Download 1 The Philosophy of the Enlightenment Lecture 9 (notes) 1. Hand

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The Philosophy of the Enlightenment
Lecture 9 (notes)
1. Hand back the comments from week 8; take in comments.
2. Reading for this time: DIDEROT, Natural Rights, ROUSSEAU, Political Economy.
3. Grammar test.
Please note: the following of you have not yet sent me:
your short paper: Ahmad Al-Amad, Jordan Hallin, Christian Nufer, Ciara Ross—I assume
Ahmad and Ciara have dropped the course. James Amoah (e), Mathew Marino (e), Sydney
Roberts (e) have still not submitted, and are way past their extended deadlines. 20% of your
course credit is on the point of vanishing.
the outline for your term paper (due October 31st): Naqeah Abid, Ahmad Al-Amad, James
Amoah, Jordan Hallin, Pearl Khayyam, Mathew Marino, Miles Mokanen, Christian Nufer, Sydney
Roberts, Ciara Ross, Gary Spero, Jamie Wang, Nicholas White. Without it you will not get
credit for your term paper, worth 30%.
First, a clarification of the dates of the pieces we have been studying:
1. D’Alembert’s Dream was written by Diderot in 1769, and revised by him in 1776, but not
published until 1830.
2. Diderot’s encyclopedia articles: Encyclopedia (1755), Natural Rights (1755).
3. Rousseau’s Political Economy (1755)
4. Voltaire’s Candide (1759).
5. Condorcet’s Sketch (1795)
Now, some preliminaries about natural law.
The beginnings of the Enlightenment understanding of natural law are in large part the fruit of
the work of Hugo Grotius (1583–1645), who laid the foundations for international law based
on the concept of natural law. Grotius saw it as necessary to separate the foundation of law
from theological dogma—especially Lutheranism and Calvinism—on the one hand, and the
absolutism of the state, on the other. Calvin insisted that the law is based in the last instance in
divine omnipotence, and state absolutists held that the (divinely mandated) authority of the
monarch was the basis of all state law. Calvin took the line that one cannot ask for the
justification of divine justice, since justice itself is the will of God, which is absolutely
unconditioned. The divine decisions concerning the salvation or damnation of any soul, which is
divinely predetermined, have no “grounds”, since that would place human reason above the
divine. But Hobbes (1588-1679) argued in a similar way for the foundation of justice in the
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state, with it not being conditioned by a prior grounding in transcendent norms, calling the state
a “mortal God”.
In combatting this, Grotius reverted to Platonism. “For experience could never reveal what law
and justice are in themselves” (Cassirer 237); rather they “involve the concept of a
correspondence, a harmony and proportion, which would remain valid even if it were never
realized in a single concrete instance” (237). As Grotius famously wrote in 1625, “What we
have been saying would have a degree of validity even if we should concede that which cannot
be conceded without the utmost wickedness, that there is no God, or that the affairs of men
are of no concern to him.” Law is not valid because there is a God. To claim that justice
depends only on the will and not on reason is to render God unworthy of worship. Law is like
mathematics: it has an objective structure which no arbitrary whim can alter (Cassirer 243).
Leibniz followed Grotius in all of this. Moral norms and the nature of justice, Leibniz argues,
“do not depend on God’s free decree, but rather on eternal truths, objects of the divine
intellect, which constitute, so to speak, the essence of divinity itself” (Leibniz 1768, iv 280). If
what is good and just is so simply because God has willed it, then whatever has been decreed
by God (or the gods) is good and just by definition. Here Leibniz allows himself a ribald joke:
noting the emperor Claudius’s decree that “in a free republic, farting (crepitus) and belching
should be free”, he writes, “it would follow that if Claudius had made the god Crepitus one of
the authorized gods, he would have been a god worthy of worship!” (L 562).
Montesquieu in his Persian Letters echoes this philosophy: Justice is a relation of agreement, and
this relation remains always the same, no matter what subject it embraces, and no matter
whether it is conceived by God, angel or man (Cassirer, 243)
As Cassirer notes, in this respect “even the empiricists Voltaire and Diderot scarcely differ
from Grotius and Montesquieu.” (243-244) But they fall into a dilemma: for they do not accept
innate ideas. Voltaire argues that such a universal principle of reality is not present and active in
every individual from the first, but through experience, it “can be found by everyone for
himself”. Indeed, that is all that Leibniz had argued for all innate principles. That they are innate
does not mean that they do not have to be discovered. Indeed, this is also what Grotius had
said: moral obligation “proceeds from the essential traits implanted in man” (1625, Prol. §12),
which is why they can be discovered by him. In this way naturalism is not opposed to innatism.
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Gassendi, one of the founding fathers of empiricism, described the Golden Rule, “Don’t do to
anyone else what you would not have them do to you”, as “the first natural law” (Schneewind
1990, 366). He argued that “not only is there nothing more natural or according to nature than
society, and society being not able to subsist without this precept, it ought also to be esteemed
natural; but also because God seems to have imprinted it in the hearts of all men”.
Diderot: Natural Rights:
Points of interest (to me) in the article:
1. Opens by asking “what about rights and justice in the state of nature”? It is here that the
question of natural rights must be tackled.
2. Voluntary actions not to be confused with free ones. What is the difference?
3. Posits the man bound by no moral obligations to others. “I am not so unjust as to insist
on a sacrifice from another person that I do not wish to make for him” (Golden Rule
part of natural morality: Hobbes, Gassendi).
4. He concludes, for this “violent reasoner”: natural rights more complicated than he had
supposed, and not something he is capable of determining by himself.
5. “Particular wills are suspect: they can be good or evil, but the general will is always
good: it is never wrong.” This is determined by reasoning beings, which is why nonreasoning animals are not included.
6. “The general will determines the limits of all duties.” “I am a man and I do not have any
other truly inalienable rights than those of humanity.” But where is the general will
located?
7. It is “a pure act of the understanding that reasons in the silence of the passions about
what man can demand of his fellow man and what his fellow man can rightfully demand
of him”. It is “particular to the society of which he is a member”; legislatures ought to
depend on it. But “the nature of natural rights … is always related to the general will
and to the common desire of the entire species”. Which, then? Particular societies,
governments of nations, or the human species?
Rousseau: Political Economy:
Points of interest (to me) in the article:
1. “The body politic , therefore, is also a moral being possessing a will.” Debt to Diderot
for the idea of the general will.
2. A will that is general for a society’s own members will not be general for members of
other societies. The general will of the whole world “is always the law of nature”, and
from this we can “judge whether a government is good or bad and in general the
morality of all human actions”.
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3. “The voice of the people is in fact the voice of God”.
4. Freedom is first necessary: the securing of property, life and liberty of each member is what
motivates people to form societies.
5. “How is it possible that they all obey and yet no one commands? … These wonders are
the work of the law.” “It is this celestial voice that dictates to each citizen the precepts
of public reason…”
6. How do you make the particular wills agree with the general will? “When the guardians
of public authority sincerely apply themselves to the fostering of that love by their own
example and concern…” Who are these guardians?
7. “Patriotism cannot exist without liberty, nor liberty without virtue, and certainly not
virtue without citizens; If you create citizens, you will have everything.”
8. “If there are laws for the age of maturity, there ought to be laws for infancy and
childhood, teaching obedience to others …we should so much the less abandon the
education of children to the understanding and prejudices of their fathers, as that
education is of still greater importance to the state than to the fathers…” Nazi
practices? Hitler Youth, anyone?
9. “The right of property is the most sacred of all rights of citizens and more important in
some respects than liberty itself…”
Reading for next time: DIDEROT, Natural Rights, ROUSSEAU, Political Economy.