Modern philosophy is philosophy done in Europe and North America between the 17th and early 20th centuries. It is not a specific doctrine or school, (and so should not be confused with Modernism) although there are certain assumptions common to much of it, which helps to distinguish it from earlier philosophy.
The 17th and early 20th centuries roughly mark the beginning and the end of modern philosophy. How much if any of the Renaissance it should include is a matter for dispute; likewise modernity may or may not have ended in the twentieth century and been replaced by post-modernity. How one decides these questions will determine the scope of one's use of "modern philosophy". The convention, however, is to refer to philosophy of the Renaissance prior to Rene Descartes as "Early Modern Philosophy" (leaving open whether that puts it just inside or just outside the boundary) and to refer to twentieth-century philosophy, or sometimes just philosophy since Wittgenstein, as "Contemporary Philosophy" (again, leaving open whether or not it is still modern). This article will focus on the history of philosophy beginning from Descartes through the early twentieth century ending in Ludwig Wittgenstein.
Thursday, December 4, 2008
The Modern philosophy
Modern Philosophy's Beginings
Things began to get better: The economy improved; There was a return to building, cathedrals, universities, cities...; a return to “luxuries” -- paper, plays, music...; a return to invention -- the compass, printing...; a return to exploration -- Africa, the New World, the Pacific.... It was the renaissance, which we date (roughly!) from 1400 to 1600 or so. They were vigorous times, interesting times, dangerous times!The aristocracy had won the day over the fledgling monarchies and even the church’s heavy hand, at least for now. So there were just tons of these upper-crust types, often with lots of money, totally in love with the idea of themselves. Religious and other thinkers were freed, to one extent or another, from the powerful central authority of the church to create their own, very reasonable or totally outlandish, religious philosophies. And merchants found that money can buy almost anything, including the traditional respect that the aristocracy received. In fact, aristocratic title and merchant wealth were a perfect combination for a good marriage! These aristocrats and merchants believed in the "perfectibility" of mankind: We could become better human beings! Most importantly, we could become more powerful, richer -- more aristocratic, if you will. Much attention was paid to behaving like a gentleman or a lady, as reflected, for example, in Baldesar Castiglione’s guide to proper conduct, The Book of the Courtier. They were practical, interested in real events and real people in the real world. Individualistic and competitive (and very “dog eat dog”), they liked their politics, and they like to play rough. But, they were also anti-intellectual, even cocky in their ignorance. They tended to think of scholars as dry, impractical types, who might be able to forecast eclipses, but probably couldn’t tie their own shoes, much less make money or run estates! And they were superstitious, spiritualistic, fascinated by astrology, ancient Egypt, the Kabbalah, alchemy, magic -- a Renaissance version of our “New Age” movement. Two events in particular stand out as representative of the renaissance: The first was printing. Johann Gutenberg (c 1400-1467) of Mainz invented the printing press and movable type, and printed the Gutenberg Bible in 1455. The second was the discovery of the New World, which meant lots of gold and silver and a stoked-up international economy, as well as an outlet for those discontented with life in Europe (“Lebensraum” -- room to live, as the Germans call it). This, of course, is usually credited to Christopher Columbus (1451-1506).
Wednesday, December 3, 2008
Biography
René Descartes, often called the father of modern philosophy, attempted to break with the philosophical traditions of his day and start philosophy anew. Rejecting the Aristotelian philosophy of the schools, the authority of tradition and the authority of the senses, he built a philosophical system that included a method of inquiry, a metaphysics, a mechanistic physics and biology, and an account of human psychology intended to ground an ethics. Descartes was also important as one of the founders of the new analytic geometry, which combines geometry and algebra, and whose certainty provided a kind of model for the rest of his philosophy. After an education in the scholastic and humanistic traditions, Descartes’ earliest work was mostly in mathematics and mathematical physics, in which his most important achievements were his analy>tical geometry and his discovery of the law of refraction in optics. In this early period he also wrote his unfinished treatise on method, the Rules for the Direction of the Mind , which set out a procedure for investigating nature, based on the reduction of complex problems to simpler ones solvable by direct intuition. From these intuitively established foundations, Descartes tried to show how one could then attain the solution of the problems originally posed. Descartes abandoned these methodological studies by 1628 or 1629, turning first to metaphysics, and soon afterwards to an orderly exposition of his physics and biology in The World. But this work was overtly Copernican in its cosmology, and when Galileo was condemned in 1633, Descartes withdrew The World from publication; it appeared only after his death. Descartes’ mature philosophy began to appear in 1637 with the publication of a single volume containing theGeometry, Dioptrics and Meteors, three essays in which he presented some of his most notable scientific results, preceded by the Discourse on the Method, a semi-autobiographical introduction that outlined his approach to philosophy and the full system into which the specific results fit. In the years following, he published a series of writings in which he set out his system in a more orderly way, beginning with its metaphysical foundations in theMeditations (1641), adding his physics in the Principles of Philosophy (1644), and offering a sketch of the psychology and moral philosophy in the Passions of the Soul (1649). In our youth, Descartes held, we acquire many prejudices which interfere with the proper use of our reason. Consequently, later we must reject everything we believe and start anew. Hence the Meditations begins with a series of arguments intended to cast doubt upon everything formerly believed, and culminating in the hypothesis of an all-deceiving evil genius, a device to keep former beliefs from returning. The rebuilding of the world begins with the discovery of the self through the ‘Cogito Argument’ (‘I am thinking, therefore I exist’) – a self known only as a thinking thing, and known independently of the senses. Within this thinking self, Descartes discovers an idea of God, an idea of something so perfect that it could not have been caused in us by anything with less perfection than God Himself. From this he concluded that God must exist which, in turn, guarantees that reason can be trusted. Since we are made in such a way that we cannot help holding certain beliefs (the so-called ‘clear and distinct’ perceptions), God would be a deceiver, and thus imperfect, if such beliefs were wrong; any mistakes must be due to our own misuse of reason. This is Descartes’ famous epistemological principle of clear and distinct perception. This central argument in Descartes’ philosophy, however, is threatened with circularity – the Cartesian Circle – since the arguments that establish the trustworthiness of reason (the Cogito Argument and the argument for the existence of God) themselves seem to depend on the trustworthiness of reason. Also central to Descartes’ metaphysics was the distinction between mind and body. Since the clear and distinct ideas of mind and body are entirely separate, God can create them apart from one another. Therefore, they are distinct substances. The mind is a substance whose essence is thought alone, and hence exists entirely outside geometric categories, including place. Body is a substance whose essence is extension alone, a geometric object without even sensory qualities like colour or taste, which exist only in the perceiving mind. We know that such bodies exist as the causes of sensation: God has given us a great propensity to believe that our sensations come to us from external bodies, and no means to correct that propensity; hence, he would be a deceiver if we were mistaken. But Descartes also held that the mind and body are closely united with one another; sensation and other feelings, such as hunger and pain, arise from this union. Sensations cannot inform us about the real nature of things, but they can be reliable as sources of knowledge useful to maintaining the mind and body unity. While many of Descartes’ contemporaries found it difficult to understand how mind and body can relate to one another, Descartes took it as a simple fact of experience that they do. His account of the passions is an account of how this connection leads us to feelings like wonder, love, hatred, desire, joy and sadness, from which all other passions derive. Understanding these passions helps us to control them, which was a central aim of morality for Descartes. Descartes’ account of body as extended substance led to a physics as well. Because to be extended is to be a body, there can be no empty space. Furthermore, since all body is of the same nature, all differences between bodies are to be explained in terms of the size, shape and motion of their component parts, and in terms of the laws of motion that they obey. Descartes attempted to derive these laws from the way in which God, in his constancy, conserves the world at every moment. In these mechanistic terms, Descartes attempted to explain a wide variety of features of the world, from the formation of planetary systems out of an initial chaos, to magnetism, to the vital functions of animals, which he considered to be mere machines. Descartes never finished working out his ambitious programme in full detail. Though he published the metaphysics and the general portion of his physics, the physical explanation of specific phenomena, especially biological, remained unfinished, as did his moral theory. Despite this, however, Descartes’ programme had an enormous influence on the philosophy that followed, both within the substantial group that identified themselves as his followers, and outside.
The Leviathan
In Leviathan, Hobbes set out his doctrine of the foundation of states and legitimate governments - based onsocial contract theories. Leviathan was written during the English Civil War; much of the book is occupied with demonstrating the necessity of a strong central authority to avoid the evil of discord and civil war. Beginning from a mechanistic understanding of human beings and the passions, Hobbes postulates what life would be like without government, a condition which he calls the state of nature. In that state, each person would have a right, or license, to everything in the world. This inevitably leads to conflict, a "war of all against all" (bellum omnium contra omnes), and thus lives that are "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short" (xiii). To escape this state of war, men in the state of nature accede to a social contract and establish a civil society. According to Hobbes, society is a population beneath a sovereign authority, to whom all individuals in that society cede their natural rights for the sake of protection. Any abuses of power by this authority are to be accepted as the price of peace. However, he also states that in severe cases of abuse, rebellion is expected. In particular, the doctrine of separation of powers is rejected the sovereign must control civil, military, judicial and ecclesiastical powers.
Politics
The civil state, that is, the result of the passage of primitive man from the state of nature to a social life, derives from a contract the purpose of which is to procure the greatest possible pleasure, a pleasure which could not be had in the state of nature. The state of nature in which man lived before the formation of society, was founded on a savage egoism which drove man to secure a maximum of pleasure without hindrance from a norm of justice or mercy toward other men ("homo homini lupus est"). Every man was continually engaged in war against all other men ("bellum universale"). With the dawn of reason, man understood that he could not live in eternal warfare and that if he wished to satisfy his instinct of egoism he must seek peace ("pax quaerenda"). The means of attaining peace consisted in man's ceding his natural rights ("jus non retinendum") in favor of an authority which would ensure this peace and allow the greatest possible pleasure. Once man had ceded his rights to this authority, he was bound to obey ("pactis standum"). This contract having been made, authority came into being in the person of the sovereign, who had not ceded his natural rights. The members of the state, then, have given up their rights in favor of the ruler, while the ruler alone still enjoys the same unlimited and absolute power which belonged to all men in their primitive condition. The ruler must retain this power if he is to have the authority and strength to dominate the instincts and passions of individuals and to ensure the maximum of good for all. This massing together of individuals, dominated by force, is the state, the symbol of which Hobbes believed he had found in the monstrous Biblical animal, the leviathan, which was capable of devouring all other animals. Thus Hobbes named his greatest workThe Leviathan.
Metaphysics
Of the two Cartesian substances, Hobbes accepts extended material substance and denies the spiritual; or, rather, he makes the spiritual substance a derivative of material substance. Matter is not passive, as it was for Descartes. On the contrary, it is endowed with motion, and this motion is from within. Thus for Hobbes there are two metaphysical elements: matter and motion, which can be reduced to one, dynamic matter. The intrinsic motion of matter has given origin to the diversity of the inorganic and organic world. Life is thus a product of matter and motion, and the human soul is a composite of very subtle atoms. Hobbes does not deny the existence of God, but he is decidedly opposed to any positive revealed religion, including Christianity. Even the moral life does not exceed the limits of matter and of motion. Sensations, passing to the heart, generate pleasure and hate, that is, inclinations and repulsions. Men naturally tend to pleasure considered as a form of self-satisfaction. But such a tendency must be rationalized by calculation, in order that it may bring greater pleasure. This is possible only in the state.
Theory of Knowledge
The whole of human knowledge is contained within the limits of sensation. Sensations are due to an external movement which generates an internal reaction in our organism. Concepts are representations of qualities common to several distinct sensations, which in speech are expressed by a common name (Nominalism). The mind operates on such concepts through analysis and synthesis, composing and dividing them into their elements. For example, by adding the concept of animality to that of rationality, we have the concept man; by subtracting from the concept man the concept of rationality, we have the concept animal. This system is pure mechanical nominalism. Nevertheless, Hobbes does not deny the value of science, of knowledge of abstract causes. This science will be attained in fact as soon as we have an analytical knowledge of the elements and a synthetic understanding of their combinations. Thus Hobbes believed that he had saved science as an absolute value, even though such a value is only phenomenal, being an operation of the mind and not an objective contact with external reality.
Biography
Thomas Hobbes was born in Malmesbury in 1588. He was educated at Oxford University, which was at the time a center of nominalistic Scholasticism. As tutor for a noble English family he had opportunities for travel. At Florence he came into contact with the thought of Galileo; in France he knew Mersenne, the great friend of Descartes. It was Mersenne who induced Hobbes to write his critical observations on the Meditations of Descartes. Hobbes returned to England in 1637 with the intention of writing. When the struggle between Parliament and the King broke out, Hobbes, who was a supporter of the absolute monarchy, retired to France, where he lived for ten years. Granted an amnesty, he returned to England in 1651 and was reconciled with Cromwell. When Charles II, whom Hobbes had tutored, ascended the throne, the King granted a pension to his former teacher. Hobbes died in 1679, having lived beyond the age of ninety. Thomas Hobbes wrote one great philosophical work, which he divided into sections and published at three different times: De cive(On the Social and Political Organism), a work that was further developed and later published under the title The Leviathan; De corpore (On the Body); and De homine (On Man). The vigorous thought of Hobbes made a deep impression in his native country and abroad. The Leviathan is generally considered his masterpiece.
Science and Social Philosophy
In Bacon's thought we encounter a relation between science and social philosophy, since his ideas concerning a utopian transformation of society presuppose an integration into the social framework of his program concerning natural philosophy and technology as the two forms of the maker's knowledge. From his point of view, which was influenced by Puritan conceptions, early modern society has to make sure that losses caused by the Fall are compensated for, primarily by man's enlargement of knowledge, providing the preconditions for a new form of society which combines scientia nova and the millennium, according to the prophecy of Daniel 12:4 (cf. C. Hill, 1971, 85–130). Science as a social endeavor is seen as a collective project for the improvement of social structures. On the other hand, a strong collective spirit in society may function as a conditio sine qua non for reforming natural philosophy. Bacon's famous argument that it is wise not to confound the Book of Nature with the Book of God comes into focus, since the latter deals with God's will (inscrutable for man) and the former with God's work, the scientific explanation or appreciation of which is a form of Christian divine service. Successful operations in natural philosophy and technology help to improve the human lot in a way which makes the hardships of life after the Fall obsolete. It is important to note that Bacon's idea of a – to a certain extent – Christian society by no means conveys Christian pessimism in the vein of patristic thinkers but rather displays a clear optimism as the result of compounding the problem of truth with the scope of human freedom and sovereignty (cf. Brandt, 1979, 21).
Natural Philosophy: Struggle with Tradition
Bacon's struggle to overcome intellectual blockades and the dogmatic slumber of his age and of earlier periods had to be fought on many fronts. Very early on he criticized not only Plato, Aristotle and the Aristotelians, but also humanists and Renaissance scholars such as Paracelsus and Bernardino Telesio. Although Aristotle provided specific axioms for every scientific discipline, what Bacon found lacking in the Greek philosopher's work was a master principle or general theory of science, which could be applied to all branches of natural history and philosophy (Klein, 2003a). For Bacon, Aristotle's cosmology, as well as his theory of science, had become obsolete and consequently so too had many of the medieval thinkers who followed his lead. He does not repudiate Aristotle completely, but he opposes the humanistic interpretation of him, with its emphasis on syllogism and dialectics (scientia operativa versus textual hermeneutics) and the metaphysical treatment of natural philosophy in favor of natural forms (or nature's effects as structured modes of action, not artifacts), the stages of which correspond — in the shape of a pyramid of knowledge — to the structural order of nature itself. If any “modern” Aristotelians came near to Bacon, it was the Venetian or Paduan branch, represented by Jacopo Zabarella. On the other hand, Bacon criticized Telesio, who — in his view — had only halfway succeeded in overcoming Aristotle's deficiencies. Although we find the debate with Telesio in an unpublished text of his middle period (De Principiis atque Originibus, secundum fabulas Cupidinis et Coelum or On Principles and Origins According to the Fables of Cupid and Coelum, written in 1612 (Bacon, V [1889], 461–500), Bacon began to struggle with tradition as early as 1603. In ValeriusTerminus (1603?) he already repudiates any mixture of natural philosophy and divinity; he provides an outline of his new method and determines that the end of knowledge was “a discovery of all operations and possibilities of operations from immortality (if it were possible) to the meanest mechanical practice” (Bacon, III [1887], 222). He opposes Aristoteliananticipatio naturae, which favored the inquiry of causes to satisfy the mind instead of those “as will direct him and give him light to new experiences and inventions” (Bacon, III [1887], 232). When Bacon introduces his new systematic structure of the disciplines in the Advancement of Learning (1605), he continues his struggle with tradition, primarily with classical antiquity, rejecting the book learning of the humanists, on the grounds that they “hunt more after words than matter” (Bacon, III [1887], 283). Accordingly, he criticizes the Cambridge University curriculum for placing too much emphasis on dialectical and sophistical training asked of “minds empty and unfraught with matter” (Bacon, III [1887], 326). He reformulates and functionally transforms Aristotle's conception of science as knowledge of necessary causes. He rejects Aristotle's logic, which is based on his metaphysical theory, whereby the false doctrine is implied that the experience which comes to us by means of our senses (things as they appear) automatically presents to our understanding things as they are. Simultaneously Aristotle favors the application of general and abstract conceptual distinctions, which do not conform to things as they exist. Bacon, however, introduces his new conception of philosophia prima as a meta-level for all scientific disciplines. From 1606 to 1612 Bacon pursued his work on natural philosophy, still under the auspices of a struggle with tradition. This tendency is exemplified in the unpublished tracts Temporis partus masculus, 1603/1608 (Bacon, III [1887], 521–31),Cogitata et Visa, 1607 (Bacon, III, 591–620), Redargutio Philosophiarum, 1608 (III, 557–85), and De Principiis atque Originibus…, 1612 (Bacon, V [1889], 461–500). Bacon rediscovers the Pre-Socratic philosophers for himself, especially the atomists and among them Democritus as the leading figure. He gives preference to Democritus' natural philosophy in contrast to the scholastic – and thus Aristotelian – focus on deductive logic and belief in authorities. Bacon does not expect any approach based on tradition to start with a direct investigation of nature and then to ascend to empirical and general knowledge. This criticism is extended to Renaissance alchemy, magic, and astrology (Temporis partus masculus), because the “methods” of these “disciplines” are based on occasional insights, but do not command strategies to reproduce the natural effects under investigation. His criticism also concerns contemporary technical literature, in so far as it lacks a new view of nature and an innovative methodological program. Bacon takes to task the ancients, the scholastics and also the moderns. He not only criticizes Plato, Aristotle, and Galen for these failings, but also Jean Fernel, Paracelsus, and Telesio, while praising the Greek atomists and Roger Bacon. Bacon's manuscripts already mention the doctrine of the idols as a necessary condition for constituting scientia operativa. InCogitata et Visa he compares deductive logic as used by the scholastics to a spider's web, which is drawn out of its own entrails, whereas the bee is introduced as an image of scientia operativa. Like a bee, the empiricist, by means of his inductive method, collects the natural matter or products and then works them up into knowledge in order to produce honey, which is useful for healthy nutrition. In Bacon's follow-up paper, Redargutio Philosophiarum, he carries on his empiricist project by referring to the doctrine of twofold truth, while in De Principiis atque Originibus he rejects alchemical theories concerning the transformation of substances in favor of Greek atomism. But in the same text he sharply criticizes his contemporary Telesio for propagating a non-experimental halfway house empiricism. Though Telesio proves to be a moderate “modern”, he clings to the Aristotelian framework by continuing to believe in the quinta essentia and in the doctrine of the two worlds, which presupposes two modes of natural law (one mode for the sublunary and another for the superlunary sphere).
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