Friedrich Eduard Beneke: Experiental study of soul as a foundation for all knowledge in its main branches (1820)

(1797-1854)

If you know German philosophy of early 19th century merely from summarised compendiums, you might think that only one line of thinkers followed Immanuel Kant: Fichte, Schelling and Hegel. You might have read of Schopenhauer as an afterthought, especially if the compendium dealt with the whole of 19th century, but you would most likely not see any mention of Beneke. Still, he took Kantian philosophy in a direction completely different from any of the other thinkers mentioned above.

Beneke’s Erfahrungsseelenlehre als Grundlage alles Wissens in ihren Hauptzügen, a book about “study of soul” or psychology, is an example of this direction. The name of the book already reveals important duality in Beneke’s account of psychology. Firstly, he thinks that psychology should be based on experience and observations. Beneke notes that although empiricism has been an important philosophical school, empirical psychology has not been truly developed since the times of Plato and Aristotle. He remarks that this lack of development has been mostly due to prejudices obscuring this topic, although soul - our own mental life - should be something quite familiar to us. Hence, empiricists have been more successful with natural than human sciences.

Secondly, Beneke notes that psychology is important due to a speculative or idealistic principle. What Beneke means by this principle is not any metaphysical theory about the nature of reality as such nor is it any attempt to explain the essence of soul, like Wolffian rational psychology had been. Instead, Beneke just emphasises the rather obvious truth that we humans can never have any access to any supposedly “neutral”, “completely objective” or God’s viewpoint. Thus, all science is science made by and for humans and study of human beings or psychology must then be the foundation of all science.

Beneke is of the opinion that Kantian philosophy united at least in some sense these two complementary viewpoints. Yet, the problem of Kant’s philosophy and his most famous followers, Beneke suggested, was that they didn’t attempt to make precise observation of human mental life. Beneke himself holds that psychology should use a Euclidean method - his suggestion seems to be that psychology should find the most basic elements of human mental life and explain everything else in mental life through these elements, just like Euclid explained geometry through simple elements, like points and lines.

Beneke’s first task is then to identify basic activities of human mental life. He notes that there are three such activities. The first one of these humans share with all animals, that is, the activity involved with the maintenance of animal body. The second activity consists then of sensory activity, and finally, the third consists of muscular activity. Beneke’s terminology is here somewhat confusing, as he speaks of these activities as being unitary, while still corresponding to multiplicity of faculties, for instance, sensory activity being instantiated by five sensory faculties of touch, smell, taste, hearing and vision. More important than this terminological muddle is Beneke’s remark that it is quite impossible to separate any body and soul within these activities - for instance, we do not have a separate soul using body to receive sensations, but in sensations, and indeed, in all human life, mental and physical aspects are completely intertwined.

Beneke also says that traditionally different senses have been divided into subjective and objective kinds. He opposes this division, because human life does not neatly divide into subjective and objective components - each human being is a subjective individual, but also shares features with other human beings and is in this sense objective. He does admit some gradual difference in the subjectivity and objectivity of senses: smell, taste and touch deal with sensations that are more individual than sounds and visions.

Beneke’s main thesis is that no new faculties are required for explaining human mental life. In one sense this is just a piece of propaganda against previous philosophers: when a Wolffian mentions e.g. a faculty of memory, he is just saying in a curt fashion that humans can, among other things, remember things, but he is not insisting upon any distinct activity of memorising (in fact, many Wolffians wanted to explain these “faculties" or capacities through a single activity).

In another sense, Beneke’s suggestion fails at a deeper level. An important part in Beneke’s reconstruction of mental phenomena is to note that humans can reawaken former, already weakened perceptual activities - this is the foundation of memory and conceptual activities. One might firstly remark that this act of reawakening of perceptual activities - say, imagining a face of an absent person - is an activity quite different from perceiving the face of a present person, because one can clearly imagine things without at the same time perceiving them. It is as if Beneke has confused the similarity of the experiences of perceived and imagined face with the identity of activities behind them. Secondly, even these experiences are clearly of different nature, as was noted already by Hume: perceptions are livelier than imaginations.

With the assumption of reawakening of activities, it is easy for Beneke to reconstruct more complex cognitive activities. Indeed, for Beneke concepts - or conceptual activities, as he prefers - just are activities composed of simple, reawakened activities. For example, concept of flower, in a particular human being, is just the sum of memories of all flowers she has perceived. These concepts might then be connected with muscular activities of tongue etc., thus leading to invention of language.

It is clear that such psychologically understood concepts are very idiosyncratic, because humans might connect very different memories to same word. Indeed, he insists, individual perceptions of same thing are more alike in different persons than their concepts of these things. Concepts might be more universal than perceptions in the sense that many perceptions can awaken same conceptual activities in us, but this doesn’t make these conceptual activities any more necessary.

Despite the idiosyncrasy of concepts, Beneke does not want to say that they would be subjective in comparison with objective perceptions. Beneke is trying to point out that notions like subjectivity and objectivity are a matter of degree. He suggests this as an essential correction of the Kantian idea that space is subjective. This is true of all we experience, Beneke states, but space is still more objective than some other experiences, because it is experienced in a similar manner by all humans.

While conceptual activities are for Beneke unified complexes of activities, judgements are, on the other hand, comparisons of conceptual activities: e.g. in a positive judgement, one notes that a concept is similar to another, in whole or partially. For instance, judgements “this rose is red" means that a conceptual activity of thinking this rose is a part of the conceptual activity of thinking all red things one has perceived. Judgements are then certain, if the concepts involved are clear. Deductions are finally formed of chains of such comparisons of clear concepts.

A clear problem in this rather naive conception of certainty is the problem of induction. How can one be certain that all ravens are black, if one hasn’t perceived all ravens? Beneke’s solution is just to embrace the problem: certain universal judgements require infinity of perceptions. Then again, he admits, there are different grades of certainty, and the more we see perceptions verifying a universal judgement, the more certain the judgement is.

The difference of empirically and a priori certain judgements - and therefore of empirical and a priori sciences - is then only relative and lies in the ease, in which we can find instances verifying them: for a priori certain judgements, all experiences of certain sort provide positive instances. Thus, certainty of mathematics (apparently just geometry) is based on structure of human vision, while certainty of logic is based on structure of human conceptual activities.

As simple as Beneke’s solution of the problem of induction is his solution of Humean problem of causality. In fact, it is for Beneke just one modification of the first problem. A causal judgement, he says, just indicates that one of type of perception always follows another type of perception, and certainty of such a judgement is verified in the same manner as of every other universal judgement. In case of the general principle of causality - every event has its cause - the certainty is based on the very nature of human perception to consist of a series of interconnected events.

As a priori sciences Beneke mentions also aesthetics and ethics, which have to do with feelings or moods. A kind of starting point for Beneke’s account of feelings is provided by the traditional idea of four temperaments. Especially important are the elements out of which Beneke reconstructs the temperaments. These are the complementary aspects of receptivity for external stimuli and force of maintaining inner activity. Both aspects can be stronger or weaker, creating thus four different combinations or temperaments.

The two components of external stimuli and use of inner force are, according to Beneke, also components of feelings, together with basic activities and their combinations or concepts. While there are innumerably many manners to combine different quantities of stimuli and inner force, Beneke underlines three limit cases, corresponding to important aesthetical concepts: state of heightened external stimuli is an experience of pleasurable, state of heightened inner force is an experience of sublimity, and finally, state of balance between stimuli and inner force is an experience of beauty.

Beneke explains these three notions in detail only in relation to basic activities, but these examples suffice. All nourishing activities and lower sensory faculties (smell, taste and touch) are too fleeting to be capable of anything else but the feeling of pleasure, but with other basic activities, Beneke says, all three feelings are present. Thus, quick sounds, variety of irregular shapes and rocking movement are all pleasurable, long sounds, lack of shapes and storm are all sublime, and harmonious sounds, regular shapes and rocking of boat in storm are beautiful.

Kant had famously noted that pleasure wasn’t a topic of what we would call an aesthetical study. In a sense, Beneke concurs, because external stimuli causing pleasures are again very idiosyncratic and therefore mostly incapable of generalisation. Then again, inner force is supposedly something similar from one person to another, which makes sublimity capable of generalisation. Like in other cases, beauty lies also here between pleasure and sublimity, which Beneke uses to account for Kantian idea that judgements of beauty are in a sense both subjective and at least demand universalisation. Now, while Kant had not indicated that a feeling of sublimity would be fully generalisable, he had compared completely idiosyncratic pleasure and subjective, but universality demanding beauty with the objective and fully universal demands of moral principles. In a sense, Beneke follows Kant by taking sublimity as a foundation of the final a priori science or morality.

Beneke’s account of morality is linked to his idea of desire and purposeful activity. Sometimes, he describes, a mental activity, while still active in some sense, points to a more full realisation of itself and thus comes with a yearning toward this fuller realisation - this is a state of desire. Desire as such does not suffice for fulfilling the yearning, and on occasion, desire remains without this actualisation as a mere desire. At other times, desire is fulfilled by an activity, which could then be called purposeful action. While the fulfilling activity can be called purposeful the desiring activity itself is not purposeful - for instance, while an artist creates a work of art through a purposeful activity, aiming to realise an internal idea of an artwork, this internal idea has not come about through any purposeful activity.

Now, human beings make judgements about other humans and their inner mental life through feelings the actions of others generate in them. According to Beneke, it is apparently the feeling of sublimity, from which we can recognise truly moral persons (Beneke thinks that it is especially the individuals and their virtues, which should be the topic of morality). In other words, the feeling of sublime gives an ideal of behaviour, with which to compare concrete human beings. It goes without saying that this ideal lies then not in susceptibility to external stimuli, but on the contrary, in independence from external stimuli.

Thomas Robert Malthus: Principles of political economy (1820)

Although Malthus is mostly remembered from his seminal work on population growth, he was also interested of more extensive questions in economy. Like Ricardo, Malthus followed on the tradition of Adam Smith, and indeed, he engaged in dialogue with Ricardo, often criticising details of latter’s work.

An important point of contention between Ricardo and Malthus was the question of measure of value. Of course, they shared a lot of common conceptual ground in their notions of value. By value of thing both writers meant the so-called exchange value or value measured in relation to something. In other words, when thing A is exchanged for certain quantity of B, then the value of A could be said to be this quantity of B. Usually some goods - at the time, gold - is chosen as a general measuring stick for all other goods.

Now, it is common knowledge that exchange values of goods change, depending on how much demand there is for it and how much supply there is to satisfy this demand. Even the conventional measure of value or gold has a variable value. Ricardo had suggested that despite this variation, there is some natural measure for value of different goods, namely, the amount of labour required for their production. This value was natural, according to Ricardo, because if left unregulated, prices of good would tend to move toward this natural value.

In a sense, Malthus agrees with Ricardo. He admits that goods do have a natural price, which is partially defined by the labour used for their production. Yet, firstly, this natural price is said by Malthus to be determined by other things beyond labour, such as cost of manufactures required for the production - in other words, this natural price is just the lowest price, which would take care of the costs of the goods and especially keep the labourers and people selling goods fed. Secondly, Malthus notes that despite this naturalness, there is no guarantee that prices would universally tend to move toward this point. Indeed, one might well imagine that two items, with equal productions costs, would still never have the same price, if the demand for one would always higher than the demand for the other. Thus, Malthus is more willing to admit that e.g. differences in quality might affect prices of goods. Instead of Ricardo’s measure, Malthus then suggests his own: value of a good should be measured by the amount of labour one could hire with it. Malthus’ suggestion seems believable, when one considers what we usually mean by value - things are more valuable, if we could get more goods and services with the money we could get by selling them.

Just like Ricardo, Malthus still considers mostly agricultural products, which indeed were the most important factor in the economy of the time. Thus, following Ricardo’s example, Malthus is eager to study the relations of three different classes - the landlords, who live by renting their land to farming, labourers, who live by the wages they get from working in the farms, and capitalists, who live by the profits they get from farming. Now, Ricardo thought that the rents, the wages and the profits should be measured by the proportion all the classes receive from the total amount of the produce. Malthus noted quite correctly that at least in case of rents and wages this style of measurement makes no sense, since it assumes that landlords, labourers and capitalists are playing a zero-sum game, where the gain of one means loss for others. Thus, if the total amount of agricultural produce would rise, but the rents of the landlords would remain equal or even rise in lesser quantity, Ricardo’s theory would assume that landlord would have lost something, although he would get the same or even bigger quantity of the products as a rent. Malthus instead suggests, more naturally, that rents and wages should be measured simply by the quantity of the products landlords and labourers receive. The profits of capitalists, on the other hand, should be measured, according to Malthus, in relation to the original capital they have spent for getting the products.

With these measures in hand, Malthus goes on to discuss in what manner each class involved in agricultural production could optimise the value they get from their efforts. The case of landlords is simplest, since practically any permanently positive effect on agricultural produce eventually raises the rents. Thus, in complete opposition to Ricardo, who noted that in poor countries landlords get a larger share of agricultural produce, Malthus notes that in developed countries landlords still fare better, since they get more of that produce, although their proportional share of the whole might be lower. Similar considerations apply to optimising the profits of agricultural capitalist - the more she can produce with less costs, the better. The case of labourers is somewhat more complicated, since rise in production of food, says Malthus, tends to incite population growth, which in the long run lowers wages of labourers. Thus, following his population studies, Malthus suggests that general avoidance of early marriages - the only form of birth control Malthus allows - would be beneficial for all labourers, because it would keep the wages steady.

Like Ricardo, Malthus is careful to distinguish wealth or richness from value - a society with abundance of goods would be immensely rich and wealthy, but the goods would be of no value, since everyone had what they wanted. The more interesting question for Malthus concerns then the means for making a state wealthier. We can at once note some clear deficiencies in Malthusian notion of wealth. He defines wealth as the sum of all material goods, which could be used in exchange. This definition, as Malthus himself notes, at once precludes all immaterial goods, such as skills and cultural artifacts, from entering into account of wealth. Malthus himself notes the unfairness, which leads to giving no value to the work of teachers and artists, since their work does not directly lead to the production of material goods. Still, Malthus says, this restriction must be made for theoretical purposes, because it would be enormously difficult to quantify the immaterial goods. A more important point of criticism is that Malthusian theory gives no value to leisure, which is seen as a mere detriment for development of state. One might speculate that the overall happiness of a state would at some point not be helped by increasing the production of new goods, but by decreasing the amount of work.

Malthus suggests two principles for the progression of national wealth. Firstly, the quality of soil gives a natural limit to what can be produced - lands of certain quality just won’t give enough agricultural produce to make investing in them useful. Although Malthus is again speaking from the standpoint of mostly agricultural society, his point can be clearly extended to an industrial society: the efforts required for finding the necessary raw materials put an ultimate limit to production. Secondly, the interplay of demand and supply regulates the rate at which the potentials of the production can be actualised - if there’s no demand for certain products, capitalists do not have any incitement to sell them. With his regulating principle Malthus does away with an idea common at the time that any supply of goods would just create its own demand. On the contrary, Malthus notes, there might well be times with too many products with not enough buyers. While this state of affairs might at first seem good for the labourers, who could buy things cheaply, it would in time affect them adversely, because there would eventually be no incitement to hire workers for farms and factories, leading the state to a further depression. Thus, Malthus notes, while parsimonious lifestyle of citizens is sometimes good for the society, because it creates more capital that can be used for investments, it might also lead to such a state of too few buyers of goods.