure of organized religion was part and parcel of the extreme progressive liberalism that he embraced." Moses analyzes Douglass' moral perfectionism and aversion to relativism, a joint product of Enlightenment thought, liberalism, Victorian rationalism, and Christian perfectionism.

Here is another take by Moses on Douglass and other iconic black political intellectuals:

Creative Conflict in African American Thought by Wilson Jeremiah Moses

Here you can read an excerpt:

I. Introduction. Reality and Contradiction

Among other things you will find here an analysis of the ideological differences between Douglass and Alexander Crummell, the uneasy relationship between moralism and power politics, and the tension in Douglass between individualism and racial loyalty.

Finally, note the quotation from Douglass in Evolutionary Writings by Charles Darwin, edited by James A. Secord (Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2008).

Descartes as a Moral Thinker

"'I think, therefore I am', said Descartes, and the world rejoiced at the perspective of the expansion of individual personality and human powers through the liberation of the intellect." — C.L.R. James et al

The watershed marked by the philosophy of Descartes has long been recognized. The dualism of Descartes' philosophy has often been linked to his historical and social position, e.g.:

Descartes' Dualism (Extract) by Albert William Levi

One can find such treatments also in the Marxist tradition (e.g. C.L.R. James & the Johnson-Forest Tendency, quoted above):

Descartes & Marxism: Selected Bibliography

There is, of course, the perennial favorite which deals not with Descartes specifically but with the contradictions of Enlightenment, unsatisfactorily in my view: Dialectic of Enlightenment by Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno. See also my web guide/bibliography:

Positivism vs Life Philosophy (Lebensphilosophie) Study Guide

Here is a book I just discovered which is alleged to challenge common wisdom about Descartes:

Steiner, Gary. Descartes as a Moral Thinker: Christianity, Technology, Nihilism. Amherst, NY: Humanity Books, 2004. See also at Prometheus Books.

There is one brief passage on Marx, and, surprisingly, Steiner finds an affinity between Descartes and Marx. Otherwise, the book appears to be innocent of Marxism. Looking through the bibliography, the one author I'm tempted to pursue is Hans Blumenberg (also known for a debate with Karl Löwith).

Here is the publisher's product description:

Although commentary on Descartes is extensive, the importance of morality in his thought has been all but overlooked in contemporary English-language scholarship. Considered to be the first modern philosopher, Descartes is often interpreted as a wholly secular thinker who acknowledged no authority above the human will. In this important reassessment of the great French philosopher, Gary Steiner shows the influence of Christian thought on the moral foundations of Descartes's philosophy.

Descartes's commitment to Christian piety and to the autonomy of human reason stand in an uneasy tension with one another. In DESCARTES AS A MORAL THINKER, Steiner examines this tension between the "angelic" aspirations in Descartes's Christian commitments and the "earthly" or technological aspirations reflected in his endeavor to use reason to ground scientific practice. Steiner provides a close analysis of all Descartes's texts and correspondence that bear on morality. By placing Descartes's work in historical context, Steiner demonstrates Descartes's indebtedness not only to Galileo and Bacon in developing his conception of autonomous human reason but also to Augustine and Aquinas in conceptualizing the human condition and the role of belief in God. Providing a detailed survey of German, French, and English scholarship on Descartes, Steiner concludes with an in-depth examination of contemporary debates about secularization, nihilism, and modernity in such thinkers as Friedrich Nietzsche, Martin Heidegger, Hans Blumenberg, and Karl Lowith. Steiner shows how Descartes's own ambivalence about the relation between faith and reason can shed light on contemporary controversies regarding what Blumenberg calls "the legitimacy of the modern age."

This bears looking into. I think this will inadvertently confirm the incomparable greatness of Baruch Spinoza.