John Austin: The Province of Jurisprudence Determined – Sovereignty

Austin’s final lecture should finally proceed to the analysis of positive law. As we have seen, he describes positive law as a commandment by a superior. If the lawgiver itself has a superior in a community, their power of giving laws is derived from this superior actor. Ultimately, all positive law is then dependent on some actor who has no superior in an independent society, that is, a sovereign. Thus, Austin says, he has to characterise the concepts of sovereign and of independent society.

Austin defines a sovereign of a community as such a person or a group of persons that 1) most of that society habitually obeys them and 2) this person or group does not habitually obey any individual or group in that society, although they might occasionally submit to a command of someone. The other members of the society are then said to be subjects of the sovereign.

Austin calls a community consisting of a sovereign and all the people subject to the sovereign an independent political society, although he admits that actually only the sovereign is independent, while all the subjects are dependent. Austin notes that this definition does not mean that the society in question could not be subjected to other societies in a transitory manner. Thus, when the allied forces occupied France, the French nation was still an independent society, since the government of France obeyed the occupiers only in a transitory manner.

Austin emphasises that an independent political society can have only one sovereign. Thus, he argues, a society in a civil war, where one side obeys one government and the other side another is not an independent, political society, although the two sides of the conflict might be.

Austin compares an independent political society, first, with a dependent political society. Such a society is political, because it answers to a common superior, such as a viceroy, but this society is not dependent, because this superior has a further superior and the whole society is then subordinate to another society.

Secondly, Austin compares an independent political society with an independent natural society. In such a society the members interact with one another, but are not part of any political society. Closely related to such a natural society is the society of sovereigns, since although as sovereigns they are part of political societies, in relation to each other they do not form a political society. Thus, Austin concludes, international politics are not regulated by a positive law.

Austin admits that this classification of societies is not perfect. In other words, there are societies that are not independent political societies, subordinate political societies, independent natural societies or societies of sovereigns. Examples of such societies include families within political societies, since they are not themselves political societies, but do not exist in a state of nature.

Austin admits that his definition of an independent political society is not completely precise. It says that the bulk of that society must habitually obey the sovereign, but this leaves still undetermined, what proportion must obey or how often and how long they must do so. Thus, although there are clear cases of independent political societies and clear cases of societies that are not independent or political, there are also some cases which cannot be easily categorised into either categories, such as a society recovering from a civil war or a colony fighting for its independence.

Austin notes also that his definition of an independent society contains an implicit assumption that the society in question is big enough. What the exact size for this “big enough” is cannot be exactly determined, but we can still say that a family living in a state of nature is no political society, although all the family members would obey one person as their superior.

Austin goes on to classify various forms of sovereigns. He has already stated that the sovereign is either a single person or a group of persons. He mentions also the possibility that the whole of the society would govern itself, but discards it as improbable, since society always has people who are unable to govern. Thus, Austin concludes, the government of an independent political society is either a monarchy, with a single individual as a sovereign, or aristocracy, with a group of persons as a sovereign.

Furthermore, Austin continues, aristocracies in this general sense can be divided into oligarchies, with a very small group as a sovereign, aristocracies in the proper sense, with a somewhat larger group as a sovereign, and popular governments or democracies, with a relatively largest group as a sovereign. Yet, he admits, no precise numbers can be assigned to these kinds of aristocracies.

Austin notes that in aristocracies the sovereign may consist of a single homogenous group of individuals or of several groups, some of which might be larger and others smaller. The latter kind has an indefinite number of subdivisions, he remarks, but the only one he considers worthy of consideration is the so-called limited monarchy, where one part of sovereign is an individual person, often titled monarch, although this is not the case of proper monarchy according to Austin’s definition.

Whatever the form of the sovereignty, Austin says, the sovereign can exercise their power through delegates or subordinates representing them. This is often even a necessity, when the size of the society grows so large that the sovereign itself could not govern everything by themselves. An interesting species of such representatives is formed by societies where sovereignty is at least partially with a large part of the populace that elects representatives to rule for them, like in the British system, where the commons vote their representatives to the parliament.

Austin considers the supposed division of sovereign power to legislative and administrative or executive powers. According to his definition of positive law, this division seems meaningless, since many of the powers deemed often executive and also the special judicial power are simply legislative. Thus, Austin concludes, the only definite division of sovereign powers that can be made is that of supreme and subordinate powers.

Austin reflects on the notion of so-called half-sovereign or imperfectly sovereign societies, the prime example of which were supposedly the states in the Holy Roman Empire, which in some sense governed themselves, but had also some political duties toward the Empire. Austin thinks that no such notion is actually required. In some cases such states are simply just nominally independent, in others truly independent (like Prussia). There is a third possibility, Austin admits, where a state, like Bavaria in its relation to the Empire, is partially independent of another state and still has to obey it in some cases, but then the true sovereign is not the government of the first state alone, but this government together with the government of the second state. Furthermore, in a case like Hannover and Great Britain sharing a monarch, the British state was not, according to Austin, imperfectly sovereign over Hannover, but the sovereign of Hannover was part of the sovereign of Great Britain.

Austin points out that in some cases independent political states have united into a composite state, or as he prefers to call it, a supreme federal government: a good example would be the United States. Such a composite state, Austin thinks, forms a single independent political society, but its sovereignty does not lie just in the central government, but is shared by it and the governments of the constituent states. Then again, he insists, this is very different from a system of confederated states, such as the so-called German Confederation following the Holy Roman Empire, where the states remain independent, but they have formed a permanent alliance.

Austin argues that the power of sovereign cannot be legally restricted in its own society, because they are the source of all legal restrictions. Of course, their power can be restricted by divine law or by positive morality, in other words, their actions might be considered unethical or against the common opinion. Furthermore, if a sovereign is a group of persons, the power of a part of this group can be also legally restricted, so that e.g. the king of Britain could be legally punished. Furthermore, he also admits that the sovereign might be legally restricted in another independent political society: for instance, if the British government has assets in a Swiss bank, it must obey Swiss jurisdiction with its interaction with the bank.

In Austin’s opinion, since the sovereign power can never be legally restricted within its own political society, political liberty can mean only the liberty from legal obligation granted by the sovereign. He is also critical of thinkers who extol political liberty as the supreme end of a political society. Instead, he insists, the true end of a political society is the common good, which might in some cases require limiting the political liberty of someone. Indeed, Austin points out, all political liberty requires setting legal limits someone else, for instance, my liberty to travel freely in a country must be guaranteed by the duty of others not to harm me in my travels.

Just like sovereign power has no legal restrictions in its own society, the sovereign also has no legal rights in its own society, Austin thinks. According to him, legal right is something conferred by the sovereign government to an actor in its society, so that respective duties are conferred to other actors. Clearly, he argues, the sovereign cannot hand such rights to themselves, since it already has the legal power to do anything. Of course, the sovereign may still have divine or moral rights. Furthermore, the sovereign can have legal rights in other independent political societies, if such rights are given to it by the legislation of the other society.

The purpose of an independent political society is the common good of its citizens, thus, Austin argues, the cause for its continued existence is that the subjects consider it more useful for the society to obey their sovereign than, for instance, resist its commands. The origin of a political society, on the other hand, could have been of various sorts, Austin conjectures, but one element of its generation has to have been that the majority of its subjects have thought its existence to be generally useful. Yet, he is adamantly against the idea of a so-called social contract, which is not just clearly a fiction for historical reasons, but also suggests the erroneous idea that the political society would be based on a consent of people in the natural state, when no such consent would form a legal contract in a state with no political society, and indeed, would not obligate the sovereign in any manner.

John Austin: The Province of Jurisprudence Determined – Positive morality

Austin’s next task is to set out what distinguishes proper laws from laws that are merely analogous or metaphorical. He notes that the words analogy and metaphor mean strictly speaking the same: analogical or metaphorical is not literally the same, but resembles the original somehow. Yet, he adds, usually metaphorical is understood as bearing a smaller resemblance than analogous. Thus, he will also differentiate between laws closely analogous to proper laws and metaphorical or figurative laws.

Austin now ignores the metaphorical laws and divides the proper laws, together with closely analogous laws, into three main categories. First is the already well defined divine law. Second is the positive law, which Austin thinks was given by humans as political superiors or as private persons pursuing their legal rights to other human beings. Other proper laws given by a human being to other humans belong to the final, third class, which also contains closely analogous laws that are mere opinions held by human beings about human conduct. Austin considers calling this third class morality, but because the divine law can also be called morality, he finally suggests the name positive morality.

Austin explains the relation of the three classes by stating that the divine law works as a criterion for the positive law and the positive morality: divine law states what the positive law and the positive morality ought to be. Yet, he also notes, this cannot really be the full truth, since atheists can also make evaluations of positive laws, although they do not believe in any divine law. Furthermore, Austin points out that we could think of the possibility that the divine law might be bad. Thus, he concludes, the true criterion must be the principle of general utility that could be used by atheists and also for determining that the divine law is good.

Austin also notes in passing that he has used the phrase “natural law” in two senses, firstly, as another name for the divine law, and secondly, as indicating the portion of the positive law that according to the mixed hypothesis assuming both utilitarianism and moral sense as criteria of morality holds universally in all humankind. Although the similarity of the two names is apt to produce confusion, according to Austin, there is a reason for the similarity, because the latter natural law is produced as an image of the divine natural law through the means of the moral sense.

Returning to the task of explaining the class of positive morality, Austin first considers the proper laws in that class. Such proper laws should be, according to his own definition, commands instituted by some determinate individuals or groups of individuals, with the danger of a sanction if that command is not followed. Yet, as this is not the case of positive law, the commanding agent should not be a political superior or a private individual pursuing legal rights. Thus, Austin explains, commands in a state of anarchy belong to this class. Another example are commands instigated by leaders of states not toward their subjects, but e.g. toward leaders of other states.

Some commands of private persons are also proper laws that are part of positive morality, Austin states, yet, not all of them. The commands not belonging to this class, he explains, are such that are made by individuals pursuing their legal rights, such as commands made by guardians to their wards and masters to their slaves. Such commands, Austin thinks, are actually part of positive law. On the other hand, the commands belonging to the positive morality, he explains, include commands of parents toward children, of masters toward servants and of lenders toward borrowers. A further interesting example is that of a club instituting rules for its members.

Moving on to improper laws of positive morality, Austin notes that this class consists of laws set by general opinion of some indeterminate group of persons. The important point here is, according to him, that the group of people is indeterminate and cannot thus really issue any commands nor can there be any definite threat of a sanction for breaking this general opinion. Still, Austin points out, there is an implicit threat of a general opinion turning against anyone breaking such uncommanded moral rules, which makes human behaviour of e.g. a certain culture predictable.

Austin points out that one still has to define what is meant by a group of people being determinate or indeterminate. He notes that there are two cases of determinate groups of individuals. In the first case, the group consists of persons, each of which can be designated by some specific description and each of which belong to this group due to this specific reason. An example of such a determinate group, Austin explains, is a company with specific individuals as its owners.

In the second case, Austin continues, the group consists of all the persons of one or more generic descriptions, who belong to this class because of these general characteristics. An example of such a group, he says, is British Parliament, which comprises the British monarch and all the members of the upper and lower houses, all of whom are members of parliament not as specific individuals, but as e.g. members of lower house and could thus be replaced by other individuals, for instance, through voting.

The common feature of both these cases is that all the members of such a determinate group can be definitely indicated. On the contrary, members of an indeterminate group cannot be definitely indicated. Thus, for instance, when we speak of a general opinion of a certain class of people, we do not know which of them exactly have this opinion, only that most of them do have it.

Having now separated the divine law, the positive law and the positive morality, Austin makes the remark that these three might coincide, but sometimes do not, while in some cases they might even conflict. Thus, all the three laws coincide with murders, since they all forbid it. On the other hand, the positive law forbids smuggling, but positive morality or the opinions of some persons might not think it is necessarily forbidden. The laws conflict, if one of them forbids what the other commands, for instance, when positive law forbids dueling, but the positive morality of a certain culture takes it as a necessity in certain cases.

Austin proceeds to metaphorical extension of the notion of law, which he has already suggested as made because of similarity in the uniformity of behaviour in case of people following laws and cultural norms on the one hand and e.g. astronomical objects and animals on the other. Such metaphorical laws are far from proper laws, he says, because there is no question of, for instance, planets being commanded to follow a certain course and being punished if they don’t. The indication of this difference is important, Austin explains, because other writers have explicitly confused them.

John Austin: The Province of Jurisprudence Determined – Moral sense

Austin seems convinced that the impossibility of ever perfectly becoming aware of the divine law through utilitarianism is a fault that seems inconsistent with the supposed goodness of God. One might object that it is quite enough that we can still indefinitely improve our ethical understanding, but this is not the strategy Austin takes. Instead, he suggests that this inconsistency is just a fact in any system of ethics: perfect humans would require no divine commands, but would act perfectly. In other words, Austin suggests, we live in an imperfect world and this is just a conundrum that exceeds our capacities of reasoning.

Austin’s second strategy is to point out that the only alternative to utilitarianism is the theory of moral sense, according to which we do not need to calculate whether our actions are good, but we have immediate or instinctual feelings of what actions are good and what not. This division of possible theories of moral criterion seems reminiscent of the juxtaposition of deliberative morality with the subjective certainty of conscience in Hegel’s Phenomenology, but this is probably just a coincidence.

According to the theory of moral sense, Austin explains, an uneducated Kaspar Hauser would have different feelings, if he killed a person for stealing their food or if he killed them in self-defence, being thus aware without anyone telling it that the former is a bad thing, while the latter is not. Furthermore, this theory assumes that these feelings are implanted by God, as a tool for understanding divine commands. Thus, if this theory were right, we would always know what is the right course of action, although our will might be too weak to realise these actions.

Austin notes that we can dispute the theory of moral sense, and this possibility makes it very suspect, since this supposed moral sense is then not like a feeling of hunger we cannot really doubt. Furthermore, he points out, our moral judgements are often not immediate, but we hesitate on what is the correct course of action. In fact, Austin adds, even if our moral judgement would be immediate, it still might not be instinctual, but just a sign of an ingrained habit to think something as bad.

Austin also makes the obvious objection that different people have had different ideas about what constitutes good and bad action. Yet, he at once adds that this is not a perfect objection against the existence of moral sense, since we do not know if God might have had reasons for giving different moral senses for different persons, so that what would be good for one might be bad for another. Even so, Austin finds utilitarianism a more convincing explanation, since it explains the diversity of moral judgements, since people have different ideas about what is useful, but also gives hope for finding some common ground in moral reasoning.

Austin mentions also a third possibility, which is essentially a combination of utilitarianism and the theory of moral sense, stating that moral sense is a criterion of some divine commands and utilitarianism of others. He notes that although this third hypothesis is more compatible with the diversity of moral judgements, it still faces the objection that there seems to be no moral question, of which all human beings would agree with each other. Yet, Austin finds the theory interesting, because it is the only hypothesis justifying the usual division of law into positive and natural law, natural law being grounded in moral sense and thus universal to all humans, and positive law being grounded in utilitarianism and thus varying from one culture to another.

Austin ends his account of the divine law with a few further ways to misunderstand utilitarianism. First of them involves taking utilitarianism not as the criterion, but as the motive of our actions. Austin underlines that the criterion of utilitarianism or the general good of humankind is no abstraction beyond individuals, but simply the sum of the joys of individual humans. According to him, the best person to decide what makes an individual happy is that very individual. Thus, Austin concludes, utilitarianism demands that the motive of the actions of an individual should not be any abstract general good, but their own advantage. He admits that this general principle is not without exceptions and that a person must sometimes put the interest of others ahead of their own interest, but even then it is usually people they know such as their own family that must be helped.

The second mistake that Austin considers is to confuse utilitarianism with the so-called selfish system. Indeed, he adds this mistake is often connected with the additional misreading of the selfish system itself: while this system states that human benevolence has been generated from an original self-love, it is read as denying the existence of benevolence. In any case, Austin concludes, utilitarianism is no theory on motives of human actions and is thus compatible both with the existence of independent feelings of benevolence or the reduction of benevolence to self-love.

John Austin: The Province of Jurisprudence Determined – The limits of utilitarianism

Although Austin advocates utilitarianism in case of determining the commands of divinity, he is aware of its limits, which are ultimately the limits of the human mind. In other words, there are numerous possible cases to consider and no single person can ever determine the proper course of action for all of them, and indeed, most people have never enough time to determine even the most central duties.

Austin’s answer is that this problem is actually common to all sciences. For instance, no single person can find out all the truths of mathematics, but these have been revealed bit by bit by different mathematicians. Indeed, even nowadays no one knows everything in mathematics perfectly and even the mathematicians must rely on the authority of other mathematicians to be convinced of such mathematical truths they have not had the opportunity to study themselves.

Austin admits that the case of ethical studies is still somewhat different from other sciences, because there are not that many impartial persons researching ethics, but essays on ethics are often marred by personal interests or by adherence to unreasoned customs. Because of this, no reliable consensus has been reached and thus there is as yet no ethical authority to follow.

Yet, Austin sees this lack more as a temporary impediment than as a permanent obstacle for the development of ethics. Indeed, he is certain that there is an extensive consensus at least of the basic principles of ethics. Austin even suggests that anyone could by now learn these principles and thus develop a trust on the authority of professional ethicists applying these principles to practice: he gives a somewhat hopeful example that the poor will completely stop thieving, once they have understood that the institution of private property is good for the whole society. In any case, Austin insists, the more the utilitarian principles will spread among the populace, the more people there will be to do proper scientific ethics.

A faultless system of ethics can never be found, Austin says. Still, we as a society can at least improve our understanding of ethics and come more and more closer this system and full knowledge of God’s commands.

John Austin: The Province of Jurisprudence Determined – Divine law

After determining the general definition of law or rule, Austin proceeds to distinguish human made law from divine law. As one might expect, he characterises the divine law as decreed by God. Duties toward divine law are then religious duties and violations of those duties are sins. Like all violations, sins lead to sanctions – religious sanctions – which God should inflict in this life or in the life beyond.

Austin divides divine law into revealed law and unrevealed law. Revealed law should be based on the express commands of God. Then again, unrevealed law, although given by God, should not be based on their express command. In fact, Austin says, unrevealed divine law is what is often called natural law and should be followed by all human beings, no matter whether they have heard divine commands. The problem is, how human beings become aware of the unrevealed divine law.

Austin thinks there are only two theories for the criterion of the unrevealed divine law. First of these theories, he says, states that all human beings have universal sentiments for approving certain actions and disapproving others. This moral feeling or conscience is, according to this theory, given to humans by God, for the purpose of discerning what God has commanded.

The other theory, Austin continues, is that the natural law must be discovered through reason, with the aid of the principle of general utility. Austin is here basing utilitarianism in the benevolence of God, who wants the happiness of all sentient creatures and has thus decreed that they should do things increasing general happiness and avoid things decreasing it.

Austin explains that the principle of general utility is meant to be applied to general tendencies: what would be the result for the general happiness of humankind, if an act of certain kind would be generally done or avoided? Thus, although an action would as such increase the happiness of humankind – say, when a poor person steals something from a rich person, who doesn’t even notice the theft – the action would still be forbidden, because universal permission of thievery would make the whole institution of property impossible. On the other hand, although punishment as an individual action is detrimental to human happiness, it is useful as a foundation of a general system of laws. Hence, Austin concludes, God’s commands are, for the most part, general rules that are to be followed with no exception.

Austin notes a common objection to utilitarianism: if we really had to make precise calculations whether an action contributed to the general happiness of humanity, we would never have time to act, since such deliberation would be too difficult. Austin answers, firstly, by noting that if we do not have any immediate moral sense, as suggested by the first theory, this deliberation is our only possibility to find out the divine commands. Secondly, he notes that the deliberation is meant only for testing general rules of action, which can then be applied without a moment’s notice. Furthermore, Austin adds, we do have sentiments for these rules – for instance, we hate thievery – which provide immediate motives for our actions.

Austin admits that in some cases the general rules do not show us the best course of action. For instance, it is usually beneficial to follow one’s government, since anarchy is so detrimental to human happiness. Yet, in some cases the government itself might be of so great detriment to the happiness of its subjects that a revolution is in order. In such a case, Austin concedes, a deliberation about this specific action must weigh more than a deliberation about the general rule. In these cases the deliberation would take time, as supposed by the objection against the utilitarianism, but Austin considers this good, since one should not lightly act against general rules.

John Austin: The Province of Jurisprudence Determined (1832)

(1790–1859)

John Austin belonged to the utilitarian circle of Jeremy Bentham and James Mill. His field of study was jurisprudence, evidenced especially in his main work, The Province of Jurisprudence Determined.

The purpose of Austin’s book is to define the topic of jurisprudence, which he preliminarily determines as positive law. In other words, he tries to demarcate this positive law from other topics resembling and often confused with it. This means, firstly, distinguishing positive law from the other division of law, which Austin names divine law. While the divine law is given by God to human beings, positive law is given by human beings to other human beings, and usually by so-called rulers to their subjects. Furthermore, Austin distinguishes positive law from moral rules, which are also given by human beings to other human beings, but are not laws in the proper sense of the word – Austin calls the set of such rules the positive morality. Finally, Austin points out that there is a fourth kind of so-called laws, which are laws only metaphorically, such as the laws of animals, by which are only meant regularities of animal behaviour.

Austin’s method is to, firstly, define what we generally mean by law. After that, he aims to find the basic characteristics of divine law, in contrast with the positive law. Finally, he will characterise the difference of law and morality and the mere metaphorical use of the word law.

Austin characterises law as a kind of a command. Then again, he defines command as an explicit or implicit expression of a wish or a desire with the suggestion that the refusal to not fulfill this wish will result in something evil. Such a suggestion of evil makes the receiver of the command obliged or bound by duty to obey the command: a rather severe understanding of duty, since a fellow pointing a rifle at me obligates me then to do something. Austin goes even so far as to suggest that nothing can be a duty, if it does not correspond to some command.

The evil inflicted for the disobeying of the command Austin calls a sanction, which includes what are usually called punishments, although not all sanctions are punishments in the proper sense of the word. Austin carefully points out that the sanction in question need not be a strong one: indeed, otherwise it would not make sense why anyone would want to violate a command. Furthermore, he notes that rewards do not create in this manner obligations or duties, although they might provide an incentive to do something.

Austin divides commands into laws or rules and what he calls occasional or particular commands. The point of the division is that in the case of laws or rules the command is directed generally to a class of cases. Thus, commanding a servant to do a particular errand today is not a law or rule, but to order them to do such an errand everyday is a rule. Similarly, when a parliament declares all thieves to be hanged, this is a law, but when a judge orders a specific thief to be hanged, this is not a law. Austin admits that this division does not completely agree with the general usage of the words, and indeed, that some particular commands of Parliament have been called laws.

Austin suggests that laws, and indeed, all commands are given by superiors and obligate inferiors. This superiority means, he explains, simply power – a superior person has the capacity to inflict some evil upon the inferior person. In the case of God, Austin thinks, this superiority is absolute, but in many other cases it is just relative: for instance, a monarch has a power to rule their subjects within certain limits, but if the monarch breaks these limits, the subjects also have the power to revolt against the monarch.

Austin’s definition of law explicitly distinguishes law from morality, since moral rules are not imposed by superiors, although morality does have something analogous to obligations toward law and sanctions for breaking it. Even more so, the definition distinguishes mere metaphorical laws from proper laws. More interestingly, Austin points out that it also separates laws from other things often called laws, which do form a part of jurisprudence. First type of these Austin calls declaratory laws, which are not so much commands, but explanations and interpretations of what duties commands impose. Second type is that of permissive laws, which revoke certain formerly imposed laws. The third and final type is that of imperfect laws, which lack a sanction.

Austin notes that some true laws might not seem to be commands, although on a further inspection they are. First case is that of laws creating rights. Austin states that every right of someone is correlated with a duty of someone else, thus, a law creating a right for someone imposes a duty to someone else. Second case is that of so-called customary laws, based on the habit of people obeying them. Austin notes that as long as no one really adds a sanction to these customs, they are not proper laws, but whenever a judge bases a decision on such a customary law, it becomes a proper law.

Thomas Carlyle: Sartor resartus (1831)

(1795–1881)

At first glance, Carlyle’s Sartor resartus is a parody of philosophical treatises, especially those from Germans of late 18th and early 19th century. This is suggested by the name of the imagined thinker, Teufelsdröckh (something like “Devil’s dirt”), and his supposed hometown, Weissnichtwo (“Know not where”). Add to this that Teufelsdröckh is meant to be a professor in Allerley (“all sorts of things”) and that his main work – the theme of Sartor resartus – studies philosophy of clothes, and the reader is bound to expect that Carlyle is not taking any of this seriously.

Yet, when Carlyle finally gets to the fictional work itself, an air of depth and seriousness appears. He does make mockery of a scholarly tendency to get bogged down in insignificant details in his description of the historical-descriptive part of the work, where Teufelsdröckh, among other things, spends a whole chapter on the topic of aprons. But the tone of the work changes, when Carlyle turns to the second, philosophical-speculative part of Clothes-philosophy.

Clearly influenced by Kantian thinkers, Teufelsdröckh begins by rejecting the absoluteness of time and space and comes to a conclusion reminiscent of Fichte – there’s nothing as real to be discovered in the world as me. Yet, he immediately continues, it is not as obvious what this me is. His first suggestion is to note that underneath all the clothing, we humans are nothing more than naked animals. Still, Teufelsdröckh at once adds, humans are also spiritual beings, and this especially through their clothes: a judge radiates a certain authority just because of certain clothing. Indeed, without clothes, civilisation as we know it would be quite impossible: for instance, where to carry one’s purse, if not in one’s pockets?

Clothing, Teufelsdröckh says, is something through which a spirit converses with other spirits. In a mystical fashion, he suggests looking through all these raiments of clothing, into the innermost essence of human beings. Here is revealed a mythical conclusion that the whole material universe can be seen as clothing for eternal.

Carlyle interjects at this point a fragmentary biography of Teufelsdröckh, supposedly composed from a collection of his random notes. This biography has its share of fantastical elements – Teufelsdröckh being supposedly a foundling with a possible noble heritage, raised by a pair of commoners as their own. Still, for the most part, the beginning of the story is a quite realistic, if somewhat parodied tale of a German would-be-scholar trying to make a living by finding a patronage for himself.

The biography takes again a more fabulous turn, after Teufelsdröckh experiences a failed romance and starts to travel, apparently meeting world historic individuals, like Napoleon. Yet, Carlyle leaves these external details mostly untold and concentrates on the spiritual development of Teufelsdröckh, who begins from a state of scepticism and desperation (everlasting no), but finds inner strength to resist the fear of a world without meaning. Then, after renouncing himself, Teufelsdröckh discovers the divine or the everlasting yea in the world and has now a purpose for which to produce things.

Returning to the Clothes Philosophy, Carlyle shows Teufelsdröckh praising the simple, self-made leather clothing of Quaker George Fox as the most important point in modern history. In comparison, the official church seems to Teufelsdröckh full of sham priests, whose clothes have become shallow masks with no spirit within. This does not mean that Teufelsdröckh would disregard all religious symbolism in favour of simple adornments. Quite the contrary, he praises symbols in general, which at the same time stay silent or conceal and speak or reveal things, and especially religious symbols, in which the artist behind the symbol has also become a prophet. These religious symbols just need to have behind them the divine or infinite, which uses the symbols as signifying some deep truths.

Two kinds of persons Teufelsdröckh is said to honour: an honest worker, toiling for their daily bread, and a spiritual worker, toiling for the Bread of Life. Best it is, he says, when both are combined in the form of a peasant saint. Although this admission might seem like a praise of a worker, it has its darker side: Teufelsdröckh does not take seriously the Malthusian idea that workers could starve to death if overpopulation continues. Instead, he is more worried that in the current time, when even priests are mere empty cloaks, workers will not be able to find their spiritual bread. The result of this non-existence of religion, Teufelsdröckh says, is that everyone will turn against everyone else, caring for nothing but their own independence, poor perishing from hunger and overwork, and rich perishing from satiety and idleness.

Teufelsdröckh is still optimistic. Even if the dying society is empty like disregarded clothes, at least clothes will carry the memory of the person who used to wear them. He also hopes that the society will at some point be reborn like phoenix, although it is now burning itself up. Indeed, he even suggests that like a snake is already growing itself a new skin, when it discards its old one, something new is already building up in our society - radicals of today already carry the seeds for the rebuilders of tomorrow.

From the current politics, Teufelsdröckh returns to the metaphysical, or as Carlyle says, transcendental level. Teufelsdröckh begins by comparing the notions of miraculous and lawlike. At first noting that science has progressed away from finding divine in miracles and searching it in the regularity of the cosmos and its laws, he continues by insisting that science has still only penetrated a small portion of the infinity of nature. Furthermore, he suggests, if nature is nothing but clothing for the divine - or to take another simile, a book written by God - why should it be just a cookbook full of recipes (i.e. laws of nature) and nothing more significant? Instead of regularities, Teufelsdröckh again wants us to return to appreciating the miraculous in our study of nature. Isn’t a miracle still a miracle, if it appears regularly? And isn't a miracle still a miracle, even if it is caused by internal workings of our mind (e.g. when we appear to see devils and witches)?

Teufelsdröckh goes even so far in his disdain of regularities that he, taking a cue from Kant, denies the validity of space and time, when it comes to metaphysics. Space and time may have to be taken for granted in our every-day life, but when it comes to the divine and even to the capacities of the mind, he insists, space and time are of no relevance: indeed, we can instantly think of things far from us or past or future. While living in this spatio-temporal world, he concludes, we are like ghosts appearing in a physical form, and after our seeming death, we return to the eternal from which we arrived.

Carlyle ends his summarisation of Teufelsdröckh with the consideration of two classes peculiarly engaged with clothes: dandies and tailors. Dandies, he defines, are people whose lives are dedicated to clothing and who thus, in a sense, have an inborn understanding of the philosophy of clothes: a poet making a work of art of themselves. In fact, dandies form, Teufelsdröch suggests, a religious cult with their own dogmas of what to wear and especially what not to wear: a new form of the old superstition of self-worship. As a contrast to dandies, Teufelsdröckh points out the so-called poor-slaves or drudges, whom he somewhat ironically describes as resembling monastic orders in having taken an oath of poverty. If the dandies worshipped themselves, he adds, the drudges worship earth, since all they think is where to get the next round of potatoes. In fact, these two so-called sects are nothing but the two classes of rich and poor, whom Teufelsdröckh earlier envisioned as tearing down the civilisation in their quarrel with one another.

The very last fragment Carlyle has selected to introduce from Teufelsdröckh’s work – before announcing that Teufelsdröckh has vanished from the face of the earth – is reminiscent of the earlier fragment about George Fox as a producer of his own leather outfits. Here Teufelsdröckh consequently praises tailors as sub-creators. Indeed, he suggests, aren’t all creative people in some sense tailors of their own kind?

Sir James Mackintosh: Dissertation on the Progress of Ethical Philosophy (1830)

Mackintosh’s dissertation on the history of ethics is mainly famous through its connection to James Mill. In one small paragraph Mackintosh criticised Mill’s essay on government, and Mill retaliated with vitriol. Still, the topic of Mackintosh’s work wasn’t really even political philosophy, and the dissertation deserves to be read on its own. One might think a history of ethics would be of mere antiquarian interest. Yet, a historian of ethics can have something to say about ethics itself, by pointing out what to criticise and what to applaud.

The main point of criticism Mackintosh raises against many earlier philosophers is the same: they have failed to distinguish between a criterion of moral actions and their motivation. This criticism is especially poignant in case of utilitarians, whom Mackintosh characterises as having confused jurisdiction with ethics. In other words, Mackintosh explains, utilitarians are overtly interested with the question of what actions are good and what not, while they almost completely ignore the question of how to improve people’s characters so that they would tend to act well. Thus, Mackintosh does not say that utilitarians were wrong in defining good actions as those useful for most of humanity. Indeed, he appears to mostly agree with the utilitarian definition, although he also says that in practice, we humans cannot apply this criterion alone, due to the limitations of our understanding of what serves the whole humanity best. Yet, even greater fault of utilitarians, in his eyes, is that they do not then properly explain how people could be inspired to act toward such generally beneficial ends.

We might say that Mackintosh has here hit upon a difference between contemporary and classic notion of ethics. If we read an article on ethics nowadays, it invariably tends to be concerned with questions of the first sort, while the second type of question is considered by almost no contemporary ethicists. On the contrary, the second type of question was the main topic found in classical works of ethics, while considerations of the first type of question were more often found in books on natural law.

Even though Mackintosh admits that earlier writers of ethics tried to tackle the second question, he also notes that they confused it with the first question. This confusion was often connected with two errors: making ethical motivation too intellectual and interpreting human actions as always self-centred. Although distinct errors, they were often connected in theories of prudential reason that would make humans act ethically, because ethical actions agreed usually with the interest of the individual. The intellectual error here lies in the idea that reason alone could make us do something. Indeed, Mackintosh notes, prudence has an emotive element (the so-called self-love), although it is so weak that when acting prudently, we might confuse it with acting from mere reason.

The weakness of prudence or self-love as a motive links directly to the second error Mackintosh perceived in many of his predecessors, who assumed all human actions are ultimately based on self-love. How could such a feeble motive make us really do anything? Often what moves us, Mackintosh notes, are much stronger desires, say, a desire to eat chocolate. This desire does not have self and its welfare as its object, as indeed, fulfilling it by eating lots of chocolate won’t do good to our physical constitution. Instead, what is desired is the chocolate itself and its taste, and fulfillment of this strong desire produces equally strong pleasure.

As the example of the desire for chocolate showed, it is quite possible to have desires that are not based on self-love - and indeed, many of them are stronger desires. Furthermore, Mackintosh continues, some of these desires are disinterested in the sense that they aim for the pleasure or happiness of other people. That is, we feel pleasure when we see others become happy, especially if they become happy because of our own actions, and we feel discomfort when we see others in pain. This is an empirical fact that we just cannot disregard, Mackintosh insists.

Despite this empirical fact, Mackintosh notes, some philosophers have tried to argue that even disinterested desires are fundamentally selfish. Their argument is that such disinterested desires and emotions have been generated from more self-centered pleasures and emotions through association. For instance, in our childhood we might have experienced fulfillment of our desires in the company of our family members, making us sympathise with them, and later these feelings of sympathy could be generalised to other people through further associations.

Mackintosh isn’t convinced that the argument works. He admits the premise that disinterested desires are generated on the basis of more primitive desires - indeed, this is even assumed in the notion of moral education of people. Yet, he at once notes, such generation does not mean that the generated emotions would be dependent on their roots nor even essentially similar to them. Consider avarice, for instance. It certainly is a generated emotion, since newborn babies do not yet desire money. Instead, the love of money is generated, because people come to associate money as an indispensable means for gaining things, e.g. for satisfying primary desires, like hunger. Even so, avarice is independent from hunger and other similar desires, which is clearly shown by the actions of a miser preferring to save money instead of spending it on food.

What is true of avarice, Mackintosh says, is equally true of disinterested emotions - although we learn to love and help others only later in life, these affections are still real. This is true also of the highest type of disinterested affection, that is, conscience. Conscience resembles prudence, Mackintosh says, in that it is quite a weak emotion compared to more heartfelt emotions. Indeed, like prudence, it is a more general emotion and even one of different level: its object are our moral dispositions and actions proceeding from those dispositions, that is, it aims to improve our first-order emotions so that we would be more inclined to choose what is known to be good.

We circle back to the difference between criterion and motivation and their confusion especially in utilitarianism. Utilitarians, Mackintosh says, often seem to try to motivate good and virtuous behaviour by pointing out its good consequences for the society and for the individual. Especially in the latter case, Mackintosh notes, they appear to forget the most important beneficial consequences, that is, those affecting the mental condition of the individual. Take as an example one classic virtue, courage. Sure, courageous actions can help us get external advantage through the brave actions we can do because of it. Yet, there is a far greater advantage to be got through the effect of courage on our own mind - courage makes us impervious to fear. Similar positive effects to our mental condition are connected to all virtues, Mackintosh concludes: with virtue it becomes a delight to do good things.

James Mill, Analysis of the Phenomena of the Human Mind 2 - Yawns and hiccups

The latter part of the second volume of Mill’s book concerns the active or volitional part of the human mind. Mill notes that the cognitive and volitional sides of human mind share the same structure - for instance, volitional side also deals with sensations and ideas. The difference is, Mill suggests, that while sensations of the theoretical part are, in a sense, indifferent to the mind, the sensations of the volitional part are not, being either pleasant or such that the mind would want prolong, or painful or such that the mind would want to stop them. Mill makes it sound like the trivision of sensations would be hard and fast, while one might object that e.g. a sensation pleasant now might become indifferent and even painful, if it has to be endured too long.

Like indifferent sensations, pleasant and painful - or interesting - sensations can also be revived in ideas, Mill says, and such ideas of pleasant and painful sensations are called desires and aversions. This choice of nomenclature seems peculiar. Mill himself points out one possible point of contention: we also say that we desire things like cake, which are not sensations. In fact, Mill says, in all such cases we ultimately desire some sensation, e.g. the taste of the cake. Yet, there is a more important point of contention, because we can think of a pleasure we’ve had without desiring it. Mill offers the explanation that desires are actually only ideas of future pleasures. This explanation seems insufficient, because we could think of future pleasures and still not yet desire them. Indeed, it seems far more plausible to take desire as a primitive concept, especially as Mill’s explanation of pleasures already implicitly referred to it (pleasure is a sensation we would want or desire to continue).

In case of pleasant and painful sensations, Mill continues, we also make associations to their causes. In fact, thinking about such causes might affect us more than thinking of the pleasures and pains themselves. For instance, we might think of a past stomach ache with indifference, but still avoid the food that we think caused this sickness at the time. Mill appears to think that such affections are not just caused, but also defined merely by such associations, which seems again insufficient - surely they also contain the aspect of us wanting to gain or avoid something.

Mill notes that we often have stronger affections toward more remote causes of pleasures and pains. For instance, people often desire wealth, power and dignity more than, say, food. Mill has a quite convincing explanation for this peculiarity: remote causes, like money, allow us to gain more and a larger variety of pleasures than mere immediate causes.

An important subset of affection toward remote causes concerns other persons. In some cases, Mill notes, such affections are awakened by shared experiences and common interests. Then again, he adds, we also have a general compassion toward all humans, because the similarities with them make us associate their pleasures and pains with our own pleasures and pains. The more similarities we have toward some group of people, the more affection we have for them, for instance, in case of people from the same class (in a pre-Marxist fashion, Mill insists that only privileged classes could have such a class consciousness).

Mill touches also aesthetic affections, but unfortunately, not in any great detail. His main point is that we call sensations beautiful and sublime not because of themselves, but because of associations they convey in us. Thus, the humming of a beetle is found beautiful, not because of any intrinsic feature, but because it awakens in us the notion of summer. Because such associations may vary from one person to another, there is no universal criterion of beauty, Mill concludes: black seems ugly in a culture, where it is associated with death, beautiful in a culture, where it is associated with festivities. What is especially lacking in Mill’s account is the explanation what kind of associations are required for calling something beautiful or sublime.

When we have an idea of ourselves as the only possible cause for gaining some future pleasure or for averting some future pain (or some of their causes), we have a motive, Mill defines. Clearly, this definition works only if we assume, like him, that all thoughts of future pleasures involve desire. In any case, motives can work against one another, and indeed, Mill insists, only another motive can prevent us putting one into action. Different people are affected in different measures by same motives, and a particular affinity to some motive is called disposition. Mill notes that in common parlance we often confuse affections, motives and dispositions: thus, we may speak of lust when speaking of a positive affection toward sex (idea of sex as causing desirable sensations), of a motive for engaging in sexual relations (idea of ourselves as instigators of sex) or of a disposition to engage in sexual relations.

In a Humean manner, Mill considers cause and effect to be nothing more than a name for a regular association of certain events. Thus, he sees no problem in saying that sensations cause certain bodily actions - we can say that a pungent odour makes us sneeze, while a certain sensation in our stomach makes us hiccup. These examples might make Mill’s analysis of causation seem suspect, since it seems more likely that in such cases the sensation is not really the cause of the bodily movement , but merely shares with it a common cause (some bodily process).

In any case, because Mill thinks sensations can produce bodily movements, he sees no difficulty in ideas causing them also. In fact, he points out laughter caused by humour or weeping caused by sadness as examples of this kind of causation. Of course, Mill adds, such uncontrolled weeping is still not voluntary action. What is still required is the presence of a desire: when motives make us act, they are called will.

Mill does not then believe in any motiveless will. He insists also that will cannot awaken its own motives - this would be like baron Munchhausen lifting himself from his own hair. This rather plausible suggestion makes Mill go even so far as to suggest that it has no effect on the train of ideas, being just a process of translating ideas into action. Mill considers two possible objections. First is the notion that we often seem to will to recollect something. Mill’s answer is that actually we always only desire to do so. Similarly, to the second objection that we often will to attend to some sensations or ideas, Mill answers that attending means just that we find these sensations or ideas interesting. Mill’s answers seem just verbal confusions, since he admits that the very element that makes acts into acts of will (desire or interest) is involved also in these two cases. One might even rephrase the objections in a manner suggesting that there is a choice involved. Suppose we are attending to something complex, like a bicycle. The idea we have of it has different aspects, and we may then choose to attend to one of these aspects, say, one of the tires. Couldn’t we then say that we willed or wanted to attend to the tire?

James Mill, Analysis of the Phenomena of the Human Mind 2

Second volume of Mill’s work on philosophy of mind clearly divides into two different parts, and I shall treat the latter part in a writing of its own. The first part continues the discussion Mill started in the first volume, that is, the analysis of common concepts pertaining to human cognition.

The first of these concepts are relational terms. You might remember from my previous post that Mill appeared to accept only monadic predication, which seems, of course, problematic for understanding relations. Mill’s solution is to suggest that relational terms like “parent-child” are actually names for a single phenomenon, consisting of two things. The different names just emphasise different aspects of this same totality. Connected to this notion is Mill’s idea that difference and opposition is necessary at least for such conscious entities as us - we do not really sense or think anything, if there is no change in our sensations and ideas. Together these ideas suggest surprisingly close tendencies with broadly Hegelian philosophers, who view the world as an necessarily interconnected system of oppositions.

Mill goes into great details classifying the various possible relations: difference and sameness of sensations, sensations as preceding one another, spatial relations of objects, temporal relations of objects, quantitative equality and inequality of objects, qualitative likeness or unlikeness of objects, same or different composition of ideas and ideas as preceding one another. A clear fault in Mill’s schema is the ignorance of relations with more than two relata. The closest Mill comes to discussing them comes with spatial relations, as he admits that even the idea of position of an object involves relations to all other objects. Still, even here Mill tries to simplify matters and concentrates on juxtaposition of two objects and such pairs like high and low or front and back.

If we inspect Mill's account of spatial relations in more detail, we find him, in a manner reminiscent of Fichte, reducing the genesis of our experience of space into muscular exertions, by which we move ourselves or things around us. In another sense, Mill’s notion of space reminds one of Leibniz, because just like him, Mill says that space is nothing but an abstraction from all the concrete positions and spatial relations between things. While Kant would object that surely space is prior to positions in it, he might approve Mill’s admission of a subjective element in our notion of space - we always associate a place with a further place, thus making our notion of space infinite.

A further peculiar element in Mill’s notion of space is that when we think of empty space, he insists, we think of something positioned in that space and then the absence of this something. This is a feature of Mill’s general theory of privative statements - he insists that thinking of absence of something, we think of both that thing and its absence (e.g., when thinking of darkness, we think of light and its absence). In case of space, this would mean that by empty space, we always mean space empty of something. Indeed, he confirms, because our experience of space is intrinsically related to the idea of something resisting our efforts, we cannot think of any space empty of everything.

Mills account of time is similar enough to his account of space that we do not have to deal with it in great detail - like space is for Mill just an abstraction of all positions, time is nothing more than just an abstraction from all successions. Reminiscent of Kantian tradition, Mill connects numbers also with successions. In other words, he points out that although numbers are used to count the greatness of synchronously existing objects, the act of counting happens through some successive operation.

Mill also investigates the notion of personal identity, especially over time, and reflection. His basic solution to this conundrum is to point out that personal identity is just a special case of any identity. Identity as such, say, of other persons, we come to know by seeing a person and remembering that we saw her earlier. Similarly, Mill says, we are always conscious of ourselves, remember being conscious of ourselves and hear testimonies of others concerning us at times, which we don’t remember.

Mill’s explanation seems flawed in many ways. Firstly, one might point out that he hasn’t ever really explained what it means of being conscious of oneself, because saying that consciousness in general is just a general name for sensations and ideas explains nothing about self-consciousness - what are we conscious about when we conscious of ourselves? Secondly, Mill’s explanation would at most tell what evidence we use to justify our assertions of self-, or indeed, any identity, but not what it means that something is identical with itself. Finally, while it is undoubtedly obvious that our assertions and experiences of self-identity are particular examples of assertions and experiences of identity, one might wonder, in the manner of Fichte, whether e.g. our experience of self-identity underlies our experience of all other identities (that is, whether we must be able to identify ourselves, before being able to identify anything else).

James Mill: Analysis of the Phenomena of the Human Mind 1 (1829)

In my previous post on James Mill, I noted that he emphasised the need for the study of the human mind as a precondition for planning education. Mill tackles this very topic in his two-volumed Analysis. First volume, which I will be studying now, deals roughly with the theoretical side of the human mind, while the consideration of the practical side is left for the second volume.

Mill’s viewpoint is clearly empiricist and he begins with an assumption of Humean undertones that everything in our experience is reducible to sensations (what Hume would call impressions), ideas, formed on basis of sensations, and groups and trains of ideas, generated from sensations and ideas through association. Starting from sensations, he enumerates the usual smell, hearing, taste and sight, divides sensations of touch into sensations of (moderate) temperatures, sensations of tactile contact, sensations of disorganisation, such as pain or itch, and sensations involving muscular exertion, and adds the sensations belonging to alimentary canal and possibly also to other intestines.

Mill’s portrayal of these various types vary from ordinary to perplexing, latter being exemplified by his insistence that the effects of opium are sensed in the alimentary canal and just strengthened by associated ideas. Indeed, one might argue that Mill should have added a separate class for clearly pleasurable sensations, such as is occasioned by stimulation of various substances and sex. In any case, Mill makes an important remark that when speaking of sensations, at least English has a deplorable lack of distinct words for a) sensation of one kind (say, a smell), b) whatever causes this sensation (also known as smell) and c) the organ for this type of sensation (yet again, smell).

Ideas, Mill continues, are then traces of sensations. While we have some say on what we sense e.g. by changing our position in relation to our environment, he affirms, we cannot control what ideas we will have or think about, because they are generated by sensations and other ideas through association. This association is governed, again in a Humean manner, by habit - if we are used to sensing various sensations or ideas together, either simultaneously or successively, we are bound to think one part of this group when another part is sensed or thought.

Although the account is rather simple, there are some questions that Mill leaves unanswered. For instance, Mill notes that in case of succession we are used to following the train of thoughts to the direction of the process involved: thus, a farmer is used to thinking of first planting the seed and then the seed sprouting. Problem is that we often think such processes in reverse and particularly do so, when looking for explanations, for instance, if we want to explain why plants grow, we think first of their growing and only then the idea of someone planting the seeds. Another problem is that Mill does not point out that there are associations, which appear to be a necessary product of the way we sense - for instance, a combination of colour with extension seems not just coincidental nor even one based on the nature of things sensed, but on a fact that we cannot sense coloured things, which are not extended.

Such groups and trains of ideas can, then, form a single idea out of many individual ideas, Mill says. Thus, since we are accustomed to sensing, say, a distinct rosy smell with a certain kind of sight, we tend to think of them as a single unit (a rose). Similarly, temporal trains of ideas should form complex ideas of processes.

The purpose of language, Mill suggests, is merely to communicate to others or to our future selves these various sensations and ideas, either individually or as complex trains of thought. Later on, he adds another purpose for the language, that is, making it possible to think of such otherwise difficult ideas like a polygon with hundred sides. This seems a very limited understanding of the purposes of language. Particularly, this appears not to note that sentences of a language are meant to indicate e.g. that something happens or happened, not just that we have sensed or thought something. Mill himself appears to be at least unconsciously aware of this, since he notes that all verbs carry with them the notion of existence. Yet, Mill uses “existence” here in a very strong sense, which makes him instantly think of this immediate connection as a detriment to language - if we speak of e.g. what chance is, Mill suggests, we immediately assume that chance is something existent, namely an individual object. It seems obvious that we need not go so far, in other words, when we say that chance is so and so, we truly affirm something about chance without assuming that chance is an individual existent.

The trains of thought we express in language indicate, Mill suggests, causal relations, relations of resemblance or different names for same things. The third option here is the most perplexing, since Mill includes in it such mathematical statements as one plus one equals two. One might accept this classification in such simple cases, but whenever the calculations become complex enough, it is doubtful that we have any concrete idea to name in both sides of the equation. For instance, can we really say we have a distinct idea of what 1000^1000 is meant to say? What this expression indicates is more like a certain task of calculation (multiply 1000 with itself 1000 times), and the sentence connecting this task to its result indicates a certain relation between numbers.

The remaining part of the first volume is dedicated to an analysis of certain central concepts of human cognition in terms of concepts introduced thus far. For instance, Mill suggests that consciousness means no feeling distinct from sensations and ideas, but is simply a general name for both of them: if I am conscious of something, I either sense or have an idea of it. Although one might agree with Mill that consciousness is nothing distinct from sensations and ideas, one might still ask in the manner of Leibniz whether consciousness - or better, conscious sensations and thoughts - could form a subspecies of all sensations and ideas. Indeed, we might assume that different sensations and ideas have various degrees of consciousness and by moving our attention to one aspect of a sensation or an idea we might become more aware of its components.

Of the concept of conception Mill notes that it simply refers to complex ideas. This is undoubtedly true description of how some thinkers have used the word or similar expressions in other language (say, Begriff in German). Yet, other thinkers seem to use concept and conception only in relation to linguistically expressed notions (thus, a mental image of a bicycle would not yet be a concept, whereas a linguistic expression “bicycle”, perhaps also with a definition of the expression, would certainly be). Related to this is the question whether conception is somehow active in comparison with mere sensation and “having an idea”. Mill suggests that the supposed activeness of conceiving is just a misdirection of the active form “I conceive” and that conceiving is as passive an event as dreaming or dying, which can also be expressed in an active form. While Mill’s point is well made, it could be that when philosophers have spoken of the activity of conception, they might have actually meant the relative independence of conceptions from external objects. After all, we can conceive things that do not exist, especially if conception is understood in a linguistic manner.

In case of imagination, Mill goes even farther in his redefinition of words and suggests that imagination is just a new term for having a train of ideas. This seems to go against all ways the word has been used. In an early modern discussion, imagination was closer to what we would nowadays call memory, meaning thinking of anything that isn’t currently present, even if we have perceived it earlier. Nowadays, we are mostly using imagination in the sense that Mill disparages as Dugald Stewart’s redefinition of the word: that is, imagination is a train of new thoughts. “It is implied in every wish of the child to fly”, Mill says, trying to be sarcastic, but we indeed speak of imaginative kids as having such inventive thoughts, often divorced from reality.

Especially confusing is Mill’s discussion of belief. He at first divides belief into three distinct classes: belief in events and real existences, belief in testimony and belief in the truth of propositions. Later he makes a reclassification, saying that belief in testimony is just a special case of a belief in events (those told by other people). Nowadays, many philosophers might want to classify all beliefs as concerning propositions, because the content of belief can be expressed as a proposition. On a closer look, Mill himself might agree, because he thinks that one part of beliefs in propositions, those concerning individual objects, are essentially beliefs in events and real existences (he would just have to make the assumption that all such beliefs can be expressed in propositions). This still leaves the problem that Mill’s account of propositions is too simple, allowing in principle only monadic predication - a problem we already saw in the case of his idea of mathematics.

An even bigger problem lies in Mill’s attempt to describe belief merely in terms of sensations, memories, associations and abstractions. For instance, he says that in the case of sensations and memories, belief means simply having them - if we sense something red or have a memory of it, we believe it. These cases already seem problematic. If Mill means just that having a sensation or having a memory is such an experience we can never doubt, we might accept that this is true, but this is, for the most part, not a very characteristic way to speak of belief (one might even say that only philosophers say things like “I believe I have a sensation of redness”, whereas usually people use the concept of belief only in cases where there is at least a possibility of things not being so). If, on the other hand, Mill would want to use the notion of belief here in a more substantial manner - say, as a belief that there is something that causes this sensation of redness or that there was something that I now remember as red - then we immediately see that belief is definitely not identical with sensation or memory. True, sensation and memory might well be evidence and occasion for such a belief, but there might still be doubt e.g. whether what we remember really was red and not blue.

Mill’s mistake is even clearer in his supposed examples of belief. If we spin around very fast and stop, we get the feeling of the earth spinning beneath us. Mill suggests that we also believe that earth is really spinning, which seems far-fetched. Even more, Mill makes a quick throwaway line that fearing something implies also believing in it - hence, he says, anyone who is afraid of ghosts must believe in them. A quick consideration makes Mill’s statement seem unfounded, even if he thought it so self-evident to need no justification. Picture a person hearing a strange noise in her house during the night. She might be afraid that there is a burglar in her house, but she might still be uncertain whether there is any burglar and thus not really believe in the existence of this burglar.

Indeed, Mill appears to make no distinction between modalities of actuality and possibility, belief being intimately related to the former - we might consider e.g. a sensation or memory, without being sure of its object being real. In the more complex cases, he says that habitual associations just are beliefs - if we tend to think of the sun rising after it has set, we believe that it will rise again after setting. Again, this regular or habitual association might be a ground for believing something, but there are cases where we might still have doubts, whether e.g. the sun will rise everyday for the whole infinity of time.

This is not to say Mill’s book is completely without merits. His account of abstraction is particularly interesting. Mill’s basic point is the difference between what calls notation and connotation. A word like “red” notes a certain property of individual objects, but it also connotes something, namely, those very objects that can be called red. In more modern terms, we might say Mill is here talking about the difference of intension and extension. Abstraction, then, means that we ignore the connotation of the word and think only of its notation: we think of redness without any reference to red things. Mill’s point is that abstractions are then nothing truly existent, but always dependent on the ignored connotation - there is no Platonic redness floating around without red objects.

James Mill

(1773-1836)

Some thinkers have had the misfortune of being overshadowed by both their predecessors and their successors. This is true e.g. of Karl Reinhold, a philosopher known often just as the link from Kant to Fichte. A similar fate has been experienced by James Mill, who is often regarded just as the person to transfer Bentham’s utilitarianism to his more famed son, John Stuart Mill.

Even so, James Mill was an interesting philosopher, with a wide range of interests. Indeed, this variety calls for some selection. I will not look at his role as a historian of India, although this was a work close to his professional interests as an administrator in East India Company. I will also ignore his economic writings, mainly because Mill's main achievement was to inspire David Ricardo to complete his book on economy. Instead, I shall focus on Mill’s political essays, the most famous of which is undoubtedly his essay on government.

Mill begins his look on the best form of government with a conundrum. Clearly, pure democracy is impossible, he says, because every time a governmental decision is required, we cannot go around asking everyone what to do. Then again, aristocracies and monarchies can - and even more strongly, Mill appears to say - tend to devolve into dictatorships where rulers follow their own interests. Sometimes solution was seen to be in mixing democracy with monarchy and/or aristocracy. Mill noted that this would mean merely that the government would not be unified, but a battlefield of the different interests of the nobles and the commons.

Mill’s simple answer is representation - the decision must be made by people representing the real owners of the political power. Evidently, representation is pointless in case of monarchies and aristocracies and does not remove the threat of tyranny. One might naturally ask whether the representational democracies don’t also face the threat of tyranny, in case representatives gain too much power. Mill’s answer is that if the representatives are regularly changed then they will have an incentive to rule for the best of the whole community - after all, they will soon be just regular citizens.

Mill’s account of representation has some notable gaps. First of all, it is a bit unclear whether Mill really suggests that all the representatives will be changed at appointed time, without any chance of same representatives being re-elected. A more important problem is Mill’s somewhat naive assumption that the interests of an individual representative will in every case coincide with the supposed interest of the whole community. Indeed, Mill seems to leave quite out of consideration the possibility that representatives might make decisions benefiting just some factions within the people. Mill does try to prevent this possibility by rejecting all systems where representatives are voted to represent certain professions or class. Yet, even if one would not officially be a representative of certain class, she might still feel the interests of this particular class as aligning with one’s own and make decisions based on it.

Despite his rather republican conclusions, Mill at once takes back his statement that mixed governments could not work and notes that a king and a House of Lords could still be maintained, if the representative government would find some use for them in administration. Mill’s suggestion might have been just a political move, meant to allay concerns that he would be deposing British royalty. Even so, he makes the further conservative move that voting could have an income limit. He doesn’t want the limit to be too great, which would make the system practically aristocratic, but allows a small limit, because, he says, people with little money can take care of the interests of those with no money. Furthermore, although Mill does not want rich people to buy votes for themselves and therefore endorses a secret ballot, he casually notes that representatives will most likely be rich and aristocratic in the good sense of the term, that is, capable men.

My use of the word “men” is quite deliberate. Mill states in clear terms that women are to be treated like children: they do not take part in voting, neither as voters not as candidates, because, Mill says, their interests are taken care of by adult men. Nowadays, Mill’s reasoning seems just preposterous. Even if one would believe that fathers and husbands always have the interests of their children and wives in their mind, the case of orphaned, unmarried women would still need some further solution.

Mill’s system of government has, then, an elitist streak. Indeed, he notes that while even a nation of mere uneducated people would benefit from representational democracy, its true worth is shown in nations with a large, educated middle class. Then again, Mill’s middle class is not a closed club, but people can become part of it by educating themselves. Indeed, Mill endorsed the idea that all people could and should receive education, with the exception of those that have some clear syndrome making learning difficult. This is the part where Mill’s philosophy most closely touches what was classically meant by philosophy, as Mill notes that finding best means of education requires first determining what human mind is like and what makes it happy. We’ll see in a later post what to make of this side of Mill’s philosophy.

In addition to representative government, Mill also spoke for freedom of press. According to him, there are only two cases where it should be restricted. Firstly, press should refrain from publishing slanderous lies told of individual persons. They could still make headlines about true scandals, except in cases where scandals are not true scandals, although irrationally held to be so because of outdated morals. Secondly, press should not hinder the proper activities of government. This does not mean that government could not be criticized, and in fact, Mill takes it to be the duty of free press, because people need to no when a time for a revolution is at hand.

John Ramsay McCullogh: The principles of political economy: with a sketch of the rise and progress of the science (1825)

(1789-1864)

John Ramsay McCullogh follows the tradition of classic British economists, such as Adam Smith, Ricardo and Malthus. He is definitely not a very original thinker, but his work is a representative example of this current of thought and takes its ideas to a certain extreme. Good example is McCullogh’s opinion on labour as a source of wealth. This thought goes back to at least Adam Smith, but McCullogh upholds it in a very one-sided manner, explicitly denying that anything else could ever produce any wealth. In a famous example, he tries to show that passage of time as such does not produce any additional wealth. McCullogh asks the reader to think of a barrel of wine that its owner locks in cellar. Seemingly, McCullogh notes, the barrel appears to become more expensive just by itself, but actually, McCullogh insists, it is the act of placing the barrel in the cellar and waiting that has produced the additional wealth.

McCullogh’s example is rather unconvincing in itself - certainly the act of putting the wine in the cellar has the least to do with the chemical and biological changes in the wine that make it more valuable. A clear counterexample is provided by the generation of oil and diamonds. The starting point of the process is something relatively cheap - dead life forms and coal. These have become valuable just because they have lied underground for several generations, under the pressure of Earth’s crust, and no person has definitely buried them there.

What engages McCullogh most is the question how to increase the effectiveness of labour. Answer he provides are familiar from previous economists: guaranteeing property rights makes it possible to amass capital to different endeavours, which enables different persons and even different nations to specialise on their own type of industry. McCullogh's three main classes - workers, landlords and entrepreneurs - and their respective sources of income - wage, rent and profit - follow the ideas of previous economists, but feel a bit outdated nowadays, when landlords rarely exist and individual entrepreneurs have been replaced by global corporations.

McCullogh, like other economists of his time, is thus more than a bit blind to the influence of his own cultural context - this is somewhat paradoxical, since McCullogh begins his work with an account of the history of economy. His special blindspots - which he shares with other economists - are the questions of population growth and gluts. On the first issue, McCullogh follows Malthusian idea that increased wages will eventually lead to an increase of population and thus to a return of wages to the old level, when the amount of potential workers has grown. As we know from the state of Western Europe, this “eventual” link is no law of nature, since there the development of effective contraceptives and liberation of general mores have suppressed the population growth.

When it comes to gluts - that is, excess of supply in relation to demand - McCullogh is far more radical than either Malthus and Ricardo, who agreed that gluts were a real problem. McCullogh, on the other hand, simply states that gluts appear only in cases where markets are unnaturally regulated e.g. by monopolised fields of commerce. In a completely free market, on the contrary, gluts would be only temporary and would - again, eventually - vanish when capital was transferred to more lucrative fields of business and workers would find new type of employment. One might agree that this happens eventually, but it could still be that this transfer would take an inordinate amount of time, especially from the viewpoint of an individual worker. This is especially important question in our time, when many jobs require extensive, specialised training. Indeed, there might be whole generations full of people who have basically educated themselves to an outdated and obsolete profession.

In addition to the reliance on eventual change of things, McCullogh’s work, like that of Ricardo before him, suffers from emphasis on mass market products, like corn or wool, where one item is just like any other and easily reproducible. Indeed, McCullogh himself admits that there are items, like rare artworks, which create natural monopolies, since e.g. there is only one artwork of certain sort in existence and their supply cannot be augmented. Just like with Ricardo, we may well ask whether the modern economy contains more and more examples of industries concentrating on such rare goods.

By far the most interesting part of McCullogh’s work is the last chapter on consumption. His definition of consumption is rather problematic. While labour, he says, changes matter into a form useful for us, in consuming we at the same time take advantage of this usefulness and turn matter into a form in which it is not anymore useful for that purpose. This definition works well in case of food items, where eating something both benefits us and destroys what we eat. Still, it seems clear that this combination of using and destroying things is not necessary. Firstly, we may well lose usefulness of a thing without using it, for instance, when we break a household item. Secondly, there are a lot of things we can use without destroying them, such as a book which can be read many times over.

Despite the flaw in the definition, we can at least agree upon the general sentiment behind it: we use things, and while we use them, they tend to lose their cohesion. McCullogh notes that this process of using things does incite us to produce new things and thus increases the amount of labour. Hence, McCullogh concludes, consumption is not as such a bad thing, but can increase the wealth of a nation. Indeed, McCullogh goes even further. While earlier economists had considered service sector to be of secondary importance in comparison with industries, McCullogh sees no essential difference between them. Thus, he says, there’s no clear economic difference between farmer’s work of producing corn and cook’s work of preparing corn for a dinner. In fact, McCullogh quite radically suggests that even seemingly useless tasks, like building a house of cards, can be economically useful, if they incite people to work harder for the rest of time - an important concession for the importance of spare time.

Although McCullogh is thus positive about the power of consumption, he admits that in some cases consumption should be restricted. The ground for such a restriction, McCullogh insists, is formed by the limits of consumable resources. The main target of McCullogh’s point is frivolous government spending, but nowadays, instead of this laissez faire -reading, one might as well choose its unintended ecological meaning - resources form a strict limit for consumption, and human race cannot continue its economic growth unless it will take care that this growth remains sustainable and does not overstep the boundaries.

Samuel Taylor Coleridge: Opus Maximum

Coleridge’s unpublished Logic was actually just a part of larger project, which he called at different times either Opus Maximum or Magnum Opus. Logic, together with an account of history of philosophy, was meant to be a preliminary study leading to the central problematic of the grand work - a proof of mainline Christanity and especially the notion of trinity. This central part exists only in several large fragments, but these are enough to indicate what Coleridge's train of thought was.

We miss the opening chapters of Opus Maximum and enter the stage in medias res, with Coleridge considering the question what differentiates morality from other sciences. He notes that statements of morality have quite a peculiar flair. If morality tells me that I ought to do something, it does not mean that this action would be absolutely necessary - morality is no mathematics. Yet, the moral “ought” is also something completely different from hypothetical necessity of physical sciences.

Coleridge is clearly following the lead of Kant’s Critique of Practical Reason and it is thus no wonder that he invokes as a primary assumption underlying morality the notion of will. Coleridge’s idea appears to be that this will is somehow responsible of its actions and moral statements then indicate, what actions fulfill this responsibility and what actions actively break it.

What is this will then? Coleridge notes as its primary characteristic a capacity to begin causal series. Yet, he remarks, this is no true explanation in the usual sense of the word. Ordinarily, things are explained, Coleridge says, when they have been connected to some previous item that has caused it. In case of will we can never really do that, since this very ability to begin things anew is something completely inexplicable. In other words, the notion of will is an idea, that is, something that definitely underlies our experiences and so must be in our reach, but as a final link of explanation admits no further explanation.

Coleridge is at once opposed to the idea that all morality could be reduced to mere prudential love of oneself. Firstly, he notes in a Kantian manner that this “self” is nothing more than mere formal binding of a bundle of experiences and thus incapable of being loved, or then it means our true self that is beyond all experience and thus beyond mundane love. Indeed, he continues, what is loved in this self-love is usually the earthly representative of our self or body. That is, self-love is just love of bodily pleasures or other benefits, which eventually can be used for a more pleasurable bodily life. But when we are told that we ought to do something, we are not told to do it because of future pleasure.

Coleridge avoids the Kantian disparagement of moral emotions by restricting the notion of pleasure to bodily pleasures. He states that already the satisfaction felt when we use our cognitive abilities is far different from bodily pleasures, and even further removed is the feeling of bliss generated by morality and religion. Thus, there is no demand that moral actions should be done grudgingly.

Maxims of morality, Coleridge notes, seem like commands from another, higher self - what Kant would call our noumenal self - and consciousness of these commands we call conscience. Now, Coleridge continues, even becoming conscious of these commands demands something - we must act in certain manner so that we would not be blind to demands of conscience. In other words, he concludes, conscience is possible only if we actively admit that we are answerable to a superior form of our self and so have faith in something beyond sensible reality.

Coleridge goes even further and says that not just morality or ethics, but every kind of consciousness is dependent on such faith and conscience. We may perhaps detect influence of Fichte here. Coleridge notes that what he has called conscience is in a primary sense self-consciousness - consciousness of our true self as a source of norms for action. Furthermore, whatever we are conscious of - that is, more than just aware of, in the way mere animals are - we have immediately related to our self. To conclude, for Coleridge, the whole human experience is underlined by a consciousness of what we must do in the world we experience.

Coleridge’s next move has also Fichtean tones. He notes that in order to relate any object of experience to ourselves as a moral subject, we need the notion of an object that is also a moral subject, although different from ourselves - every I needs You. When we look at a certain viewpoint, we can not differentiate between the two persons, Coleridge insists, and then we are speaking at the level of reason, that is, at the level of what is necessary according to all subjects. It is only when we move on to the level of will that we can differentiate between persons, and even then our conscience tells us that the other persons are equal to our own self and should be treated as such.

Morality, Coleridge argues, can then be regarded as a demand to subjugate the level of will - differentiation of persons - to the level of reason - equalisation of persons. Furthermore, he notes, our idea of God is just an idea of an entity, in which these two standpoints coincide absolutely - absolute will, which is unified with universal reason. In other words, Coleridge's suggestion is that morality demands that we gain conscience, which is just our communion with the divine level.

Coleridge’s next question is how we humans come to have a link to God. He at once notices that this cannot happen through any ordinary sort of proof. Much like Jacobi before him, Coleridge suggests that such proofs risk the confusion of divine and mundane levels, which leads to pantheistic explanations. Instead, he remarks, faith in God is something we learn even from our mother’s milk. During the first period of our life we humans do not have the capacity to separate ourselves completely from our mothers, and indeed, we are aware of our full dependence of her. When we then see our mother praying to a Superior Being, we gain an inkling of a universal parent taking care of all persons.

One might think that this genetic explanation of our notion of God is an argument against this notion - people from different cultures and people with no previous education would have no idea of God’s existence. Coleridge tries to show that even the Lockean notion of tabula rasa analysis of human experience points towards a notion of God. Coleridge’s argument begins by noting that Lockean philosophers analyse the experienced things by the characteristics these things are perceived to have. He then remarks that these characteristics differ from one perceiver to another - a plant poisonous to one observer might be harmless to another. Hence, he concludes, these characteristics are not so much passive properties, but active powers that can appear in different manners in different surroundings. The source of such activities, Coleridge insists, must ultimately be a self-causating activity or will.

Having thus based all consciousness and experience on the existence of responsible will and the existence of that will on absolute will, Coleridge next wants to show that this absolute will is no deistic impersonal God. Indeed, in order to be not just reason, but also will, God must be a person, that is, an I compared to You or to another person. From another viewpoint Coleridge notes that God is supposed to be a pure creating activity and therefore must have some result, if nothing else, then this second person.

This necessary result of divine activity, Coleridge says, is nothing more than the so-called second person of trinity - Word or Logos, which could be said to conceptualise the original power of self-creation by creating distinctions within it. In addition to being differentiated into two persons, Father and Son, these two persons also recognise their identity in an act of mutual love, which is represented by Spirit or the third person of trinity. In a sense, then, God must create to itself a community of persons just to exist as a person.

At this point Coleridge notes the peculiarity of religion as a sort of synthesis of philosophy or science dealing with necessities and of history dealing with contingencies. While the trinitarian nature of divinity belongs in Coleridge’s eyes to the necessary portion of religion - God must be a self-created community of persons - the existence of evil does not. Only the possibility of evil is necessary, but its actual existence is not.

In fact, evil offers a true conundrum for Coleridge, because its existence should be explained. It cannot be explained through any activity of God, who cannot be a source of imperfection. The only possibility that Coleridge can fathom is then that evil is similarly self-caused as God himself. The difference is that while God exists necessarily, evil does not. Evil, that is, a will not abiding with God’s absolute will, has just willed itself to existence. Of course, temporal notions are here only a metaphor. In a less figurative sense, evil just is something that need not be, but still is, and since it exists, it retains itself, as long as nothing is done about it.

What is particularly important for Coleridge is to show that evil is not a necessary outcome of the energy of divinity, unlike in Plotinian philosophy, where evil has a mere shadow of an existence, necessarily projected by the ultimate reality. Closely connected with this attempt is Coleridge’s project of showing that certain key tenets of the Bible can be justified philosophically, which would bolster the status of Christianity against Neoplatonism and its modern appearance in Schellingian philosophy.

At this particular stage, Coleridge’s work becomes even more fragmentary, but certain key moments can be discerned. Coleridge evidently tries to show that the biblical story of Genesis can be rationally reconstructed by incorporating what he considered to be the most developed account of natural world - the Schellingian philosophy of nature - but leaving out its seeming pantheism, which denigrates the idea of personal God.

The starting point of Coleridge’s account seems to be the fact of evil - that is, of a will which at the same time stubbornly upholds its own particularity against the truly absolute will of God and tries to place itself in the place of absolute will, remaking all of existence in its own shape. This muddle of contradictory tendencies of particularisation and universalisation in the original evil will Coleridge calls chaos - it is the primordial puddle of contradictory forces, which by itself cannot do anything.

Just like God recognised itself in the other personality and thus loved it, Coleridge continues, God’s love extends also to the primordial chaos, despite its imperfection. This divine love or “breath of God” gives chaos a more stable existence and makes it a potential material for further shapes of existence - chaos becomes aether. In the same act, the differentiating person in trinity or Logos shapes a portion of this aether into a carrier of active energy or light. Thus, Coleridge weds the Biblical tale of God saying “let there be light” with the Schellingian idea that physical world is built out of opposition of active light and passive matter.

Next in Coleridge’s account is the multiplication of these basic opposites into various forms of opposition: separation of unit from true unity in centrifugal force opposed to a search of true unity in centripetal force, mutual repulsion of material units opposed to their coherence as a unified material object and volatile expansion or diffusion of matter opposed to its contraction into a tighter unity. This is followed by construction of air as mediating between mere vacuum and visible matter, and move to concerns of chemistry. We need not go into details, but merely state the obvious parallel of Coleridge's account with Schellingian ideas.

Opus Maximum ends as abruptly as it began, with no indication how Coleridge would have finished the work. Still, we have seen enough to recognise which parts of the work would have been more fruitful. It is especially the idea of ethical underpinning of human consciousness and the notion of necessity of community for personality that hold most interest to a modern reader. On the other hand, his attempt to synthesise Genesis with German philosophy of nature seems like a peculiar and ultimately futile project.