Louis Eugène Marie Bautain: Philosophy of Christianity – Second volume

Bautain begins the second volume of his book by continuing with his account of the history of philosophy. He had ended the first volume with the mention of Aristotle, and next he jumps over most of the Hellenistic period to Neoplatonism, which he takes to be nothing but an eclectic conglomeration of Jewish traditions, Greek philosophical doctrines and oriental superstitions and suggests it to be a providential example of what errors human reason is capable by itself. Bautain contrasts Neoplatonism with New Testament and the Church Fathers, who, he claims, founded the true science by investigating especially the trinitarian nature of the divinity.

Bautain’s view of medieval philosophy is highly critical. He understands the aim of the scholastics, who were keen to defend philosophy against heresies invented by human reason. Yet, Bautain thinks that the weapons they used, that is, the syllogistic and the whole Aristotelian philosophy, were incompatible with the living nature of Christian faith. He does admit that philosophers like Anselm of Canterbury and Thomas Aquinas found great truths by their faith, but regrets that they had to mutilate their ideas by presenting these in the rigid scholastic form.

The most regrettable result of scholastic philosophy, according to Bautain, was that human reason once again thought itself capable of knowing the truth by itself, without the help of faith. This led, Bautain thinks, straight to the idea of Cartesian doubt, which ultimately remained vague in its very principles, since it never could explain what even this thinking thing was in its nature. A similar cry for beginning from tabula rasa regarding the external nature, Bautain suggests, was heralded by the Baconian philosophy, which, in addition to Cartesianism, Bautain sees as a principle of all modern philosophy. The effect of Descartes and Bacon, Bautain insists, was making philosophy again a pagan affair, which he considers to be especially embodied in the contemporary German philosophy or Schellingian pantheism, which he sees as a resurrection of Neoplatonism.

Bautain moves to consider specifically the current French schools of philosophy. He starts with the Enlightenment philosophers, all of whom he deems as mere materialists and as responsible for the anarchy of the French revolution. Bautain especially emphasises the role of Condillac as the instigator of the later ideological school of Destutt de Tracy, which in Bautain’s eyes made humans into mere thinking machines and especially led to a complete indifference to religion.

After the restoration of French monarchy, Bautain continues, the ideological school was replaced by the followers of the Scottish common sense school. He finds the whole premise of this school suspect, since it tries to determine the nature of human mind through self-consciousness, although even Kant had shown this to be a flawed attempt. Furthermore, Bautain continues, the common sense school is interested merely in the worldly side of human experience, ignoring the question of his future fate. Thus, he concludes, common sense philosophers are at best just deists, who do not know the living God.

The final contemporary French school Bautain mentions is that of eclecticism, founded by Victor Cousin. Bautain is reluctant to criticise Cousin, having been his student and still considering him a friend. Still, Bautain cannot really endorse Cousin’s eclecticism. Much of it, he says, is essentially just a repetition of the common sense philosophy, with all the same faults, and what Cousin adds to it is just a view that all historical schools of thought have had some grain of truth in them, which Bautain finds repugnant, as it lowers Christianity on the same level as all the non-Christian philosophies. Bautain is especially distrustful of Cousin’s affinity with the contemporary German philosophy, which pantheistically reduces spirit and matter, God and human, and indeed everything into a featureless absolute.

Bautain turns his critical eye next to contemporary theologians. Apparently his views had aroused some controversy, since he attaches to the letters published in the book an explanation that when criticising scholasticism, he does not criticise Catholicism. In fact, he says, scholasticism is just a method, that is, application of Aristotelian logic and philosophy to Christianity. There’s nothing particularly Christian in Aristotle, Bautain argues, and indeed, his logic is good mostly for disputation. In fact, he emphasises, Church Fathers did not use Aristotle in their works, but tried to positively make sense of the things they had faith in. Bautain admits also that the scholastic method still has its uses, for instance, in making our reason more precise, but the point is that reason by itself cannot reach the essential truths.

In the original correspondence, Bautain does not even pay this lip service to scholasticism, but begins an all out attack against the contemporary scholastics, who tried to base things of faith on reason. Theology, he insists, hasn’t really progressed in the last few centuries, and theologians seem completely unaware of the developments in other sciences. Although Bautain speaks of scholasticism, the theology he investigates is actually based on Cartesianism, even if the methods used are otherwise Aristotelian. 

The current theologians, Bautain starts, begin with a Cartesian doubt, imagining that reason could set up metaphysics without any recourse to faith. Indeed, he adds, they restrict the whole nature of human soul to this one faculty of reason or thinking, ignoring the wealth of richness hidden within the human mind. No wonder they then proceed directly to logic, by which they understand mere study of reasoning and especially syllogisms, without any comprehension of the limits of reasoning shown by Kant, Bautain underlines and emphasises that syllogisms by themselves can merely show that some statements are consistent with one another, but cannot provide their own premisses.

Armed with the methods of logic, Bautain states, the modern theologians continue to apply them to abstract ontological notions like being as such that don’t have any proper content in themselves: we do not feel what this being is like, unlike when the very source of being or God touches us. When they then divide being into material and spiritual beings, he insists, they seem to imply that the two share the same nature, forming one monistic whole with two poles, and when they then further divide the spiritual being into finite and infinite spiritual beings, they seem to add that this whole is even pantheistic, whole of existence forming a mere gradual continuum from matter to God.

Theologians try to prove, in a manner reminiscent of Descartes, the existence of God from their notion of being, but relying on both Kant and Paul, Bautain thinks their attempt is doomed to fail. All demonstrations happen through equation, deduction or induction, he suggests, but none of these work with the topic of God: equation is ruled out, because there is nothing equal to God, if one tried to deduce the existence of God from the existence of being in general, this would essentially make God pantheistically into a mere aspect of the whole existence, and induction fails, because we cannot understand infinity from our merely finite experiences. In fact, Bautain insists, the only way to reach a true faith in God is to accept the divine Logos speaking to our very minds, and if someone refuses to do that, no manner of argument can really persuade them.

Equally fruitless in Bautain’s eyes are the rest of the branches of modern scholasticism. He especially focuses on the study of human nature, which he deems equally entangled with dead abstractions and ignoring the true living unity of individual humans. Thus, Bautain reproaches, these neo-scholastics do not consider such important questions as what the future fate of humanity is like, being satisfied with such dry notions as the simplicity of spiritual substance. This dryness is especially felt, he thinks, in morality, which instead of concrete situations requiring moral consideration investigate mere abstract notions pertaining to morality.

Bautain does not suggest a complete abandonment of a philosophical study of Christianity, but more its reworking: less listing of historical heresies and their refutations, more edification of heart. Instead of ontology of being in general, he suggests founding theology on faith in the divine trinity. This should be supplemented, Bautain continues, with analytical psychology, investigating the facts of consciousness and their genesis in the history of an individual and the whole human species. Only after these fundamental disciplines should follow logic, the main task of which would be to determine the limits of the use of reason, on the basis of its place among all faculties, and to recognise, not truth as such, but only truth in certain contexts and especially faults in reasoning. The final apex of this study would be morality, based on the dual nature of humanity and its relation to the divine.

Bautain introduced a further supplement to the correspondence, concerning what he considers an increasing threat of pantheism, inspired by the German idealism of Fichte, Schelling and now also Hegel. Bautain considers it especially dangerous that French Catholic priests do not have the means to deal with this new enemy, since they are still engaged in age-old heresies not relevant in the current situation. Pantheism in itself, he suggests, is a perennial enemy of Christianity, and indeed, all other philosophies eventually become just pantheism, whether we are dealing with Gnosticism, Platonism or Cartesianism. The current pantheism, Bautain suggests, is a reaction to sensualist philosophy, reverting from the everyday common sense to vaguely idealistic speculations.

The main thrust of this new form of pantheism, Bautain suggests, is to again synthesise all the developments of science into a unity incorporating God as well as nature and humans. All its proponents, he continues, divide it into two parts, first of which provides an insight into this unity in its purity, independently of all appearances, while the second part applies the first into the realms of nature and humanity. Thus, Bautain concludes, the new pantheists see individual disciplines as mere reflections of the whole of science, describing the unity incorporating everything.

What makes this form of pantheism especially dangerous, Bautain thinks, is that for the first time it is a pantheistic doctrine that has found footstep in the society at large. It sees all religions as mere development of our understanding of the all-encompassing unity, he explains, hence degrading the status of Christianity to a mere temporary quirk that will be replaced by a more refined religion. Because of its popularity, this attempted replacement has its effects in the practical affairs, Bautain argues and suggests that young people are already dismissing the notion of Christian charity and speaking instead of philanthropy and harmony, which still are too sterile concepts to actually incite anyone to action. He sees the effects of pantheism also in sciences, where the place of the analysis has been taken by an almost poetic urge to synthesise, and in arts, the task of which is not anymore to imitate the beauty of nature, but to manifest the divine unity in complete independence of anything outside art.

In the realm of politics, Bautain states, principles like justice have been replaced by a fatalistic following of the supposed necessity of events, crushing individual happiness under the banner of common good. Then again, he adds, a pantheistic individual has no reason to consider the good of others, since anything they do will always be a manifestation of the divine, no matter how immoral it may seem.

Bautain returns from this detour back to the original series of letters, where the three converts have a new worry. They wonder about the doctrine of the original sin, which appears to contradict the evident glory of humanity that holds the veritable crown among all the creatures of Earth and has a capacity for infinite perfectibility: how could all this be reconciled with the supposed depravity of human nature? And supposing this depravity of original sin is true, how can it have affected the whole humanity, when it is essentially the fault of one human being?

Bautain insists that despite all their marvelous achievements, humans still are in a state of deprivation: just look at the fact that none of those achievements appears to satisfy us, but we always yearn for more. Furthermore, when we speak of the glory of humans, we refer to humans at the height of their development, but forget that their first state is one of weakness, where the power of reason is still dormant. And when a child grows, they do not automatically become purely good and virtuous, but more of a melange of brightest generosity and deepest egoism. A human is an animal with mere animal desires, one might say as an excuse, but why are they then given a reason that is not satisfied with its animal condition?

For Bautain, God's condemnation of the original sin is just a proof of divine justice. God has set up a law, Bautain explains, in order to make humans happy and thus wants them to follow it, but if they don't, God must act as a judge. How come then has the original sin transferred from one person to the rest of humanity? Bautain suggests that the first sinner being the progenitor of all human race has causally affected the whole humanity, which forms a genetic unity due to its common ancestors.

The Jews admit all that Bautain has taught them, but raise another problem: where has all the evil, such as sin and death, come from? Is it ascribable to God, as Paul seems to imply, when he says that everything is from, by and in God? Does this mean that evil is eternal and what this implies for the accountability of humans? What is the law that humans are supposed to follow and how come the first human could have known it, when even philosophers don't agree on this matter?

Bautain's answer begins with another warning against pantheism: although it may sound so, Paul's statement does not equate everything with God. Instead, Bautain explains, what Paul meant was that all that is, in a primary sense of the word, comes from God. This still leaves the possibility of something not deriving from God, namely, evil, as long as it is not being in the proper sense of the word.

God did not necessarily develop or emanate into the world, Bautain underlines, but freely created it, that is, willed into existence, what they had thought in their wisdom (from God), through their Logos or Word (by God), in an act incomprehensible to mere humans. What God created, he continues, was two substances – heaven and earth – or spiritual and corporeal nature, both sustained by divine life (in God), without which both would return to non-existence. With this life, on the other hand, both are immortal, Bautain assures us, so that not just our soul, but also our body can live forever. In summary, the world in its possibility depends on divine wisdom, but in its reality on divine will.

The world created by God, Bautain insists, cannot be nothing but good. Where do evil, sin and death then come? In an Augustinian manner, Bautain suggests they are mere negations: evil is just the lack of good in our actions or an abuse of our freedom, sin is the effect of this evil, as a breaking of law, and death is just the necessary consequence of sin as a removal of life. This explanation does not fully satisfy his correspondents, who ask Bautain how come even the possibility of choosing wrongly exists, before the appearance of sin, and indeed, what this mysterious freedom or liberty actually is: it is supposed to be the highest glory of human beings, yet, it enables their lowest deprivation. Furthermore, they add, couldn’t God wisely have foreseen that humans will abuse their freedom and why were humans created so weak as to err?

Bautain reaffirms that evil is nothing in itself and especially not derived from God, but a consequence of a free choice by an intelligent creature. This possibility of free choice, he continues, is something inherent in all creatures, even if they are merely physical, since they can react spontaneously and in an individual manner to their environment. With moral creatures or humans, Bautain suggests, this freedom occurs as a possibility to live either a mere natural or a spiritual life, in answer to speech awakening us to this possibility. Finally, he concludes, with metaphysical creatures or pure intelligences, freedom means capacity to receive or refuse divine light.

Whatever the form of freedom in creatures, Bautain analyses, it presupposes objective life giving an impulse to the free subject, capacity of the subject to receive and retain life, and the capacity to react positively or negatively to life. This is completely different from divine freedom, he explains, since God has life in themselves, while the freedom of other beings is spontaneous only on the condition of reacting to something else: creation merely sets out this capacity to react, which then must still be activated by the vivifying power of things around us. In the case of humans, Bautain states, this vivifying power comes from both the physical things sustaining our bodies and the speech sustaining our spirits.

Due to their dependence, Bautain insists, human beings should turn themselves toward the source of their life, in other words, God. Indeed, he underlines, this harmony of the divine and human or love toward God is the very law that humans should follow – you are dependent on the life given by God, thus, you should acknowledge it. Breaking this law, Bautain explains, means simply that the human being pretends to be autonomous and independent of God, breaking the connection to that very source, without which they cannot even exist.

The three Jews are still perplexed, why God provided humans even with the possibility of turning away from God, since this seems a peculiarly cruel trick. Bautain assures them that the only motive God does anything is love, because as completely free God is in need of nothing. The temptation for humans to do evil must then originate from somewhere else, namely, Bautain states, in purely metaphysical, non-corporeal entities (biblical angles), vivified directly by the divine idea and with the capacity to decide their very mode of existence by choice: this differs, he explains, from humans, who are determined by their belonging to their common genus, linked together by their line of ancestry.

All creatures, Bautain affirms, exist indefinitely after their creation, because they are sustained by the unending divine love, and this is true also of angels. Now, he continues, the first act of angels is to instinctively and spontaneously react to the vivifying power of God: they feel the action of life, they are conscious of this feeling and freely act on the basis of this consciousness. Their action may be one of accepting this divine gift, but it can also be the opposite one of rejection. Why would an angel do that? Bautain’s explanation is its very power: an angel feeling itself self-sufficient might well choose to let go of the divine life. While the choice of self-abnegation and surrender to the divine life would make an angel bright and good, he continues, the opposite act would not destroy it – the divine love still sustains its existence that much – but would make it a creature of shadow and chaos, aiming to lure all the other creatures to the same condition of disharmony.

What comes from God, Bautain summarises, are the power of free choice of all creatures and the occasion to use it for harmony with the source of all life, but God does not determine, in which way the creatures will act: that would mean that the choice would not be free. The egoistic choice of the fallen angels, Bautain concludes, is therefore not the responsibility of God, because God has not wanted this choice, but merely out of pure love gave them the opportunity to forge the fate they wanted. God has known the possibility of a bad choice, Bautain admits, but insists that as pure goodness they could not have known in advance that the choice would be bad. God would immediately take the fallen angels back to the harmonious state, if they so wanted, Bautain underlines, but after their first choice, they continue making the same bad choice again and again.

Bautain attaches to this metaphysical tale a familiar sort of reading of the first few chapters of Genesis. After creating the spiritual and the physical world, he begins, God created humankind as mediating the two realms, with supernatural spirits incorporated in terrestrial bodies and thus different from purely spiritual angels. Because of their semi-terrestrial nature, humans were not directly connected to the divine, Bautain explains, but could only hear the divine speech or Logos and believe this to be divine. In addition, he points out, humans were connected to the physical world that threatened to lure them away from the link to the divine. The fallen angels, Bautain notes, encouraged the humans to succumb to this temptation.

Due to the unity of humankind, this original sin of the first human beings, Bautain insists, became a disposition for personal sin in each individual human being. The sin, he explains, consists of a contradiction of two elements: objective will of God manifested to a creature and subjective will of this creature to act against the first. The contradiction, Bautain adds, is proportional to the intelligence of the creature, so that the sin of an angel is greater than the sin of a human being. Still, he states, the result of both of them is the same, namely, the disruption of the rapport between God and the creature, when the creatures turn themselves away from the divine. Yet, Bautain notes, the consequences of the result still differ: the angel has turned away from God with all their will, because of the simplicity of their nature, while for the human being as a combination of animal and spiritual substances, this turning means a disruption of the hierarchy of the two substances, the body being not anymore in full control of the soul.

The human soul is still immortal, Bautain notes, but it is deprived of its full satisfaction, available only from interaction with the divine, and thus feels an ever rekindling desire that gnaws its mind. The soul is also free and susceptible to the power of God, if it just heard the divine speech, but due to the break, it hears only the whispers of the fallen angels and becomes more and more ruled by the animal nature of the body. Finally, Bautain concludes, without properly controlling the body, the soul experiences the natural transformation of this body as its destruction or death.

Couldn’t God just restore the lost connection to humans and other fallen creatures? Yes, Bautain admits, but adds at once that this would go against respecting their liberty: if people want to stay away from the divine, God does not force themselves on them. Humans by themselves do not even recognise that they have distanced themselves from God through their sin, thus, Bautain argues, they must at first have to be told by their conscience that they are living in a sinful state. This consciousness of sin is not enough for restituting the lost harmony, he continues, but a punishment is required to balance the scales of justice. The problem is, Bautain explains, that no human is anymore innocent, so that the only possible solution has been the Christian one: sacrificing an incarnation of the very speech of God.

Why did God wait for so long before committing this salvational act? Because it was necessary to let humans themselves develop into a state where they freely desired redemption, Bautain explains: the evil of the fall had to be diminished to a degree where it was again possible for the souls of humans to search for God and for the bodies become pure enough to serve as a vessel for the divine.

Returning again to his account of the history of philosophy, Bautain states that from the very beginning, humans have had two foundational ideas on which to base knowledge: that of God and that of themselves in their separation from the divine. These ideas and the consequent true monotheism, Bautain adds, were retained in their pure form by the Jews, while with the rest of the world, monotheism degraded into pantheism, and even more, into animalistic polytheism. It is only at the point when the contradiction between the two was grown into its highest prominence, Bautain concludes, that the time for the liberator or redeemer had come.

This liberator, Bautain underlines again, had to be a real human being and not a mere fictional symbol, like Homeric heroes. Furthermore, he adds, he was not just a wise person, like Confucius, Zarathustra or Socrates, but a divine person. Bautain admits that he cannot really explain how the two sides of the saviour are connected, but then again, he retorts, we cannot even explain how natural generation of humans and animals happens and we are not rejecting their actuality. Besides, he notes, humans are similarly a synthesis of two different kinds of substances, which is something equally incomprehensible to us, although we can say that the divine life has something to do with this union, and just like by the word “I” we refer both to our body and to our spirit, so should the liberator act in some ways as human and in other ways as God.

Bautain advertises the Catholic Church as the place where the work of the redeemer continues: the redeemer has established a change in the spiritual nature of human beings, but this change must be affected through sensuous means or sacraments, such as the devouring of the body of redeemer taking the form of bread. This does not mean, he explains, that all the members of the Church or even all its priests are holy, because the affairs of the world might still tempt them. Still, Bautain assures the three friends, as members of the Church and as its priests, they do complete their task of transmitting the redemption to future generations. Thus, Bautain concludes his correspondence by asking the three friends to leave the ways of the world and set their faith in the Church – not just as members in name only, but as true, believing Christians.

Louis Eugène Marie Bautain: Philosophy of Christianity (1835)

(1796–1867)

Bautain is again not one of those names you are likely to hear in a course on 19th century philosophy: Catholic conservatives do not fit well in the tale of progression toward modernity. His Philosophie du Christianisme adds an interesting layer to a typical dialogue between philosophy and Christianity, as it represents also a dialogue between Catholicism and Judaism. The historical context of the book is a surge of Jewish converts in France, a number of which act as characters in the book, structured as a series of letters between these converts and Bautain. In fact, these characters apparently were real historical personages, who begin the book by telling the story of their conversion.

The context raises the inevitable question of the reasons for the conversion. Certainly the conversion must have been a step toward better inclusion in the French society, and indeed, one of the converts makes the remark that Christianity was already familiar to him from his social circles. Yet, since all three of the converts eventually became priests, they in great probability must have felt a genuine change in their hearts. Indeed, the separation from the Jewish community seems to have been one of great personal anguish to some of the converts, leading even to being ostracised by their former friends and relatives.

Despite these strong personal experiences presented in the book, as a reader I shall try to be impartial and not make any judgement about the respective status of the two religions. Still, since I am expounding the dialogue from the viewpoint of Bautain, it is inevitable that the argument of the Catholic side will have a more prominent role in the discussion.

The book begins from a time when the three future converts are still Jewish youth, but already skeptical about their religion, at least in its current state, which they interpret as putting more emphasis on ritualistic traditions than on true moral improvement. They have also been affected by the deistic arguments, but still feel that deism leaves certain of their needs unsatisfied. Furthermore, they are curious about Christianity, but do not understand the reasoning behind some of its mysteries, like the doctrine of the trinitarian nature of God.

Bautain, on his part, commends the three Jews for their spiritual search – indeed, he suggests that this is something brought about by the very hand of God. He at once warns them not to trust deism, because, he thinks, deism misreads God as being a mere force of nature, with no true personality. Indeed, Bautain is certain that Judaism is a much truer belief system than deism, seeing God as a living entity. Bautain is still convinced that Judaism is not the final truth, having been a mere stepping stone toward the true religion or Christianity. Still, it has been a necessary stepping stone, and Christianity without Judaism, he compares, would be like a statue without a pedestal.

What makes Christianity the ultimate truth, Bautain argues, is the simple fact that it is based on divine revelation given to humanity through words of Moses, prophets, Jesus and apostles and retained and fulfilled by the community of the Catholic church: what more justification would it need? Of course, if one sees in the Church nothing more than a human institution, he admits, this justification falls flat. Yet, Bautain is eager to point to moral development of humankind after the founding of the Church as an indirect proof of the truth of Christianity.

Bautain’s correspondents find flaws in this argument. They find it unsettling that they should just believe that the Church knows the right way to interpret the holy writings, suffocating the freedom of their own thought. Furthermore, they point out, the Church seems far from a consistently good organisation, as many of its members and even priests have been corrupt. Finally, it even seems doubtful to them whether one can speak of a unified Church, when it has national factions, often contradicting one another in various issues.

Bautain is ready to defend the Church. He emphasises the essential freedom of human nature and insists that Christianity does not contradict it. Instead, Bautain states, Christianity is something that is freely chosen by humans, and it is not forced upon them, but at most argued for. He admits that this ideal might not have been always fulfilled, but he thinks this is just indicative of the fact that the heavenly ideal of the Church does not always correspond to the human realisation of this ideal. Thus, Bautain admits, there have been immoral Christians and even priests, and they are to be morally condemned even more forcefully than others, since we should expect more of them. Even so, he thinks, something of that heavenly ideal affects even its worldly image: the core doctrine of Christianity has remained intact through the ages, being ready to be taught to any curious soul.

The Jews become even more perplexed, when they hear what other supposed Christians have to say about their religion: they paint the Old Testament at best as an assortment of legends and metaphors, and they regard Jesus as a philosopher or a magician, but certainly not as a son of God. Bautain notes that all such talk is the fruit of putting reason above faith, although reason is just a capacity for drawing consequences from given principles – but incapable of finding principles for itself. Thus, he insists, while reason can help us in mundane affairs, where it can base its deductions on experience, in questions of supernatural matter, by itself it will just end up with situations like Kantian antinomies, where different opinions seems equally probable and the best is can do is to sceptically believe none of them.

Faith, on the contrary, Bautain explains, is not really a doctrine and nothing to do with truth in the common sense of the word, but an act of becoming connected with the divine – trying to argue about it with the tools of reason is beside the point, and for this reason it is often the less educated who understand the faith better. Then again, he adds, this connection with divine – truth in the higher sense of the word – makes a higher sort of knowledge possible, by giving reason a proper basis in metaphysics.

Bautain begins his introduction to this metaphysics from the question of divinity: is Christian God a unity? At first, Bautain’s answer is affirmative – if asked, a Christian would affirm that God is one and would definitely not place their trust in any other divinity. Yet, from a deeper perspective, the question is not so simple, Bautain suggests. God, he says, is something we simply cannot know at all, thus, we cannot really understand the divine unity. This is, Bautain underlines, true of all things in general, since we, for instance, see the images of physical things, but never really understand their essence or what makes them tick. Humans cannot even know themselves, he insists, as we experience ourselves as in a mirror, through the reflection of a light outside us – no wonder we cannot know the divine light, except throught the revelation of the light itself.

Bautain contrasts the authority of revelation with the supposed faculty of common sense that some of his contemporaries suggested as a criterion of truth. Yet, Bautain notes, common sense is characterised not by being a certain criterion of truth but only by being common to all human beings. What lies behind this common sense, he suggests, is the speech of other human beings, awakening us to our capacity of reason. Yet, he at once adds, the first human being had to be awakened by a speech beyond human being, that is, by the divine word or light.

There are then three forms of light, Bautain suggests: the physical light revealing the natural objects, the rational light of speech revealing the human language and thinking, and the metaphysical light revealing religious truths. Concentrating on this third form, inherent in the teachings of the Christian Church, he insists that this is our only possible guarantee for the existence of God. If we instead try to make rational arguments about the existence of God, Bautain suggests, we essentially swap God with an idol: not with a natural being, like a stone, as in what is commonly understood by idolatry, but with a figment of our imagination, that is, with our personal representation of what it means to be God.

The Jews admit that the divine unity is ineffable, but return to the question they had suggested at the beginning of their correspondence – how can we then say that God is trinity and even make any sense of this statement? Instead of answering, Bautain returns to the theory of threefold light he had just discussed. He connects this discussion to a theory of three faculties of human cognition: imagination, dealing with images of physical objects, understanding, dealing with concepts or notions of relations between images, and intelligence, dealing with ideas of metaphysical prototypes. All these faculties require for their activities – formation of images, distinction of notions and generation of ideas – three conditions: the regard of subject toward its object, object distinct from and still in correspondence with the subject, and the light harmonising the subject and the object.

Now, when using these three faculties, the human mind appears passive, Bautain notes: physical light strikes our eyes and connects us to our external environment, or speech strikes our understanding and intelligence, making us form some concepts. Yet, he at once adds, these are mere materials of our thinking, while thinking still does something to them, combining them into various systems of knowledge. Of course, all these systems depend also on the materials that cannot be created by the mind. Still, Bautain underlines, these materials need not be only those seen by the physical eye, but they can be something seen by the intellectual eye, such as ideas of beauty and goodness.

Where do such pure ideas arise? They are ingrained in our very soul, Bautain suggests, and are just awakened by suitable experiences: for instance, we have an idea of a mathematical point or of a force, principles respectively of geometry and physics, which we then just become conscious of, once certain experiences awaken these ideas. Bautain connects this Platonic idea of ingrained ideas with the Augustinian notion that the ideas are awakened by the divine light of truth. In a rather predictable manner, he then identifies this pure light with the Logos of John’s Gospel, which should have then embodied itself in the body of the human being called Jesus.

Although Bautain’s correspondents are not yet enamoured by the biblical overtones of his theory, they do acknowledge that it is far more convincing than Condillac’s idea of a completely passive human soul that develops thinking through mere sensations. They find even Locke more unconvincing than Bautain, since although this philosopher did admit the power of reflection as another source of knowledge beyond sensation, he did not convincingly explain where such pure ideas like that of being came from.

Bautain’s next line of thought is again Augustinian: all the pure ideas we have exhibit a trinitarian structure, for instance, the geometric idea of a circle has the centre as the origin of the circle (being, in the sense of the kernel from which all the else is derived), the circumference as it form (existence, in the sense of what is derived from being) and the radius as the means for determining the circumference from the centre (life, in the sense of a process mediating between being and existence). Bautain goes through various examples, such as a proposition, where subject is connected to its predicate through copula, but the main point is just to argue that analogically the divinity must also have this same trinitarian nature, where the being of God is connected to the divine existence in its speech or Logos (“I am”) through the living activity of spirit.

Bautain states that the idea of trinity lies behind all true metaphysics. In order to justify this statement, he begins by dividing all objects of science into three groups: eternal and all creating God, created, but free and intelligent humans, and unfree and unintelligent physical world. Humans, Bautain contends, are acquainted with all these three objects: God through the idea of being, themselves through their self-conscience and the physical world through the abstract notion of space.

All three objects, Bautain thinks, are in a sense investigated in the same manner, through a loving embrace of the object by the subject, but through different means: God by admission of divine light or word, ourselves and our moral state through self-consciousness, and physical things through physical light and organic vision. Yet, Bautain insists, all three presuppose the activity inherent in the notion of trinity: physical space is constituted by the movement of a single point in a line, we ourselves are constituted by our soul becoming active intelligences and God is constituted by an eternal movement of the absolute source of being into its appearance as Logos.

Bautain compares this Christian philosophy with other philosophies, finding them all insufficient in comparison. Materialists are quickly dismissed as knowing nothing about the divine light or at least as interested in nothing else, but the animal side of life. Empirical scientists try in vain to find truth in the physical world around us, where it cannot be discovered. Deists do admit that the world around us must be based on a divinity beyond it, but this deistic divinity is a lifeless lawgiver, which cannot explain why the world is what it is and which also cannot base morality on nothing more than formal justice and self-preservation. And while Stoics admit the world to be ruled wisely, they cannot explain why this world appears to be a battlefield between life and death, except by endorsing Manichean dualism.

Moving on to more recent philosophers, Bautain considers Kant to be the epitome of protestant Christianity, attacking all the remnants of scholasticism in philosophy and ending up with speculative atheism that denies all knowledge of the divine. On the side of practical philosophy, according to Bautain, Kant emphasises the imperative of moral conscience as the only basis of human behaviour, but since every individual has their own conscience, the result is Fichtean practical atheism, where humans have absolute freedom to make their decisions by spontaneous choices.

To account for the existence of the world around them, Bautain thinks, the idealistic philosophy of nature turns on to internal vision (he does not mention any particular figure, but there are definite Schellingian vibes here). This vision suggests that everything is based on an absolute unity that as living source opens up to itself as an object or as a dualistic existence or universe that tries to return to the original unity: this is essentially pantheism, because all the universe is seen as a mere development of God. What is missing even from this latest philosophical invention, Bautain suggests, is the trinitarian mystery of divine being generating Logos that creates everything else and divine life flowing from both of them as a light revealing everything to humans.

At this point, the Jews feel that they are sufficiently convinced of the truth of the trinity. Yet, they feel that their conviction is still just philosophical and not the faith that a true Christian would have. Bautain assures them that they already have Catholic faith, but they have just been confused by their philosophical learning. To make the matter clearer, Bautain suggests investigating what it means to believe or have faith in something. Belief in the most general sense, he says, is just adhering to a truth, and in order to be able to believe in the existence of something real, this real thing must have acted upon us in some manner and we must have observed this action in some manner. This action could have been by natural things, leading to natural belief, by human speech, leading to moral belief, or by divine intervention, leading to supernatural faith.

In each of the three cases, Bautain thinks, the belief or faith is generated through three steps: firstly, we feel the action of the object on us, secondly, we attend to and reflect on this experience, and finally, we have reflected consciousness of the effect of the object on us. Taking the belief or faith as this whole process, he argues, we see that knowledge arises from belief or faith, not the other way around. Indeed, Bautain insists, the certainty of all our knowledge can ultimately be based only on belief and faith, which is based on the innermost interaction with the object of belief of faith. Of course, he admits, we often feel hesitant about the things we have beliefs of or faith in, but this is just due to our reason hesitating, because we have wandered away from the light that originally generated the belief or faith in us.

Just like there are three kinds of belief, Bautain argues, there are three kinds of certainty. Physical certainty, he begins, is based on sensation, through which we are convinced that fire burns etc., but it tells at most what things are for us, not what they are in themselves. Moral certainty, Bautain continues, is based on reason, acquired through interaction with other people, but it is far from infallible, because of the possibility of human error. This leaves as the profoundest kind the metaphysical certainty, Bautain says, based on the most intimate interaction with the divine.

The converts-to-become are also perplexed how people who have not even heard the biblical tales would be able to become part of this faith. Bautain suggests that God has still inscribed some essential truths, like moral law, to the minds of all human beings. Thus, he insists, all human beings have the possibility of feeling the connection to the divine through their own conscience. This means, firstly, that all humans know in their innermost self what is the right way to act and they need just to be reminded about it by external instruction about the moral law. Similarly, Bautain suggests, the metaphysical truths about the nature of the divine have already been inscribed in our mind and the revelation merely awakens us to recognise them, if we are just ready to hear what it has to say.

The three youth raise another question: if all the examples of philosophy presented thus far have veered off from the Catholic doctrine, are philosophy and religion, and especially theology, necessarily in contradiction with one another? Bautain denies this and insists that philosophy or science in general need not be antagonistic toward Christianity, and although they often seem endeavours fairly independent of one another, science can be used to confirm religion. True philosophy, he says, should not be just a description of natural phenomena, but a science of human condition and its relation to the divine, thus, it already presupposes faith in the existence of God, just like true theology should not ignore nature and humanity.

Science in general, Bautain explains, especially in its most exact form in mathematics, is based, firstly, on the analytically precise use of language, and secondly, on the necessity of the laws governing its objects: a line must have a beginning and an end, a figure must be enclosed by angles, number presupposes a unit etc. If the same exactness should be extended to philosophy as the study of human beings, he continues, we should remember that humans are not just physical, but also moral creatures. Thus, Bautain concludes, philosophy cannot be as precise as mathematics, if it has not revealed, in addition to Kantian forms of space and time, also an architectonic of its own spiritual nature. This means, firstly, knowing the genetic development of the various faculties of the human mind – how is e.g. memory related to imagination – but also knowing the source of the whole human mind or God.

Bautain notes that while a true philosopher or lover of wisdom is inevitably led to search for this wisdom beyond human beings, in the divine, a sophist instead searches for the wisdom within humanity, confusing it with mere universal reason. Thus, he suggests, sophists are lured by rationalistic pantheism, which is nothing but an aggrandised form of human self-love.

Bautain proceeds to recount the phases of true philosophy and sophism – an account which is from the perspective of current times sorely lacking in historical accuracy, especially when it comes the early eras of humankind, since at Bautain's time historical research hadn’t yet developed much further beyond using Bible as a source for everything. Thus, Bautain begins from Adam and his third son Seth, Noah and his first son Sem, Abraham and especially Moses as the founders of the true philosophy, inscribed in the Pentateuch and the other books of the Old Testament. The more mundane part of philosophy, he continues, began with the descendants of Noah’s second son, Ham, that is, the Egyptians, who also retained some knowledge of the more divine affairs.

The Egyptian tradition of philosophy, Bautain believes, was brought to Greece by Pythagoras, who was still also a religious figure, teaching rituals in addition to the more speculative philosophy. The work of Pythagoras was continued by Socrates, Bautain states, but on a more superficial level, since Socrates was not interested in the ritualistic side of Pythagoreanism, and indeed, was more of a destroyer of beliefs than an upholder of positive doctrines, questioning youth and encouraging them to speak their opinions, when Pythagoras had commanded them just to listen silently what was taught to them. Still, Bautain concedes, Socrates was ultimately aiming to make divine truths accessible to humankind, and this trend continued with Plato, who was enamoured by the spiritual teachings of Pythagoras, but unfortunately lacked the necessary practical component and succumbed eventually to pantheism. On the other hand, Bautain contrasts, Aristotle upheld the more rationalistic side of Socrates, taking Platonic ideas as mere abstractions of thought and reducing philosophy into a lifeless system of axioms and syllogisms, the content of which amounted to nothing but pantheism, with universal reason replacing the part of true divinity.

The discussion of the history of philosophy is stopped for now, with the first volume of Bautain’s work ending. We shall see where the second volume will take us in the next post.

Carl Friedrich Göschel: Of the proof for the immortality of the human soul (1835)

Last time we saw Göschel, he was busy explaining his own take of the intricacies of the whole Hegelian system. In the work we are now dealing with, Von den Beweisen für die Unsterblichkeit der menschlichen Seele, he grapples with a special question of how to prove the immortality of human soul. His fundamental line of defence is again his reading of Hegelianism, which he mostly calls speculative philosophy, but he does point in this work to many other philosophers, using even thinkers like Spinoza and Kant to find arguments for his own understanding of what to expect after death.

Göschel is clearly very fond of analogies, and one of the two most important ones presented in this book is that between the three traditional proofs for God’s existence – a division going ultimately back to Kant, but viewed as being reimagined by Hegel – and what Göschel takes as three fundamental proofs for the immortality of human soul (fundamental in the sense that all other proofs should be mere variations or combinations of these three proofs). Göschel knows his Hegelese and adds at once that these three proofs are not enough, because they are part of pre-Kantian dogmatic philosophy that failed to ask the important question of how thinking could be applied to being.

To bridge this gap, Göschel introduces the second important analogy in the work. He lifts a threefold schema of the ideal development of individual human beings from Hegel’s philosophy of subjective spirit and rereads it as a development of spirit in a more traditional sense (of course, Hegelian habit of using words like soul and spirit with religious connotations made this repurposing easy). The difference is that while Hegelian philosophy of subjective spirit ends merely with the human being becoming part of a society of other human beings, Göschel’s new reading turns the development to more theological fields.

Göschel notes that even before humans wondered about proving the immortality of the soul, they were immediately convinced of the fact that the soul would go on continuing its life indefinitely. This immediate certainty, as it were, forms for him in a sense fourth proof of immortality, just like similarly the existence of God has been justified by humans at large agreeing about this being immediately certain. What awakens the need to prove that this inborn conviction is certain, Göschel states, is the fact of death that appears to contradict the immediate conviction.

The first real proof, corresponding to the cosmological proof of God’s existence, Göschel says, is what he calls theoretical or metaphysical proof. In effect, this is proof familiar at least from the Wolffian tradition: the soul is simple, thus, it cannot be destroyed through division like a composite, material thing. Göschel gives this proof a new twist by relating it to the immediate phase in Hegelian philosophy of spirit, named appropriately soul.

Hegel understood by soul a human being in a state where they had not yet grasped the idea of themselves as distinct from the world around them (or to which they had regressed through suggestion or mental illness). Göschel takes the word to describe more the result of the development of Hegelian soul, namely, a distinct individual. Furthermore, he gives it a new twist by understanding the soul as an individual necessarily related to what he calls an internal body. This internal body should be simple – kind of what Leibnizian monad was supposed to be – and separable from the external body, capable of surviving without it. Thus, Göschel states, just like the cosmological proof of God’s existence deduces from the current existence of world that requires something to sustain it the existence of an entity that will sustain it, similarly theoretical or metaphysical proof of the immortality of soul deduces from the current existence of the soul as a simple monad or atom its continuing into the future.

Survival of such a soul-atom is not enough, Göschel thinks, because just like even Wolffians noted, mere continued existence of such an atom does not guarantee that our memories and thoughts continue to exist in separation from the body. Even worse, there’s the possibility envisioned even by Leibniz that an omnipotent God could come and annihilate even the seemingly indestructible monad, just because they wanted to. Thus, Göschel states, staying in this standpoint of abstract individuality we would be locked to a most frightful dualism, where soul would be separated from everything else, including its external body, and would live in a constant fear of the absolute other or God and in pain for being separated from them.

This awareness of oneself as distinct from everything else and awareness of something else beyond oneself marks already, Göschel states, a transition to the next phase of the journey of soul, which he calls, following Hegel, consciousness. Here Göschel and Hegel have pretty much the same understanding of the term, except while for Hegel the other of which the consciousness is aware of means the external world in general and other humans in particular, for Göschel, the important other is always God.

For Göschel, the move to consciousness is also a move from the mere existence of the soul to its essence. He appropriates a Hegelian pun that the essence (Wesen) of something refers to what has happened to this something in the past (gewesen). In the case of consciousness, this involves the soul recollecting or internalising (another Hegelian pun on the word Erinnerung) this essence, which in Göschel's opinion means the consciousness becoming aware of the determination or destiny set to it by God at the time of creation.

Göschel connects this idea of the past determination of human consciousness with an analogy with the teleological proof of God’s existence, which hinges on the notion of finding the world to be geared toward some purposes. He links this proof to what he calls the practical proof of the immortality of the human soul: in essence, this is the proof Kant used in Critique of practical reason. In other words, consciousness is determined for some infinite goal that it cannot realise in a finite time, thus, because this goal is determined by God, they must guarantee the continued existence of consciousness.

The immortality in the practical proof appears to be based on the capacity of the human consciousness to approach its destiny, which due to the finity of humans seems hopeless to achieve. Here Göschel states that God has the power to change this human condition and will do it some day for everyone, leading us to the final stage of our development or spirit. While for Hegel this stage meant simply a time when a human being does not anymore feel alienation from the world around them, for Göschel the term takes more obvious religious connotations.

In Göschel's eyes, the phase of spirit means a return to the original conviction that a human soul will continue its existence indefinitely, but now this conviction can be put in a form of proof. While the ultimate experiential realisation of this conviction must wait for the time of our death, Göschel insists, we can already state this proof that he calls logical or ontological. In effect the proof is simply a variation of the Cartesian cogito: I think of my continued existence, but while I am thinking it, I must continue to exist. Göschel’s ontological proof of immortality appears to have a clear flaw: what about the time when we are not thinking? This flaw makes it as suspect as its analogue, the more famous ontological proof of God's existence, where the inevitability of thinking the most perfect being or God as existent should make us admit their existence.

What Göschel offers as a foundation of both ontological arguments is his rather metaphysical reading of Hegelian idea of thinking forming a unity with being, thinking being in a dominant role in this relation. He describes this unity as personality, not referring to a character of a conscious being, but to the concept of personhood in trinity: God is a unity in seeming multiplicity. In effect, Göschel insists that divine thinking has the capacity to penetrate anything that seemingly differs from it, both within itself (the different persons) and without itself (the creation). This penetrating thinking is going on all the time – or more likely, it is eternal in the sense of timeless. When a human spirit truly experiences the truth of both ontological proofs, it takes part in this divine thinking.

Göschel’s reading of Hegel seems to come close to pantheism, where the human spirit is like a droplet of water assimilated in the wide ocean of divinity. Yet, Göschel rejects this outcome with the Hegelian phrase that the earlier moments of development are retained in the later stages. While with Hegel it is quite natural to read such statements as saying merely that the history of human society is always played out through individuals, Göschel endorses a stronger interpretation that every individual human soul is retained by the divine thinking – not just in the Spinozan sense that these individuals are eternally thought by God, but as full individual soul-atoms with their own consciousness.

By being in community with God, Göschel continues, the individual human souls gain the divine ability to penetrate anything. This means that even the external world is not anymore a mystery to humans, but something they can freely manipulate by their will. This final stage of the development of the human soul Göschel calls resurrection, where the soul is not anymore an atom distinct from its external body, but reconstitutes this body as being now alive in a spiritual union with the soul.

Auguste Comte: Course of positive philosophy 2 – Sound, light and electricity

With little to no explanation, Comte places acoustics as the next physical discipline after thermology. Indeed, one might even doubt if acoustics deserves a place on the list, because it seems more of an applied science, which Comte has usually excluded from his account of abstract physics. Yet, what he conceives as the topic of acoustics is not so much sound, but all vibrations. This topic has been studied positively, Comte thinks, at least as long as weight, although it is far less known. It seems that it is only the highly intricate mathematical analysis of heat by Fourier that has given reason for Comte to put thermology before acoustics.

Comte sees the importance of acoustics in that sonorous vibrations have revealed – and might be the only method to reveal – the internal molecular structure on inorganic bodies. Thus, he insists, it is through these vibrations that we know the inorganic bodies can acquire dispositions, just like living things. Acoustics is also important for physiology, Comte thinks, for the study of hearing and vocalisation, excluding what happens in nerves and brains. Yet, he emphasises, the study of these phenomena should not be left to physicists, who do not understand the peculiarities of physiology.

According to Comte acoustics is, after barology, physical science using mathematics most. It investigates, he explains, minute molecular oscillations near a state of equilibrium, where perturbation of the order is immediately followed by a return to the original state. Now, since these oscillations can be transmitted through an elastic medium, like waves on water, acoustics become an application of mechanics. Still, Comte notes, acoustics is far more difficult to study than barology, since it requires much more complicated mathematical tools: for instance, we can calculate only movement of vibrations in one dimension, but not in three dimensions. Even so, he assures the reader mathematical theory gives at least guidance for finding approximations and allows use of analogies in calculations.

Comte divides acoustics into three different topics, although he mentions also fourth, the timbre of each peculiar body, but then quickly discards it, because it is more a part of concrete physics. The first topic of acoustic proper, according to Comte, is the propagation of the sound. He notes that the velocity of the sound in air is known, but propagation in other substances or such intricate questions like the behaviour of echo have not been studied conclusively.

The second topic of acoustics would be the intensity of the sound. Yet, Comte thinks, we have not advanced much beyond what we know by common observation, the only fact he considers scientific being the effect of the density of the atmosphere on the intensity. The main reason for this poor state, according to him, is that we have not yet been able to measure this intensity.

The most satisfying part of acoustics, for Comte, are the laws regulating the musical tones. Yet, even here he sees insufficiency, since only the one-dimensional case has been studied, while the behaviour of a full three-dimensional instrument has not yet been investigated.

In an even worse condition Comte sees optics, which he regards as being plagued by the two hypotheses about the nature of light, whether it is supposed to be a material emission or a vibration. Comte thinks that both hypotheses try to reduce optics to a different science: emission theory to barology and vibration theory to acoustics. He is not enthusiastic about such an attempt to unify sciences: even physiology proves that vision is quite different from hearing and feeling weight and pressure. Since both hypotheses work as well, Comte suggests rejecting both of them and concentrating in a description of the laws governing optical phenomena.

Just like acoustics does not explain the physiological phenomena of hearing, Comte insists that optics does not explain vision. Furthemore, he thinks, optics – and indeed, no science – can explain the natural colours that different objects have: any explanation would be metaphysical and always more complicated to understand than what is to be explained. Somewhat ironically, Comte thinks it would be equally ridiculous to attempt to explain why different substances have different specific gravities of substances (periodic table had not yet been discovered).

Comte’s division of optics is quite traditional. First part should study direct light, and just like with acoustics, Comte mentions that we still have no tool for measuring the intensity of light. The second part is catoptrics that deals with reflection, while the third part, dioptrics, studies refraction, and the topic of the fourth part is diffraction. Beyond these general topics, Comte also mentions double refraction and polarisation as important particular issues.

The final physical discipline, in Comte’s opinion, is electrology. It is the most complex and thus had to be developed last, he explains, and due to this late blooming it is the least developed as science: although it has many curious facts, it still lacks laws to make the facts into a scientific system. Comte sees a clear sign of its unscientific nature in the abundance of hypotheses about various fluids that should explain electric phenomena. He thinks they are not as detrimental as in optics, since no true scientist takes them seriously and uses them as mere mnemonic devices. Still, Comte warns, they have had bad influence especially on physiology, where they have inspired such ridiculous notions as animal magnetism.

Since all bodies are not at all times electrical, the first topic investigated in electrology, Comte says, should be the investigation of methods to introduce bodies into an electric state. He also includes in this part the recognition and measurement of an electric state in a body. The second part of electrology, for Comte, is electrostatics, by which he means what he describes a state of an electric equilibrium: this part includes e.g. study of distribution of electrical state in a single body or in a set of contiguous bodies. The third part is then, naturally, electrodynamics, which studies movements generated by an electrical state, for instance, repulsions and attractions of two electrified bodies. Fourth part, finally, studies magnetism and its connection to electricity.

Auguste Comte: Course of positive philosophy 2 – Weight and heat

Comte begins his study of the concrete parts of physics from what he calls barology, that is, the study of terrestrial phenomena involving weight. He regards it as the most complete part of physics, because it is based on nothing more than observations and sound use of mathematics. Yet, he adds, barology has still been in a state of dispersed fragments, with Comte’s own account as the first attempt to unite them into a single doctrine.

Comte divides barology into two parts: static and dynamic barology. Static barology investigates the effects of weight with bodies in a state of equilibrium. In the case of solid bodies, Comte notes, this investigation began already with the discovery of the Archimedian principle.

In the case of liquids, static barology, Comte thinks, did not begin until modern times. He divides this part of barology into two studies. First of them concerns the case of a small portion of liquid within a vessel: here Comte emphasises especially Stevin’s investigation of the pressure of liquid on the vessel. The second study concerns great amounts of liquid, like oceans, where we have to take into account that the direction of gravity varies significantly from one place to another. This study, Comte thinks, is intrinsically linked with the more astronomical questions of the shape of the Earth and of the theory of tides.

Static barology of gases, Comte continues, has the added difficulty of determining the weight of the gas in case. This was first made possible, he explains, by the invention of a method for creating vacuum, which allowed measuring the difference in the weight of a container with gas and without any gas at all. This discovery made it possible to apply methods of static barology of liquids to gases.

Comte notes that an important addition to static barology would be a study of capillary phenomena, especially as they are important to explaining organic processes. Unfortunately, he laments, this part of barology is still hindered by the metaphysical notion of attraction,

Dynamic barology, Comte states, should then investigate the involvement of weight in the movement of bodies. This investigation began, in his opinion, with Galileo’s study of freely falling bodies and curves of projectiles. Comte thinks that this part of barology is still far from perfect, since the laws governing air resistance are still not determined. Even more insufficient dynamic barology becomes, when we move from solid bodies to liquids and gases.

Heat, Comte suggests, is after gravity the most universal phenomena in physics. He backs up this claim with the statement that heat affects organic and inorganic nature as much as gravity, being the foremost agent acting against the effects of gravity. While gravity affects geometry and mechanics of bodies, Comte continues, heat affects the constitution of molecules and especially living organisms. Indeed, he continues, heat is the primary method by which humans affect nature. Thus, after barology, Comte concludes, thermology is the next part of physics.

Although the investigation of heat began around the time of Galileo with the invention of the thermometer, Comte notes, it was always many steps behind barology. The greatest difference between the two disciplines, according to him, was that while barology already investigated laws of weight, thermology still concentrated on metaphysical questions like the nature of fire. Comte still sees vestiges of metaphysics especially in the so-called caloric theory of heat, which assumes the existence of a fluid causing thermal phenomena.

Comte divides his account of thermology to physical and mathematical thermology, the former of which provides the basis for the latter. He then divides physical thermology into two parts, first of which studies interaction of bodies influencing their temperature, that is, warmer body warming the cooler and the cooler body cooling the warmer. He notes that there are two different cases of this interaction, in the first of which bodies radiate their heat and thus affect one another at distance, while in the other the bodies are in contact with one another.

The other part of physical thermology, Comte says, studies reversible changes in the physical constitution of the body through heat – thus, all chemical changes and inconvertible changes, like a body losing its elasticity due to heat, are excluded from this investigation. Such changes include changes in the volume of the body and changes between solid, liquid, and gaseous states of a substance. Comte also suggests the study of evaporation and hygrometry as an appendix to this part of thermology.

Comte singles out the mathematical study of thermology, because he thinks that it holds a unique position among the physical disciplines: barology and acoustics merely apply mechanics, while optics and electrology are still mired in the metaphysics of luminous and electric fluids. Comte refers especially to Fourier’s account of heat flux, the mathematical part of which he had already applauded in the first volume. Comte notes that Fourier’s work concerns only the first part of the physical thermology, that of transmission of heat, while the account of other physical changes involving heat still await their scientifically mathematical treatment. Comte also suggests the study of the global changes of temperatures as a more practical application of Fourier’s theory.

Auguste Comte: Course of positive philosophy 2 – Physics

Moving on from astronomy or the study of the large objects of our Solar System, Comte arrives at the study of objects on the surface of one of these large objects, namely, Earth. Within this study, he notes, it is easy to distinguish between the study of inorganic and organic objects, but it is difficult to note what distinguishes the two major parts of the former, namely, physics and chemistry.

Comte notes, firstly, that physics studies properties general to all matter, while chemistry studies only interactions of particular substances. Thus, weight, temperature, electricity and even acoustic and optic properties concern all bodies, and while magnetism seems to be an exception, Comte points out that it has been shown to be a mere type of electrical phenomena.

A further point of distinction Comte states is that physics studies masses, while chemistry studies molecules. He admits that this distinction is not completely general, since weight is also a property of molecules, and indeed, most physical phenomena are a result of molecular interactions, with the possible exception of acoustics and electricity. A more apt distinction, Comte suggests, is that in chemistry at least one of the interacting substances must be in a state of extreme division and fluidity, while such a division would hinder physical processes.

The final characteristic differentiating physics from chemistry, according to Comte, is that while in the former the arrangement of molecules may change, the nature of molecules themselves does not, although this happens all the time in chemistry. He admits this distinction is not rigid, since physical changes can sometimes result in chemical changes, where the molecules themselves change their nature. Still, Comte insists, even if all chemical phenomena would eventually be reduced to physical processes, the structural difference between the two disciplines would remain.

Having thus defined physics, Comte notes that it must follow astronomy in the hierarchy of sciences, since it is much more complex than the latter: while astronomy studied its objects only through vision and investigated only their form and motion, in physics we use all our senses. The complexity means, he adds, that physics is less perfect as a science, but admits more routes of investigation.

Indeed, while in astronomy we could only observe celestial objects and their movements, Comte notes, physics uses beside observationa also experimentation and is in fact a prime example of latter, since in physical studies we have the most possibility to put bodies in different circumstances. He thinks that physics outdoes even chemistry in this, since the latter allows only artificial experiments, while in physics we can also do experiments with bodies in their natural conditions.

Physics is not just less general than astronomy, but also presupposes the results of the latter, Comte thinks. Thus, in order to do physical investigations, we need to take into account various properties of the Earth itself – its shape, size and weight, for example – all of which are determined by astronomy.

Through astronomy, physics is connected to mathematics, Comte points out, but it also itself uses mathematics in its investigations: not as much as astronomy, but more than any other science. Sometimes physical investigations involve pure mathematical analysis, like in the study of heat, while in other cases they involve geometry and mechanics, like in the study of reflection and refraction. Comte suggests that physics gives an empirical foundation to pure mathematical speculations, while mathematics gives a rational structure to physics, which would otherwise be just a random collection of facts.

As has already been suggested by Comte, physics is a general study of Earthly matter and thus precedes sciences like chemistry and study of life. Indeed, he insists, these investigations presuppose the study of matter in general, and for instance, even living beings must follow the laws of physics.

Comte admits that astronomy as the study of the world and the study of life and human beings have been philosophically more inspiring than the intervening sciences. Still, he thinks that physics has its own interest as the current battlefield between properly scientific and metaphysical and theological theories. Thus, while astronomy is better at giving predictions and thus showing that we need not make supernatural assumptions, physics, according to Comte, is better at showing the human power to manipulate phenomena and thus alleviate any theological fears of e.g. lightning.

An important aspect of this role of physics as a battlefield is, Comte says, the use of hypotheses in it. Generally, he explains, scientific laws must be discovered either inductively from phenomena or deductively from more general laws. Yet, due to complexity of the phenomena investigated, we often cannot do induction or deduction straightaway, but we must assume some hypothesis as a preliminary explanation. Still, Comte insists, we should do so only if in setting up such a hypothesis we also suppose that we can at some point properly prove it through induction or deduction.

Now, Comte notes, current physics has often leaped over these restrictions of hypotheses and made conjectures about e.g. special fluids or matters explaining heat, light or electricity. Such fluids do not really explain anything, Comte says, and they even lack the properties inherent in all real matter, like weight. Yet, such unfounded conjectures are normal for a science that is on the verge of transitioning away from metaphysics to proper science: he points out the example of Cartesian vortices as an example familiar from astronomy.

Before moving on to the concrete parts of physics, Comte suggests an ordering of these parts, although he at once admits that it is still somewhat arbitrary and only the best in the current state of scientific development. The premier part of physics, he insists, should be the most general and the closest to astronomy: this is the characteristic of barology or the study of weight, since weight is the most general property of all matter and connected with the universal gravity of astronomy. Similarly, Comte notes, the last part of physics should be the least general and the most connected with chemistry, in other words, electrology or the study of electricity and magnetism, which are intrinsically linked with chemical processes and occur only in very special circumstances. Between these two extremes he places thermology, acoustics and optics. Of these, Comte suggests, thermology or the study of heat is the most general, while acoustics are more general than optics.

Auguste Comte: Course of positive philosophy 2 – Celestial mechanics

From celestial geometry Comte moves to celestial mechanics, which he, naturally, interprets as the application of mechanics – part of mathematics in his classification – to celestial objects. It is important for Comte that there is no essential difference between earthly and celestial mechanics: there is only the arbitrary fact that we can directly observe the trajectories of earthly objects – e.g. thrown projectiles – but the trajectories of celestial objects we must at first determine through geometrical means. Thus, after Kepler had found the laws of planetary movement, the next step was to merely use mechanics to explain them.

Of course, the application presupposed that mechanics had to be developed into a ripe enough state, which is the reason why Kepler himself couldn’t do it, but had to rely on metaphysical notions like attraction, Comte explains. The notion of attraction, he insists, suggests that there is some agent actively pulling things toward the Sun. The Newtonian word gravity, on the other hand, should describe an intrinsic property of all matter in the Solar System, whether in the Sun or anywhere else – even the earthly objects, like the projectiles, have their own gravity.

Comte thinks that Newtonian notion of gravity is essentially based on the observed phenomena, and he goes into great lengths showing how Newton derived this idea from e.g. Kepler’s laws of motions. Importantly, Comte restricts the use of this notion to what he calls the world – our own Solar System – since we do not, and he thinks, probably will not have enough evidence to determine whether the Newtonian theory applies generally in the wider universe.

Having established Newtonian theory of gravitation, Comte notes that the rest of celestial mechanics is just application of this theory to various celestial phenomena. He divides this application into two disciplines, celestial statistics and celestial mechanics. Celestial mechanics regards some celestial object as not moving and tries to determine, for instance, the mass or shape of it. Comte considers an important part of celestial statistics the explanation of tides, which he also thinks as providing a transition from astronomy to earthly physics.

Celestial mechanics, Comte continues, considers the planets as moving and is especially involved in explaining perturbations in the trajectories or rotations of planets, satellites and moons (he notes also that in principle we could also apply celestial mechanics to the Sun, since it moves slightly around the mass centre of the Solar System, but since we do not know the exact position of this centre, this would be an impossible task). Comte divides the perturbations into two classes: sudden changes that involve collisions or explosions and continuous effects of the gravitation of other objects.

An important conclusion Comte makes is that the gravitational effect of other stars and solar systems to our Solar System are so insignificant and always nullified by the effect of other solar systems that this “world” of ours is effectively independent of other potential solar systems. This effectively makes any what he calls sidereal astronomy an impossible discipline, except as regards observations of movements of binary stars or even clusters of several stars. Thus, Comte says, although usually the disciplines with more general subject matter determine the disciplines with more particular disciplines, in case of astronomy this rule breaks down, since we observe no effect the universe as a whole has on our own Solar System.

As a part of rejecting the sidereal astronomy, Comte denies the possibility of ever explaining where the stars have come from. On the contrary, he thinks that we can make reasonable, even if not completely proven conjectures about the generation of planets, satellites and comets within our own Solar System. Comte effectively assumes the Laplacian cosmogony, where the mass of our Sun originally extended to our whole Solar System, and in cooling down, broke down into masses that eventually developed into the system as it now exists, planets moving around the Sun and the satellites around their planets. Comte assumes that eventually the inobservably small, but necessarily existent resistance of the medium in which the planets float must slow the movement of the planets, which will mean their reabsorbment into the Sun. Thus, he concludes, the cosmogony again proves the independence of the Solar System, which has probably been varying between phases of a unified Sun and a diversified system innumerably many times before and will continue to do so no one knows how long.

Auguste Comte: Course of positive philosophy 2 – Celestial geometry

Although one would have assumed that celestial geometry concerns only such properties as the distance, figure and size of celestial objects, Comte defines these as only one class of phenomena in stellar geometry, namely, static phenomena. He spends considerable time explaining how astronomers can determine these static phenomena, that is, measure our distance from various stellar objects, recognise the figure of these objects, investigate their size and even note the density of their atmosphere. Comte also describes the history of attempts to determine the shape of the Earth, noting that even if there has always been room for making details more precise, this does not mean that the advance of science has been just replacing one error with another.

Comte is clearly more interested in the dynamic phenomena involving movement of celestial objects. He recounts in great detail the history of the discovery of Earth’s movement, both around its axis and around the Sun. What Comte finds philosophically interesting in this discovery is that it has forced us to abandon the theological idea of humans as the centre of the whole universe and also the teleological idea of planets moving for some purpose. This does not mean that astronomy has made the world meaningless, he soothes the reader, since through it we have found the lofty idea of humans as intelligences discovering the laws of the universe even from an insignificant vantage point.

A second important consequence of these discoveries is, Comte says, that we must distinguish the notions of world and universe. By world he means our region of universe, consisting of Earth and its nearby celestial objects – effectively, the Solar System. While people of earlier times could have thought that there is nothing beyond this world, modern astronomy must assume that the universe continues beyond our world, even if we cannot say anything certain about what happens beyond the confines of our world.

It is just to be expected that Comte still has much to say about the three laws of Kepler. He is especially keen to point out that Kepler had to overcome former mythological ideas, involving the notion of a circle as the perfect and thus the only suitable orbit for the supposedly divine stars. The great effect of these laws, Comte suggests, is that they allow us to make predictions about the orbits of planets, satellites and comets. Yet, he adds, even these laws are mere approximations of celestial mechanics – the topic of my next post.

Auguste Comte: Course of positive philosophy 2 (1835)

The second volume of Comte’s Cours de philosophie positive starts with the topic of astronomy. The position of this science is not arbitrary, since he thinks it to be the highest of all natural sciences. True, it is preceded by mathematics, because astronomy depends on geometry and mechanics, but these are more like methodology in comparison, while astronomy is the first science dealing with concrete objects.

Comte sees the importance of astronomy in its being the most perfect science. True, he admits, astronomy has its practical uses, for instance, in determining longitudes, but its premier importance lies in its purity from all theological and metaphysical considerations. Indeed, Comte suggests, astronomy frees us from all teleological considerations, since it shows that Earth is just one among planets and not the centre of the universe, with humans as the end of everything,

As a science, Comte says, it is not just a collection of facts about positions of stars, but its task is to determine laws, through which to predict these positions. Indeed, he adds, astronomy has been the only science that has reduced all the phenomena it describes into one law: gravity. It is thus, in a sense, the least complex of all concrete sciences.

The simplicity of astronomy, Comte suggests, is seen also in the fact that it has the least amount of methods it can use. We cannot do any astronomical experiments nor can we really compare our observations to analogical cases in other circumstances (no space travel yet in Comte’s time). The only methods available are then direct observation of celestial phenomena and mathematical calculations. Indeed, Comte adds, astronomy even uses proportionally more calculations than observations, being the most mathematical of concrete sciences.

Comte insists that astronomy is independent of all other concrete sciences. He does admit that an astronomer must know something about physics and even chemistry for the sake of perfecting their instruments and for making necessary corrections for such matters like refraction of the light of celestial objects. Yet, Comte insists, astronomy is independent in the sense that we have and even cannot have any idea of the chemical or mineralogical constitution of the stars and planets or even of their temperature (all of this, of course, has been proven wrong, since we nowadays do speak about these matters).

On the other hand, Comte suggests, facts of all the other concrete sciences depend on facts of astronomy. Even sociology depends on astronomy, he insists, because even a slight variation on the orbit of Earth would change our societies enormously (considering that Comte insists that all concrete sciences should have some empirical basis, he does jump to this conclusion rather quickly).

Since all physical and chemical considerations are removed from astronomy, we are left with merely geometrical and mechanical properties of celestial bodies. Thus, Comte quite naturally divides astronomy into celestial geometry, studying forms and sizes of celestial objects, and celestial mechanics, studying their motions and forces.

In addition to these two disciplines, Comte suggests that we can also divide astronomy into solar astronomy, studying only our solar system, and sidereal astronomy, studying all celestial objects. He also adds that we should restrict our attention to solar astronomy, since other solar systems do not really affect us.

Théodore Simon Jouffroy: Course of natural right – Theoretical views

After reviewing a number of alternative theories about goodness, Jouffroy is finally ready to share his own ideas about it and thus to give a firm foundation to the (unpublished )future course of natural law. He starts in a Kantian fashion, distinguishing the immutable form of moral judgements – the good in itself – from the particular matter or variable circumstances, to which this form is applied. This difference, Jouffroy explains, makes it possible that natural law is immutable, but still is a science where we can make progress: we can always find new circumstances, where we have to decide what is good in them.

Now, an important feature of good in the case of particular individuals is that the good in this question should be the end or purpose of these individuals, Jouffroy insists. He immediately adds that this is no tautology, since it gives us a method for determining in each particular case what is good. Different beings have different natures or they are organised differently, thus, Jouffroy concludes, they must have different ends, indicated by their natures.

Jouffroy argues that since all things have an end – as clear and evident truth as causality, he thinks – their sum must also have an end, which is determined by the ends of the individual beings. In other words, the universe has an order that is moving toward a unified end. This final end is the good in itself we have been looking for, Jouffroy insists. As free and intelligent beings, he adds, we can understand that the universe has such an end and we have the capacity to contribute to this end by fulfilling our own portion in this whole: thus, we are obligated to do so.

Jouffroy asks still further what makes this end of the universe good. He answers that really nothing outside it, because as a total good, beyond it there can be nothing more good. Thus, Jouffroy argues, this goodness must be absolute and based on something necessary, that is, God, who is the source of the goodness of the universe: in other words, God does not make goodness good, but goodness is as immutable as God’s own nature, and God merely makes the universe conform to this goodness. This relation to God, Jouffroy things, makes goodness sacred and connects natural law with religion.

Jouffroy admits that not all humans can understand this final ingredient of sacredness in the notion of good. Indeed, our very view of the final end of the universe is limited by our standpoint: we can know there must be such an end, but we cannot say in detail what this end is like. Yet, Jouffroy insists, we can at least know something about the end of things we know best, that is, human beings. He will not go through this end in detail – this would be the topic of the whole natural law – but merely gives a very summarised overview of it.

An important aspect of Jouffroy’s idea of the human end is that humans have been provided with means by which to strive for their end, even if they lacked the full understanding of morality. Thus, our natural instincts and self-interest are not necessarily in contradiction with our final end and even contribute toward it most of the time. We want to, for instance, know things and associate with other human beings, because knowledge and communities are parts of human destiny.

Jouffroy notes that we can clearly never fully realise our natural tendencies in this life, because, for example, absolute knowledge and harmonious society of all humans are something we haven’t been able to reach. He concludes that the end of humans must be found in another life, which in a very Kantian manner requires that we must live after our seeming deaths. The end of this life, Jouffroy thinks, is to develop our personality by providing obstacles that make us virtuous and worthy of happiness.

All free and intelligent beings or persons strive toward their end, hence, Jouffroy insists, we must respect them and let them fulfill their own destinies. Yet, he adds, there are beings that are not free nor intelligent, in other words, that are mere things. Such mere things cannot have obligations, because they lack the tools for fulfilling them. Even these things must have ends, Jouffroy thinks, but their end is fulfilled by God, who uses them as mere instruments. In Jouffroy’s opinion, we humans can also use them as instruments, without a fear of violating them, and if our end requires altering or even destroying them, we are allowed to do so (a pretext for killing animals).

Théodore Simon Jouffroy: Course of natural right – Defining good

We are getting closer to a point where Jouffroy should start describing his own theory about the nature of good. Thus, he explains, he will be quick in describing various attempts of giving a rationalist definition of what good is, since the proper measuring stone for these various theories is Jouffroy’s own notion of good.

Jouffroy begins with a British Enlightenment thinker, William Wollaston, who defined good as truth: we should act in accordance with truth, and for instance, breaking a contract is acting like it was never made. Jouffroy notes quickly that Wollaston’s definition is quite shallow: when we use arsenic to poison someone, we could be said to respect the truth that arsenic is poisonous, and while trying to use snow to warm oneself might be absurd, it certainly isn’t immoral.

Jouffroy is as quick with Samuel Clarke and Baron Montesquieu, who both defined good actions to be in conformity with the nature of things. With the exact same examples as with Wollaston, Jouffroy shows the absurdity of this definition: it is immoral, but in agreement with the nature of arsenic to use it for poisoning, and while it contradicts the nature of snow to use it for warming oneself, it certainly isn’t immoral to attempt doing it.

Jouffroy is more positive with the ideas of Nicholas Malebranche, who defined good in terms of the order of entities emanating from God: these emanations have different degrees of perfection, depending on how close to God they are, and loving things according to their perfection should make us closer to God and thus more perfect, earning more of the love of God for ourselves. Jouffroy thinks that Malebranche is close to truth, but his idea of perfection is too vague, making it too difficult to deduce exact duties from it. In effect, Jouffroy states, Malebranche was too much of a metaphysician and forgot humans when concentrating with God.

As for Christian Wolff, Jouffroy thinks his fault is the exact opposite from Malebranche, that is, Wolff wasn’t metaphysical enough. Like Malebranche, Wolff defined good through the notion of perfection, but Jouffroy finds it more lacking, since Wolff never explains why good is to be identified with perfection. Furthermore, Jouffroy continues, Wolff never gave a sufficient explanation what perfections meant in case of individual humans.

From Wolff, Jouffroy moves to his opponent, Christian Crusius. Against all Leibnizians, Crusius had emphasised God’s absolutely free will and defined good as what God wills. Jouffroy thinks that Crusius is not following the correct order, since not even divine will can make anything good. Otherwise, he insists, we could not have a clear criterion for recognising what is good.

Jouffroy is very quick with Richard Cumberland and Samuel Puffendorf. Both made the same mistake that they concentrated only on what is good in social relations of humans, ignoring the question of what is good for a human being in isolation from all other humans or what is good for a human in relation to God or to other non-human things. Jouffroy also disregards all systems that merely say that good is to e.g. follow the law of nature, since he considers such statements to be mere tautologies.

Jouffroy’s purpose for the whole book has been to discuss modern systems of ethics, ignoring all ethical theories of ancient philosophers. Yet, he makes an exception with Stoicism, for the simple reason that he considers Stoics to have been near to the truth about the matter.

The philosopher in the context of rationalist systems of ethics Jouffroy spends most time with is Immanuel Kant – he even goes through Kant’s ethics twice, just in somewhat different words, because he thinks it is important for his readers or listeners to have a clear understanding of Kan’t novel method. Jouffroy finds much to like with Kant, especially his criterion for deciding what to do and what not to do: true obligations must be such that every free and intelligent being in any circumstances could act accordingly. Despite this positive feedback, Jouffroy thinks Kant forgot the most important question of the whole of ethics, namely, what is good or what is the ultimate goal of human beings, leaving thus his own ethics incomplete.