torstai 28. joulukuuta 2017

Hugues Felicité Robert de Lamennais: Essay on indifference in matters of religion, volume I (1817)

1782-1854

It is always interesting to find thinkers who in their later life completely reverse or at least significantly modify their thoughts in some manner. Catholic priest de Lamennais is an example of such a thinker. While he was originally quite conservative in his opinions, disparaging French Revolution as a destroyer of traditional social and religious values, later on he would become a devout democrat, who would attempt to combine Christianity with a more liberal attitude toward affairs of state.

De Lamennais’ four-volume work, Essai sur l'indifference en matière de religion belongs still to the conservative period of his thinking. He is evidently inspired at least by de Bonald, whom he quotes approvingly several times in the first volume. But while de Bonald emphasised more the role of society, de Lamennais focuses on religion and especially the battle of philosophy against it.

Just like Chateaubriand earlier, at least in the first volume of his work de Lamennais does not even try to give a theoretical argument for the truth of religion in general and Catholic Christianity in particular, but he merely emphasises the practical need for religion. All humans strive for happiness, de Lamennais begins his apology. Yet, any being can be happy only if it satisfies laws of its own nature. A presupposition of this step in de Lamennais’ argument is that it must be possible that a human being can live without satisfying those laws - thus, fatalism must be simply false, de Lamennais says, because in a fatalist world we would all follow the laws of our nature and be happy, which is clearly not the case. Of course, one would easily make this argument collapse by choosing a completely different criterion for human happiness, such as pleasure and pain. Still, if we follow de Lamennais a step forward, we notice that to become truly happy we must know our place in the world, as designed by God, which is the job of religion.

Although individual human happiness is then one thing that de Lamennais uses in his defence of religion, it is especially the social benefits of religion - and particularly of Christianity - which he takes as his primary justification. All societies have been based on religion, and the longer the mores of a society have been in touch with the original religious consciousness, the longer it has lasted. Especially noteworthy in de Lamennais’ eyes is Christianity, which has stabilised and civilised Europe since the fall of Rome - and like Chateaubriand, de Lamennais is quick to compare the havoc caused by French Revolution with the education of Paraguay by Catholic priests.

From modern perspective one might note that Christianity has also been one of the forces stifling the development of society, but for de Lamennais this objection would not be valid, because he is still quite enthused about the conservative ideal of society, in which people are bound in a clear hierarchy, with different obligations and authorities assigned for different classes and genders. The philosophical counterpoint - the story of a pact made to form a society - is not favoured by de Lamennais, because it essentially confuses authority given by divine power with the force of majority to make others follow the laws dictated by them (of course, one might ask, what is meant to be the basis of divine authority, if not the supposed infinite force behind it).

One common enemy of Christianity and liberal politics de Lamennais find in slavery, which cannot really be tolerated. Yet, even here de Lamennais finds the policy of Catholic Church much more reasonable than the attempts of philosophical reformists - while latter try to change the state of African slaves in one enormous upheaval, Church tries to educate men to stop taking people as slaves. One might think that while such slow reform can often be pragmatically best option, it is quite peculiar that Church as the supposed mouth of God in the material world still renounces its own principles and advocates for a pragmatic solution.

The opponents of the Church de Lamennais divides into three categories, all of which are in some measure indifferent to the importance of religion. The first and clearest of these are atheists, who turn their back completely to God. While atheists would nowadays just deny the worth of religion, the supposed atheists of French Enlightenment might have been of different opinion and they could have admitted that religion is a useful tool for upholding society. Or at least de Lamennais says they have admitted this, mentioning at least Voltaire’s quip that he wouldn’t accept atheists as servants (we can ignore for now that Voltaire most likely wasn’t an outright atheist). De Lamennais finds in this attitude a sort of inconsistency, but upholding publicly what one deems as false is not a real contradiction, just a lie - and perhaps such an atheist could say that lies might be necessary and hence acceptable in the matters of society.

A further problem de Lamennais finds in the assumption that religion has been expressly invented as a deceit when creating the first society - such an invention would already require a society, for which it should have been basis. Yet, one need not either take religion as a conscious invention or suppose its divine origin. Instead, we might suppose that religions have grown accidentally from pre-social experiences and interactions of human beings and thus can fail to be true descriptions of the relation between humans and the supposed divinity, while still having an important role in the growth of civilization.

The second category of opponents includes deists, the foremost example of which for de Lamennais is Rousseau, as expressed by the speech of the Savoyard priest in the book Emile. Deists accept the existence of God, but they deny the need for any specific revelation, embodied expressly in the figure of divine mediator or Jesus. De Lamennais follows the official Biblical announcement that Jesus is the only true way toward knowing God and thus easily concludes that deists can really know nothing about God. Their only supposed source for the knowledge of God is human reason, but that is in de Lamennais’ eyes a fickle thing and something prone for errors, as shown by the fact that no two philosophers can agree on the nature of divinity. De Lamennais even uses Hume to show that reason can really say nothing about the existence of God, thus suggesting that deism just paves the way for straight atheism. The only content left for religion in deism is ethics, but this is especially something that cannot be decided by reason, de Lamennais insists, as shown by different customs of different nations. De Lamennais’ work reeks of an attitude where deism is not taken seriously, but is regarded as a mere lightweight substitute for religion - an attitude that doesn’t understand that religiousness can be embodied also in uncertain searching for something divine and not just in a faith founded on strong foundations.

Considering the Catholicism of de Lamennais, it is no wonder that the third opponent of true religion for him is protestantism in its various forms. If atheism tried to severe humans from God and deism from Jesus, protestantism attacks the relation between individual and church. One might think that this is a too severe judgement, because the protestants do have churches also, but it is more the unity of church de Lamennais is talking about. While Luther or Calvin might just have wanted to reform the original church, what they managed to bring about was a number of petty congregations, squabbling with one another. The problem in the whole reformist attitude, according to de Lamennais, is practically same as with deism - it tries to replace Catholic tradition with individual reason and conscience. What de Lamennais criticizes is the multiplicity of possible individual opinions on faith and God, while it is just this tolerance of individual opinions we might cherish as the true benefit derived from Reformation.

torstai 14. joulukuuta 2017

Antoine Destutt de Tracy: Elements of ideology, parts 4 and 5. Treatise on will and its effects (1815)

The unfortunately final piece of Destutt de Tracy’s Elements of ideology seems like a patchwork or a combination of disparate parts. Firstly, Destutt de Tracy uses the occasion to introduce a supplementary topic that should have been included somewhere in the first three parts of his work, namely, probability. The aim of this supplement is merely to show that probability requires no independent science of its own, but instead, all sciences should contain a part which deals with uncertainties.

The topic of the book proper is volitional part of human consciousness. Just like in his study of the cognitive side of consciousness, Destutt de Tracy divides his topic into three different parts, yet, he now also begins with a general introduction for all of these parts, dealing with will in general. We have already seen that Destutt de Tracy regards will as a completely passive faculty - it is mere perception of what one finds preferable or what one desires. We have also noticed that Destutt de Tracy considers our self-conception to arise from this volitional perception - we identify these preferences as belonging to ourselves, whereas all hindrances against attaining the preferable seem contrary to ourselves. Despite this rather passive view of volition, Destutt de Tracy admits that there is something active in human nature, namely the muscular system, which serves as our means for fulfilling our desires.

Going somewhat further with the basic concepts, Destutt de Tracy introduces such familiar notions like richness, freedom, right and duty. Richness means for him simply owning things one finds preferable (one wonders how this definition could be used as a basis for actual measuring of one’s riches). Freedom, on the other hand, is for Destutt de Tracy merely the absence of any constraint for one’s actions (what later would be called negative freedom).

Even more peculiar is Destutt de Tracy’s idea that desires determine our rights. Simply put, he says that all basic rights come back to the fact that living entities should have the right to fulfill their desires - a somewhat rash statement, since surely then many rights of different people would clash with one another, like the desire of having some slave serve you would contradict the slave’s desire of walking freely. Similarly, all duties should be determined by our actual means of obtaining things (one might suppose that Destutt de Tracy thinks here that one is morally obligated to use all means to gain what one desires).

The first part of the general science of volition Destutt de Tracy calls economy, which he defines as a study of human actions. Evidently, he is not speaking of just individual actions, but of the actions produced by the society in general. Indeed, Destutt de Tracy indicates that group work is a necessary ingredient in human manner of doing things, since it gives certain advantages to everyone, such as the ability to let each person concentrate on one aspect of a certain work process.

Destutt de Tracy goes even so far as to suggest that society can be divided into three classes according to the parts of a general scheme for all work processes. That is, since all work processes require at most three types of people, a theoretician knowing the general laws governing world, applicationist knowing how to apply theories and a practical person performing the actual work, society should be divided into three parts: scientists, entrepreneurs and workers. In practice, Destutt de Tracy quickly incorporates scientists into the workers, or generally, hirelings of entrepreneurs, and he also introduces a third class of sterile owners, who get their money e.g. from rents and do not actually produce anything new.

Why are the renters then sterile? This statement just reflects what for Destutt de Tracy is the goal to be sought in economy, that is, the production of useful things. This seems quite a materialist dream, although obviously a lot might depend on what is meant to be useful. Unfortunately, Destutt de Tracy’s answer just avoids this issue - the utility of something is evaluated by the number of sacrifices one is willing to make to obtain it. We seem to be walking in circles here - we should do things that are valuable, but valuable are just those things we are willing to do most.

The more we get to the details of Destutt de Tracy’s economy, the more quaint it appears. He divides the work to be made into two different types - the one or industrial produces new things (Destutt de Tracy includes agriculture in this type), while the other or commercial moves things to where they are most needed. It is very notable that the service sector is altogether missing from Destutt de Tracy’s scheme, which just accords with his notion of where the true value in economy lies. Indeed, the only place where he speaks of service work is in connection with the sterile renters, who pay for other people to serve their needs. Since such a service does not produce any new goods, Destutt de Tracy condemns it as a mere luxury, which just consumes the wealth of the society.

It is not surprising that Destutt de Tracy thinks government resembles more the sterile property owners who merely consume without adding to the wealth of society. State in his eyes is just a necessary evil, and indeed, its only function appears to be just to protect its citizens from other states. The inevitable conclusion then is that the state budget should be restricted as much as possible and that the state should not meddle with the economy any more than it needs to. One can raise many obvious objections, the foremost being that there is no a priori reason why state couldn’t also be productive in the sense demanded by Destutt de Tracy; it is then a different question whether such a state-controlled production of goods is as effective as private production, but since he is not treating this as an empirical question, neither need we. Furthermore, we might well also ask whether state could not have other important functions, not involving production of goods, such as construction of infrastructure, education etc., which are handled by many modern states.

Despite the rather right-wing attitude toward state and his enthusiasm for the entrepreneurs, Destutt de Tracy does not forget the salaried workers. Although he does state that some inequality of wealth is almost inevitable, inequality is still unjust and an inherently wrong state of affairs. Despite this, he still denies that the poor would need any special economic policy. Instead, the general development of economy should help also the salaried workers, by giving them more work and cheaper goods.

What developments Destutt de Tracy then expects of the economy? His general attitude is anti-mercantilist in that he advocates for a completely free foreign trade, which in his opinion just serves to combine all parts of the globe, moves goods to where they are most needed and incites even internal trade. He is also somewhat Malthusian, because he thinks population shouldn’t increase unless the means of sustaining them also increase - unemployment does no good for workers. Despite these at the time modern attitudes, deeply conservative is his idea that valuable metals, gold and especially silver, are the only possible form of currency and that especially paper money just encourages swindling and causes disturbances in the economy. One might hear people proclaiming nowadays that we should return to gold standard, but Destutt de Tracy speaks for an even great leap backwards in history. He is again speaking especially for the workers, who apparently are best served by stable prices - this would be a controversial statement nowadays, when a low, but steady inflation is taken as the best state in economy.

Although Destutt de Tracy has emphasised more the means of action instead of its goals in his economy, he might have said something about the latter in the fifth part of his ideology, which would have covered morality, by which he meant the study of human emotions. Indeed, Destutt de Tracy himself suggested that the two books would have been complementary, regarding the same topic from different viewpoints, in a manner reminiscent of Adam Smith. Unfortunately, Destutt de Tracy managed to write only a small part of the beginning of morality, leaving his whole ideology unfinished.

What Destutt de Tracy did manage to complete was an introduction to the book, describing his view on the metaphysical underpinnings of our will in particular and our personality in general. He endorsed the idea of Cabanis that one’s physiology in large part determines what one is like and especially what one fancies and desires. Interestingly, Destutt de Tracy still in a sense upheld the Leibnizian pre-established harmony. Of course. his interpretation of it was rather original - Destutt de Tracy suggested that Leibniz had tried to express the notion that within human body happen some yet unobserved movements, which cause both our experience of wanting something and the corresponding perceivable movements of body attempting to achieve what is wanted. Indeed, if one just replaces Leibnizian soul with the far less ontologically loaded consciousness, this interpretation appears not that far-fetched.

When it comes to the actual emotions of a human being, Destutt de Tracy managed to just begin a chapter on love, which he called the most positive emotion possible. One might speculate that love might have offered him a similar basis for goal of human being as general sympathy did for some British moralists, but this is all a mere speculation. Even less to say we have of the planned sixth part of ideology, which would have completed the section on volitional part of human consciousness. We do know that this part would have dealt with the art of governing societies, but since we have already seen that Destutt de Tracy wanted to restrict the role of government, it would probably been quite a short work.