Descartes (le Franz Hals, 1649)
Thomas Hobbes (le John Michael Wright 17mh linn)
Leabhar 1 Earrann 2 Caibideil 2
IDÈAL NA PEARSANTACHD AGUS IDÈAL AN T-SAIDHEINS NÀDARRA ANN AN CIAD RIOCHDAN AN CO-THEANNAIS PHOLARAICH FO PHRÌOMHACHAS A' CHIAD-LUAITE.
IDÈAL NA PEARSANTACHD AGUS IDÈAL AN T-SAIDHEINS NÀDARRA ANN AN CIAD RIOCHDAN AN CO-THEANNAIS PHOLARAICH FO PHRÌOMHACHAS A' CHIAD-LUAITE.
§1 - A' GHNÈ MHONASACH-NÀDARRACH AGUS A' GHNÈ DHÈACHAIL DEN GHRÙNND-IDÈA FO PHRÌOMHACHAS IDÈAL AN T-SAIDHEINS. A CEANGAL LE SEALLADH EU-DÒCHASACH IS LETH-EU-DOCHÀSACH NA BEATHA.
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Volume 1 Part 2 Chapter 2
THE IDEAL OF PERSONALITY AND THE NATURAL SCIENCE-IDEAL IN THE FIRST TYPES OF THEIR MUTUAL POLAR TENSION UNDER THE PRIMACY OF THE FORMER.
THE IDEAL OF PERSONALITY AND THE NATURAL SCIENCE-IDEAL IN THE FIRST TYPES OF THEIR MUTUAL POLAR TENSION UNDER THE PRIMACY OF THE FORMER.
§1 - THE NATURALISTIC-MONISTIC AND THE DUALISTIC TYPE OF TRANSCENDENTAL GROUND-IDEA UNDER THE PRIMACY OF THE SCIENCE-IDEAL. ITS CONNECTION WITH THE PESSIMISTIC AND SEMI-PESSIMISTIC VIEW OF LIFE.
The basic antinomy in the Humanistic cosmonomic Idea found its first expression in the violent philosophical conflict between the "semi-idealism" of DESCARTES and the mechanistic naturalism of THOMAS HOBBES (1).
DESCARTES and HOBBES, two great thinkers, were at one in their faith in the modern ideal of personality. And they both had an unlimited trust in the new scientific method as the instrument of the philosophical science-ideal. Nevertheless, they combated each other bitterly in the actio finium regundoram between the two basic factors in the transcendental ground-Idea of Humanistic thought.
The conflict between DESCARTES and HOBBES as the first expression of the basic antinomy in the Humanistic cosmonomic Idea.
Saturated with GALILEO's conception of mathematical mechanics, HOBBES would not recognize any limits to the continuity of the natural science-ideal. He wished to found this postulate of continuity in a monistic metaphysical ontology. To this end it was necessary that even in its psychical, logical, linguistic, juridical and moral functions all reality be brought under one and the same metaphysical basic denominator, viz. the "moving body".
This system may be called materialism up to a certain point, but then — however contradictory this may sound — an "idealistic materialism". For HOBBES did not really comprehend the "moving body" in a narrow physical sense. Rather it was conceived of by him as a neutral metaphysical-mathematical basic denominator, created by sovereign thought. "Body" is everything that is capable of mathematical analysis. HOBBES even considered the state to be a body, although an artificial one. In a genuinely nominalistic manner, by means of a social contract, the state is construed in mathematical thought out of its simplest elements, viz. the individuals and their psychical emotions of fear. It is a "Leviathan", a perfect instrument of domination, the synthesis of all natural power of its "elements", viz. the individuals. The domination-motive of the science-ideal has completely absorbed the freedom-motive. In the same way the autonomous freedom of the human will is sacrificed to the mechanistic conception of the human soul.
HOBBES' pessimism and its connection with his ascription of primacy to the science-ideal. Virtue and necessity in MACCHIAVELLI.
HOBBES' "pessimistic" view of human nature was very closely connected with his ascription of primacy to the science-ideal in its mechanistic form. However, this did not at all affect his enthusiastic faith in the ideal of personality. He even sought to elevate the latter to the throne of unlimited dominion by means of the new science. The Faustian consciousness of power in the Humanistic ideal of personality has perhaps never found a more optimistic expression than in HOBBES' Leviathan, where he deals with the "kingdom of darkness" which is destroyed by the light of reason.
Did not MACCHIAVELLI, the man of the Renaissance, previously display a similar tension between pessimism and optimism when he combined the ideas of virtue and necessity? The former was to advance mankind. But the latter was conceived of as a mechanical law which gave dominating power to the lower passions in human nature.
In Humanistic philosophy even "pessimism" and "optimism" turn out to be based on the polar tensions within the basic structure of its transcendental ground-Idea. They are another expression of the polar tension in the latter.
The dualism between thought and extension in DESCARTES.
Why did DESCARTES hypostatize the "thinking soul" and the "extended body" as "finite substances", the one incapable of being reduced to the other? And why did he elevate the sole attributes of these finite substances, viz. extension and thought, to the two basic denominators for the pre-logical and the so-called spiritual aspects of reality, respectively? Why did he, in sharp contradistinction to his British contemporary, maintain this dualism (irreconcilable to the science-ideal) between body and soul?
Had not DESCARTES enthusiastically welcomed HARVEY'S discovery of the double circulation of the blood as a new victory of the modern Idea of science over the scholastic doctrine of the substantial forms? Had he not abandoned the entire biotical aspect of experience to the domination of the mechanistic viewpoint? Whence then the requirement that science must view the "thinking substance" as if no matter existed, and the "extended substance" (with "filled space" as the basic denominator for the pre-logical aspects of reality) as if no "spirit" existed? This can only be explained by the polarity of his cosmonomic Idea.
The background of the ideal of personality in this dualism.
The ideal of personality, rooted in the Humanistic motive of freedom, had retired in the theoretical ideal of clear and distinct thought. If — as HOBBES supposed — mathematical thought itself should be subjected to a causal determination from the side of the movements of the material body, there would be left no freedom at all in the supposed root of human personality. Nay, the mathematical science-ideal would in this way dissolve itself. There would not remain a standard of theoretical truth, if thought were subjected to the laws of mechanical movement.
In the Cartesian type of transcendental ground-Idea, too, the idea of a given cosmic order had been totally eliminated. Therefore, DESCARTES must choose an arbitrary boundary in order to bridle the absolutism of the science-ideal. In fact, the ideal of personality was elevated to the rank of referee. But the ideal of personality had become infected by rationalism and identified itself with mathematical thought. It now sought to save the latter from being reduced to an object of natural science.
The tension between the ideal of science and the ideal of personality gradually became acute in the basic structure of the Humanistic transcendental Idea.
But in its first manifestation its true character remained hidden in the rationalistic metaphysics of the science-ideal.
Actually Humanism had not yet arrived at critical self-reflection in philosophical thought as to the very root of the latter. The mere coordination of the "res extensa" and the "res cogitans" in DESCARTES' metaphysics clearly bears witness to this state of affairs.
The metaphysical problem concerning the relation between soul and body acquires a new significance in the light of the transcendental Humanist ground-Idea.
The mathematical science-ideal retained the primacy even in DESCARTES' attempt at a solution of the insoluble metaphysical problem concerning the relation of "soul and body". This problem had an important previous history in Greek and scholastic immanence-philosophy. It now acquired a peculiar character in modern Humanistic thought because of the basic structure of the transcendental ground-Idea of the latter.
DESCARTES accepted a metaphysical dualism between body and rational soul. Nevertheless, in an intrinsically contradictory manner this dualism is partly abandoned by his conception of an influxus physicus which was assumed to enter human consciousness from a small gland (parva glandula) in the brain. In this way he thought consciousness could be stimulated to sensory perceptions and affects which have a disturbing influence upon the logical function of thought.
This partial break with the dualism became for DESCARTES the way to extend the mathematical and natural scientific method to the psychological sphere. It now became possible to construe a purely naturalistic theory of the affects and passions.
However, if the foundations of the mathematical science-ideal and of the ideal of personality (which had sought refuge in clear and distinct thinking) were to be preserved, then an "influxus physicus" could not be accepted in mathematical thought itself and in the pure volition directed by it. This consideration led to an epistemology and ethics which met the demand of the ideal of science and exalted the mathematical method as the norm of metaphysical truth and the standard of the moral good.
For, according to DESCARTES, the imperfection and constraint of the spirit proceed from the passive influencing of the soul by the body in sensory perceptual impressions and in emotions. The perfect free personality ought to conquer the confusion of sensory perception by the pure concept formed more geometrico. And it ought to rule the emotions by means of the moral will which only acts according to clear and distinct Ideas.
The deeper ground of DESCARTES' partial indeterminism.
I do not at all wish to deny that there exist external ties between DESCARTES and medieval philosophy. But in the final analysis DESCARTES' partial "indeterminism" has outgrown the problems of the Middle Ages, because it is ruled by another transcendental ground-Idea. This also holds good for the scholastic conflict concerning the primacy of the will or that of the intellect. In the Cartesian indeterministic conception of the process of the will, an absolute freedom ("liberum arbitrium indifferentiae") is ascribed to the will over against the inadequate sensorily obscured Ideas. Is this to be understood in the sense of the Scotist conception of the primacy of the will? In my opinion this would be a fundamental misunderstanding. In DESCARTES the only motive for this indeterministic conception is to be found in his care not to undermine the foundations of the ideal of science. However, according to him, the "will" is just like fantasy and sensory perception only a "modus" of thought. In the face of the clear and distinct concepts of the latter, the will does not possess freedom of choice (2).
Error in theoretical knowledge must be explained as an apostasy of the will from the mathematical attitude of thought. Because of this apostasy the will involves us in sensorily obscured Ideas. In the field of ethics, immorality is also due to this apostasy. Here the impure will involves us in the causal processes of affects and passions. According to the rationalist ideal of science, the mathematical "cogito" can never err. The statement, "God cannot make our thought to err", is only the religious expression of the conviction that "the mathematical method of the thinking ego is infallible." Error and moral wickedness equally result from the constraint of the soul which arises from the influence of the body. This constraint must be conquered by self-reflection upon the absolute freedom and sovereign self-sufficiency of mathematical thought.
Yet the inner antinomy in the basic structure of the transcendental ground-Idea of Humanistic thought revealed itself both in DESCARTES' breaking through the metaphysical dualism between thought and extension and in the self-refutation of HOBBES' monistic naturalist metaphysics. In HOBBES, the normative foundations of truth and moral goodness were undermined by his elaboration of the mechanistic view in epistemology and ethics. Thereby both the science-ideal and the ideal of personality fell a prey to logical self-dissolution.
The antinomy in HOBBES' naturalistic conception of thought in the light of the deterministic ideal of science. The IDEAE INNATAE of DESCARTES.
HOBBES' sensationistic theory of knowledge is in conflict with his nominalistic mathematical concept of truth (3). In the last analysis it reduces thought to a movement explicable in terms of natural causality. The sole motive for this theory is to be found in the wish to satisfy the postulate of continuity implied in the mechanistic science-ideal. For that reason biotic stimulus, psychical emotion, logical thought and social process were subsumed under the basic denominator of GALILEO'S mechanics, and the modal boundaries of meaning between the different aspects were levelled for the sake of a methodical monism.
On the other hand, to save the very foundations of the science-ideal, DESCARTES accepted a metaphysical dichotomy between mathematical thought and mechanistically determined spatial nature. He must conceive of the mathematical-metaphysical Ideas as "ideae innatae" (4). And he had to render account of the origin of these concepts exclusively in terms of natural causality. However, at bottom DESCARTES' metaphysics is no less modern and nominalistic than that of HOBBES (5). Both refuse to subject mathematical thought to a cosmic order which the former has not itself posited. Both resolve the ideal of personality into the ideal of science, which thereby obtains a strong ethical impetus. In the case of both, the apostate religious root of personality has identified itself with mathematical thought, which in creative freedom wants to choose its own metaphysical basic denominators for temporal reality.
In DESCARTES, we can only speak of a primacy of the ideal of personality within the science-ideal itself. In this connection it is merely of secondary significance that the basic denominator which HOBBES accepts for all knowable reality is different from that which DESCARTES chooses for the pre-logical aspects of reality. DESCARTES conceives movement only as a modus of filled space. For HOBBES space is merely a subjective "PHANTASMA REI EXISTENTIS" just as time is merely "a PHANTASMA MOTUS" ; HOBBES' basic denominator is not space but mathematically determined movement.
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(1) For a detailed analysis of HOBBES' philosophical and political theories see my "ln the Struggle for a Christian Politics, Chap. I, XV in Anti-revolution. Staatkunde, Vol. I (1927) p. 142-195.
(2) In spite of his partial indeterminism DESCARTES can write: "Nam si semper quid verum et bonum sit clare viderem, numquam de eo quod esset iudicandum vel eligendum deliberarem; atque ita, quamvis plane liber, numquam tamen indifferens esse possem" (Meditationes IV p. 28). [For if I always clearly saw what is true and good, I would never deliberate how I must judge or choose; and thus, although being entirely free, I could, however, never be indifferent]. If the problems in DESCARTES had not changed it would be very easy to see a connection here with THOMAS' intellectual determinism. Just as WINDELBAND has tried to relate DESCARTES' partial indeterminism to the views of DUNS SCOTUS).
(3) This concept of truth stands or falls with the validity of the normative PRINCIPIUM CONTRADICTIONIS which can never be explained in terms of natural causality.
(4) Not as innate concepts present at birth. DESCARTES made this clear in his polemic with REGIUS. The latter conceived of the ideae innatae as being present at birth, but for DESCARTES innate concepts are only an in-born capacity to think them: "Non enim unquam scripsi vel judicavi, mentem indigere ideis innatis, quae sint aliquid diversum ab ejus facultate cogitandi" (Notae, pp. 184 and 185. Ed. 1698). ["For I have never written or judged, that the mind has need of innate ideas which are something different from its faculty of thought".].
(5) DESCARTES' nominalistic standpoint is sharply formulated in his Principia Philosophiae I, 58 ff. He qualifies universals as mere "modus cogitandi" and general names. In the French translation, Méditations Métaphysiques (in Oeuvres Choises, Nouvelle ed., Paris, Garnier Frères, p. 97) the intended passage reads thus: "mais on doit savoir que toute idée étant un ouvrage de l'esprit, sa nature est telle qu'elle ne demande de soi aucune autre réalité formelle que celle qu'elle reçoit et emprunte de la pensée ou de l'esprit, dont elle est seulement un mode, c'est à dire une manière ou une façon de penser." ["However, because every Idea is a work of the mind, it is to be understood, that its nature is such that it does not demand any other formal reality than that which it receives and borrows from thought or mind; it is only a mode of the latter, that is to say a manner or fashion of thinking"].
In the sequel of his argument DESCARTES calls the Ideas in me a representation, an "imago" of the first and principal causes of these Ideas in God. But this does not signify a return to the realistic „Abbildtheorie". We must never forget, that in his methodical scepticism, DESCARTES primarily understands the cogito in a subjective and individual sense, and therefore has to struggle with solipsistic arguments. The Idea of God must serve in the first place to refute these arguments: "et par conséquent, je ne puis moi-mȇme ȇtre seul dans le monde" [and consequently I cannot be alone in the world"]. Thus the bridge is built to an absolute mathematical thought which, elevated above all fallible subjectivity, creates the real RES EXTENSIVA.
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(Herman Dooyeweerd, New Critique of Theoretical Thought, Vol I/ Part 2/ Chapt 2 /§1 pp 216-223)
