"Mundus Subterraneous" le Calum Colvin 1993
§ 6 - PRÌOLUD DO CHARACHADH A' PHRÌOMHACHAIS GU IDÈAL NA PEARSANTACHD.
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§ 6 - THE PRELUDE TO THE SHIFTING OF PRIMACY TO THE IDEAL OF PERSONALITY.
The extension of the psychologized science-ideal over the modal boundaries of the aesthetic, juridical, moral and faith-aspects.
Even though HUME accepts psychological "feeling", in its modal subject-object-relation (emotion-sensation), as the basic denominator for all modal aspects of reality, yet he recognizes a relative modal diversity of meaning in the cosmos. Within the absolutized psychical law-sphere, the aesthetic, juridical, moral and faith aspects of experience were distinguished by him from the logical one (which he had also psychologized). Nevertheless, the science-ideal, with its psychologically conceived law of causality, arbitrarily exceeds these modal boundaries.
In LEIBNIZ all modal aspects of meaning are made to be modi of mathematical thought. In HUME they become modi of his psychological basic denominator. So the aesthetic aspect, too, becomes a modus of psychical feeling: "Pleasure and pain... are not only necessary attendants of beauty and deformity, but constitute their very essence" (1).
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(1) Treatise II, Part. I, Sect. VIII (p. 96).
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The same can be stated in respect to the remaining normative modal aspects of experience. HUME presented a mechanistic theory of human emotions, entirely in accord with the tradition handed down by DESCARTES, HOBBES and SPINOZA, and directly connected with LOCKE. On this point the latter had reproduced HOBBES' theory in the form in which it acquired its great influence in the English, French, and Scottish philosophy of the Enlightenment. For HUME — as it had been for HOBBES — this theory was the foundation of his ethical philosophy and of his theoretical view of faith: "in the production and conduct of the passions, there is a certain regular mechanism, which is susceptible of as accurate a disquisition, as the laws of motion, optics, hydrostatics, or any part of physical nature" (2).
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(2) Diss. on the Passions, Sect. VI .
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The laws of association are the sole explanatory principles which HUME will here employ. They are grounded on the principle of the uniformity of human nature at all times.
The psychologically comprehended science-ideal that lies at the foundation of this entire explanatory method, is clearly formulated by HUME in the following statement: "We find in the course of nature that though the effects be many, the principles from which they arise are commonly but few and simple, and that it is the sign of an unskilful naturalist to have recourse to a different quality, in order to explain every different operation. How much more must this be true with regard to the human mind" (3).
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(3) Treatise II, Part. I, Sect. I (p. 81).
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We saw that the emotions form a second class of impressions next to those which belong to the sensory function of perception and to the corporeal feelings of pleasure and pain (4).
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(4) Ibid. (p. 75).
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HUME designated the first mentioned impressions as "reflective" and deemed them to be derived from the original sensual impressions either directly or indirectly through the intermediary of an Idea of a sensory impression. He therefore called the emotions "secondary" impressions, in contradistinction to the "original" ones of "sensation".
He divided the "secondary impressions" into two classes, the calm and the vehement ones. He considered the emotions of beauty and ugliness as "calm" impressions. Under the " vehement" he subsumed all such passions as love and hate, sorrow and joy, pride and humility.
The "passions" themselves were further divided into "direct" and "indirect". Under the former he understood all such which arise directly out of the elementary feelings of pleasure or pain, such as desire, aversion, sorrow, joy, hope, fear and despair; under the latter, all such which, although originating from the same source, nevertheless, do so only by combining other qualities. Pride and humility, ambition, vanity, love, hate, jealousy, compassion, generosity, malice, and so on, are considered to be "indirect" passions.
All these emotions appear in human nature in connection with certain Ideas and objects; moreover, they do so in a regular conformity to natural laws. HUME sharply distinguishes the causes of emotions from their objects. The selfhood can never be the cause, but can only be the object of a passion (5).
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(5) Treatise II, Par. I, Sect. II (p. 77).
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For in HUME'S criticism of the concept of substance the selfhood was resolved into a collective concept of the associational series of ideas. In the case of pride and humility, one's own selfhood is the object of the emotions, whereas in the case of hate and love, the emotion has other selves for its object.
The cooperation between the associations of Ideas and those of passions.
All the various causes of the "passions" are now reduced to the simple natural principles of association.
The impressions are as much associated as the Ideas, but with the fundamental difference that the former in the temporal sequence combine only in accordance with the natural associational law of resemblance, whereas the Ideas are, in addition, connected according to the associational laws of contiguity and causality (6).
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(6) Treatise II, Part. I, Sect. IV, p. 82: "'Tis evident, then, there is an attraction or association among impressions, as well as among Ideas; tho' with this remarkable difference, that Ideas are associated by resemblance, contiguity, and causation; and impressions only by resemblance."
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Because the emotions are always accompanied in a natural way by certain Ideas, also the associations of the Ideas and the associations of the passions combine in the same object: "Thus a man, who, by any injury from another, is very much discompos'd and ruffled in his temper, is apt to find a hundred subjects of discontent, impatience, fear, and other uneasy passions; especially, if he can discover these subjects in or near the person, who was the cause of his first passion. Those principles, which forward the transition of Ideas, here concur with those which operate on the passions; and both uniting in one action, bestow on the mind a double impulse. The new passion, therefore, must arise with so much greater violence, and the transition to it must be rendered so much easy and natural" (7).
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(7) Ibid., p. 83.
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A mere association of Ideas is consequently not sufficient to originate passions. In the sphere of the emotional or secondary impressions, the laws of association are only valid on the basis of a natural and original connection between an Idea and a passion (8).
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(8) Ibid., Sect. IX (p. 101) : "From this reasoning, as well as from undoubted experience, we may conclude, that an association of Ideas, however necessary, is not alone sufficient to give rise to any passion.
'Tis evident, then, that when the mind feels the passion either of pride or humility upon the appearance of a related object, there is, beside the relation or transition of thought, an emotion or original impression produc'd by some other principle."
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The way in which HUME'S psychologized ideal of science destroys the conception of the freedom of the will in the sense of the mathematical ideal of science.
In this entire psychological mechanism of "human nature" there remains no room for the freedom of the will. HUME'S standpoint in this respect is quite different from that of LOCKE and LEIBNIZ.
LOCKE could leave some room to the freedom of the will in the indeterministic sense of a "liberum arbitrium indifferentiae" or "liberum arbitrium equilibrii", since he did not dissolve human self-hood and personality into a mechanism of psychical associations, and held to the dualism of reflection and sensation (9).
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(9) In his Essay concerning Human Understanding II, 2. Sect. 51, LOCKE found a place for the moral freedom and responsibility of personality in the "power a man has to suspend his desires and stop them from determining his will to any action, till he has examined, whether it be really of a nature in itself and consequences to make him happy or no." And he taught: "The care of ourselves that we mistake not imaginary for real happiness, is the necessary foundation of our liberty." In his Introduction (p. 16) to book II of HUME'S Treatise, GREEN correctly observes, that this concession to the ideal of personality again evokes an intrinsic antinomy with LOCKE'S ideal of science.
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In HUME'S psychologized system, such an Idea of freedom must be discarded equally with the conception, according to the mathematical science-ideal, that the freedom of the will consists in the fact that it is determined by clear and distinct thought.
The metaphysical bulwark of the rationalistic Humanist ideal of personality, i.e. the selfhood, concentrated in its mathematical thought, as a substance, as "res cogitans", had been destroyed by HUME'S psychological criticism. And with equal force, the content of this ideal of personality (autonomous freedom) had to be sacrified to the psychologized science-ideal. The "will" is therefore conceived of as a mere inner impression which we feel, when we consciously execute a new corporeal motion or produce a new Idea in our mind (10).
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(10) Treatise II, Part. III, Sect. I (p. 181).
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This psychical impression which we call "will" is as necessarily determined as are the movements of psychical phenomena. There is a necessary causal connection between human actions and their motives and the circumstances in which they arise. This necessity, however, is only comprehended in the sense of the natural laws of association, in the sense of constant sequences of similar motives and actions. It is not thought of in the sense of any hidden mechanical force or compulsion which proceeds from the impulses.
HUME was of the opinion that his psychological determinism could in no way be called materialistic, nor could be at all in conflict with religion. Rather he deemed his doctrine of the psychological necessity of human actions to be essential both for morality and religion (11). Every other conception altogether destroys the Idea of law, not only of human laws, but of the divine as well.
It must be granted that on the basis of HUME'S psychologized cosmonomic Idea no other solution is possible!
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(11) Treatise II, Part III, Sect. II (p. 189 ff.).
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The prelude to the shift of primacy to the ideal of personality.
We have seen that HUME'S psychologized epistemology dissolved the very foundations of the ideal of science and that of personality. Nevertheless, the fact that HUME subordinated theoretical mathematical thought to the absolutized psychical function of feeling and sensation can be considered as the prelude to the shift of primacy from the nature-motive to the freedom-motive.
In the beginning of his exposition concerning the motives of the will, HUME states in the clearest possible manner the contradiction which exists between his own ethical standpoint and that of the mathematical science-ideal: "Nothing is more usual in philosophy, and even in common life, than to talk of the combat of passion and reason, to give the preference to reason, and assert, that men are only so far virtuous as they conform themselves to its dictates. Every rational creature, 'tis said, is oblig'd to regulate his actions by reason; and if any other motive or principle challenge the direction of his conduct, he ought to oppose it, 'till it be entirely subdu'd, or at least brought to a conformity with that superior principle... In order to show the fallacy of all this philosophy, I shall endeavour to prove first, that reason alone can never be a motive to any action of the will; and secondly, that it can never oppose passion in the direction of the will" (12).
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(12) Treatise II, Part III, Sect. III, p. 193.
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Reason, in the sense of the mathematical ideal of science of DESCARTES and LEIBNIZ, is expelled completely from its sovereign position as the ultimate rule of human actions: "reason is and ought to be, the slave of the passions, and can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them" (13).
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(13) Ibid., p. 195.
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Mathematics is of course useful in all mechanical technique, and arithmetic is utilized in nearly every art and in every occupation: "But 'tis not of themselves they have any influence...
A merchant is desirous of knowing the sum total of his accounts with any person: Why? but that he may learn what sum will have the same effects, in paying his debt, and going to market, as all the particular articles taken together. Abstract or demonstrative reasoning, therefore, never influences any of our actions but only as it directs our judgment concerning causes and effects" (14).
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(14) Ibid., p. 193/4.
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Even the causal natural scientific thought in which the mathematical ideal of science found the method to extend its postulate of continuity over the entire reality of experience cannot in itself influence nor activate the will. Reason only discovers the causal relations between the phenomena, but "where the objects themselves do not affect us, their connexions can never give them any influence; and 'tis plain, that as reason is nothing but the discovery of this connection, it cannot be by its means that the objects are able to affect us" (15).
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(15) Ibid., p. 194.
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Reason cannot motivate an action, because experience demonstrates, that action only arises from an emotion: "nothing can oppose or retard the impulse of passion but a contrary impulse."
Thus the rationalist prejudice is abandoned that the decisions of the will are determined by theoretical Ideas (whether clearly distinguished or confused).
HUME withdraws morality from the science-ideal. Primacy of the moral feeling.
Now it is this which paves the way to HUME'S own moral philosophy. It is not correct to say that HUME denied the normative sense of ethics. On the contrary, no other Humanist philosopher before KANT (16) had pointed out so sharply the necessity of the distinction between that which "is" and that which "ought to be".
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(16) To be sure, LEIBNIZ, too, makes a sharp distinction between what "is" and what "ought to be". Cf. his Méditation sur la notion commune de la justice [Meditation concerning the common notion of justice] in jur. vol. IIIa, Fol. 72-87; here he remarks against HOBBES: "Car autre chose est, ce qui se peut, autre chose ce qui se doit." [For what is possible is quite different from what ought to be].
However, in LEIBNIZ this does not mean that ethical action would be independent of clear and distinct thought. On the contrary, as we have seen, he agrees in principle with DESCARTES' rationalist view of ethics, although in him this rationalism is mitigated by a mystical motive due to his conception of a "supra-natural" participation of human reason in the creative thought of God, which produces "love" and "piety". See KURT HILDEBRANDT, Leibniz und das Reich der Gnade [Leibniz and the kingdom of grace] (The Hague, Nijhoff, 1953), especially p. 299 ff.
I fear, however, HILDEBRANDT has exaggerated this mystical motive at the cost of a just valuation of LEIBNIZ' mathematical rationalism.
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And, even in HUME, this distinction implies the contrast between scientific thought and ethical action (17).
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And, even in HUME, this distinction implies the contrast between scientific thought and ethical action (17).
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(17) Treatise III, Part. I, Sect. I (p. 245): "In every system of morality which I have hitherto met with, I have always remarked, that the author proceeds for some time in the ordinary way of reasoning, and establishes the being of a God, or makes observations concerning human affairs; when of a sudden I am surprised to find, that instead of the usual copulations of propositions, is, and is not, I meet no proposition, that is not connected with an ought, or an ought not. This change is imperceptible; but is, however, of the last consequence. For as this ought, or ought not, expresses some new relation or affirmation, it is necessary that it should be observed and explained;" cf. LAING on this point, op. cit. pp. 189 ff.
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From this very distinction HUME drew the consequence that ethics is not capable of being proven logically-mathematically, thereby dealing a new blow to the mathematical ideal of science. His argument in support of this view is extremely interesting, since in his own way HUME laid bare the antinomy existing between the mathematical ideal of science and that of personality.
If logical mathematical thought is to be in a position to establish the norms of good and evil, then, according to HUME, either the character of virtue and vice must lie in certain relations between the objects, or they would have to be "matters of fact" which we would be able to discover by our scientific reasoning.
According to the dominant (Lockian) conception, the necessary relations between the Ideas must be sharply distinguished from "matters of fact".
Thus, if it were true that virtue is discoverable through thought, it would have to be an object either of mathematical science which examines the relations between Ideas, or of empirical natural science. There is, according to HUME, no third activity of thought.
According to the dominating rationalist conception, however, only the first possibility can receive consideration. For it pretends that the norms of ethics are capable of being proven apriori, "more geometrico". And a mere "matter of fact" is not susceptible of such proof. When it is conceded, however, that virtue and vice consist in relations concerning which certainty can be attained or for which mathematical proof can be given, then only the four invariable philosophical relations of resemblance and contrast, and the grades in quantity and quality can be taken into consideration. Now, in this case one is immediately involved in inescapable absurdities. For since there is not a single one among the four relations just mentioned which could not just as well be applied to animals and plants, or even to lifeless objects, the consequence would be inescapable that even such things would have to be capable of being judged as moral subjects: "Resemblance, contrariety, degrees in quality, and proportions in quantity and number; all these relations belong as properly to matter, as to our actions, passions and volitions. 'Tis unquestionable, therefore, that morality lies not in any of these relations, nor the sense of it in their discovery" (18).
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(18) Treatise III, Part. I, Sect. I (p. 241).
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Hume was too keen a thinker to be blind to the fact that with the same sort of reasoning one could also indicate the intrinsic antinomy in his own psychologized view of morality.
In his system virtue and vice are derived from feelings of pleasure and pain, which have nothing to do with normative properties. He attempts to rescue himself from this antinomy by pointing out that the feeling of pleasure is only a general term which signifies very different "feelings". So the aesthetic feeling and the sensory feeling of taste are not mutually reducible the one to the other (19).
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(19) Ibid., p. 248.
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Nevertheless, HUME forgets that his theory of the mechanism of human nature destroys the foundation for all normative imputation. If the normative ethical distinctions are not to be derived from mathematical reason, the question arises, in what must their basis be sought? HUME answers: in the moral sense, an explanation which clearly betrays the influence of HUTCHESON. In HUME'S system moral Ideas, just like other ideas, must be derived from "impressions". Each feeling has its particular impressions. If a particular moral feeling exists, there must also exist moral impressions which cannot be reduced to other sorts of impressions. What is the character of these moral impressions? "To have the sense of virtue is nothing but to feel a satisfaction of a particular kind from the contemplation of a character. The very feeling constitutes our praise or admiration. We go no further; nor do we inquire into the cause of the satisfaction. We do not infer a character to be virtuous, because it pleases; but in feeling, that it pleases after such a particular manner, we in effect feel that it is virtuous" (20).
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(20) Treatise III, Part. I, Sect. II (p. 247).
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Good and evil, therefore, are nothing but feelings of pleasure and pain of a particular moral character. This special character lies in the feeling of approval or disapproval that an act provokes in ourselves or others. However, in the final analysis, the motives of acts, even of moral acts, in HUME still remain a-normative. Acts are not performed on the ground of their morally good or bad character; they are hedonistically determined. But the contemplation of the act creates a particular satisfaction or feeling of pleasure, which is approbation or the feeling of virtue, from which the Idea of virtue is the copy. In consequence, it may be that the psychologized ideal of science still absorbs the personal moral freedom; but the ratio, in the sense of mathematical thought, is in any case rejected as the foundation of ethics and as the basis for the ideal of personality. The tendency to withdraw the ideal of personality from the stiffening grasp of the Humanistic science-ideal is clearly perceptible. Yet KANT was to be the first to undertake the actio finium regundorum.
HUME'S attack upon the rationalistic theory of Humanist natural law and upon its construction of the social contract. VICO and MONTESQUIEU.
HUME'S break with the mathematical ideal of science of his rationalist predecessors is also evident from his noteworthy criticism of the entire rationalistic-Humanist doctrine of natural law, and in particular from his criticism of its conception that the state was to be construed by means of one or more contracts between pre-social individuals. From the very beginning the nominalistic trait of the Humanistic ideal of science in its mathematical form manifested itself very clearly in this construction. According to its adherents, the political community is not to be founded on the substantial form of human nature, as the Aristotelian-Thomistic doctrine of natural law had done. Nominalist natural law can no longer ascribe ontological reality to the state, not even in an accidental sense. Even in HUGO GROTIUS, who externally follows the Aristotelian-Thomistic doctrine of the appetitus socialis, authority and obedience have no natural foundation. Both must be construed "more geometrico" out of the simplest elements, the free and autonomous individuals.
The construction of the social contract seemed to be the sole method to reconcile the postulate of the mathematical ideal of science and that of the Humanistic ideal of personality. For, whereas the former must lead to a construction of the state as an instrument of sovereign domination, the latter must require a justification of the modern concept of sovereignty, introduced by JEAN BODIN, in the face of the autonomous freedom of human personality. And the construction of the social contract seemed to satisfy both postulates. While for the rest HUME took a radical nominalistic standpoint, he nevertheless exercised a sharp criticism of this construction, because he correctly thought that by so doing he was able to strike a blow at the mathematical ideal of science. Thereby, in contradistinction to Cartesianism, HUME, by virtue of his historical-psychological method, came to stand on the side of VICO and MONTESQUIEU. And since the Whigs based their political views upon the mathematical doctrine of natural law, HUME'S political affinity with the Tory party is also noteworthy in this connection. Over against the contract-theory HUME appealed to the psychical condition of primitive people. The latter certainly cannot comprehend obedience to political authority in terms of an abstract contract of individuals. Moreover, it bears witness to HUME's deeply penetrating insight into the weak side of the contract theories, when repeatedly he pointed out, that the obligation which arises out of an agreement is not of a natural but of a conventional character (21). The contract, therefore, cannot precede the establishment of an ordered community and the institutions of the state.
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(21) As I indicated in my series of treatises "In the Struggle for a Christian Politics", the contract theory was the very seed of dissolution within the rationalist doctrine of natural law. The conflict between the absolutist concept of state-sovereignty and the principles of natural law concerning freedom and equality of all men as such, was a document to the inner antinomy between the ideal of science and the ideal of personality within the Humanist theory of natural law. See also my The Contest about the Concept of Sovereignty in Modern Jurisprudence and Political Science (publ. by H. J. Paris, Amsterdam 1950).
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The historical side of HUME'S criticism as he developed it in his The Original Contract and in his An Enquiry concerning the Principles of Morals, naturally did not strike at the heart of the contract theory. The latter — at least in its general tendencies — always wished to construe the justification for the state along the mathematical logical path. HUME, however, had repudiated the mathematical ideal of science. In keeping with his psychological ideal of science, the mathematical conception of the natural state is replaced by a psychological one corresponding to his theory of "human nature". In his treatise The Original Contract (in sharp contradistinction to his conception in the Enquiry (22)) HUME assumed, to be sure, an original equality of men, from which he concluded that there was an original consent of individuals by which they subjected themselves to authority.
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(22) Enquiry concerning the principles of Morals, Sect. III, Part. II.
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But this agreement is not to be understood — in the sense of the mathematical science-ideal — as a universal continuous basis for the authority of the rulers. According to HUME'S psychologized conception of mathematics, exact concepts which go beyond sensory impressions (e.g. the concept of an exact measure of equality, the concept of the infinitesimal, the mathematical point etc.) are ungrounded. The same conclusion must be drawn with respect to the search for mathematically exact foundations for the state and the legal order. In HUME'S psychologized theory of state and law the original agreement can only be understood psychologically and intermittently in terms of the impressions of necessity and utility which arise in a given situation for the sake of subjecting oneself to someone of eminent qualities. Such situations occur again and again, and, in direct proportion to the frequency of their re-occurrence, a custom of obedience is born out of the impression. In the further development of the state, however, the psychologically comprehended agreement of the subjects is of no use as an explanatory principle. The factual basis of authority is only to be found in continually exercised force.
In answer to the question concerning the right of authority HUME points to the influence of time upon the human soul. From the feeling of utility arises the first psychical impulse to obey. When, however, a government has retained its power long enough to create constancy and stability in political life, there arises in the human soul an impression or custom which forms the foundation for the Idea of the right of the government, and personal interest and advantage are reduced to a subordinate value (23).
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(23) Treatise III, Part. II, Sect. X (p. 319) : "Time alone gives solidity to their right" (viz, of the usurpers) "and operating gradually on the minds of men, reconciles them to any authority, and makes it seem just and reasonable... When we have been long accustom'd to obey any set of men, that general instinct or tendency, which we have to suppose a moral obligation attending loyalty, takes easily this direction... 'T is interest which gives the general instinct; but 't is custom which gives the particular direction."
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Thus HUME'S psychologism conquered the strongest position in which the mathematical ideal of science had hitherto thought it could defend the freedom of the individual in the sense of the ideal of personality. Even the Humanistic doctrine of natural law caves in under his critique.
(Herman Dooyeweerd, New Critique of Theoretical Thought, Vol I/ Part 2/ Chapt 3/§6 pp 302-313)
