Louis Eugène Marie Bautain: Philosophy of Christianity (1835)

(1796–1867)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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?

Ludwig Feuerbach: Thoughts concerning death and immortality (1830)

(1804 - 1872)

 If at all, Feuerbach is today remembered most often as a mere link from Hegel to Marx. This is at least so far true that the very first published writings of Feuerbach do bear the distinct mark of Hegelianism. Thus, in his dissertation De ratione, una, universali, infinita, Feuerbach contrasts in quite a Hegelian fashion individuality of sense life, where everything is distinct and separate from one another, with the universality of reason and thinking, by which any human being is inherently connected with all the other humans in a mutual act of recognition.

His next major work, Gedanken über Tod und Unsterblichkeit, continues in the same vein, but connects this distinction especially to the question of personal immortality. Feuerbach considers this question rather modern: ancient Greeks and Romans believed only in current life, lived in and for a community, while mediaevals merely hoped for immortality in some distant future, where everyone would be resurrected and good deeds rewarded and evil punished. It is only the protestantism and the rationalist philosophy, he insists, that suggested an individual subject to be of such importance that it deserved immortality in itself.

Yet, Feuerbach leaps to a conclusion, such an emphasis on individuals has made us forget that there is something much more important and perfect than mere individual life. This more perfect or infinite Feuerbach now calls God or spirit (again, in quite a Hegelian fashion). Just like reason in Feuerbach’s dissertation, God unites individuals, although now Feuerbach likens it more to love: in loving one another, humans lose their distinct individuality and merge into a wider community of persons. Indeed, God exists just through such a process of mortals losing their own individuality, in other words, by constant death of new human beings - God is the unity behind everything variable.

Such a pantheistic notion of God does not then leave any room for personal immortality, Feuerbach insists. Only in this particular life exists this particular human being, and when that life ends, there is nothing sensuous left of this person (thoughts about this person do remain, but these are not individual). If a person would continue to exist as an individual, it would have to exist somewhere, but where could this place be?

Feuerbach does consider the possibility that life after death would continue on other planets and stars, but ultimately refuses it. Life must have its spatial limits, in addition to temporal limits, that is, Feuerbach insists, there can be no life beyond Earth. His line of argument is very flimsy: life on other planets couldn’t be equally perfect to ours - nature shouldn’t just repeat things - but there couldn’t be life less perfect than the least perfect life on Earth - then it wouldn’t even be life - nor life more perfect than the most perfect life on Earth - what could be more perfect than thinking? Still, one cannot but laugh at Feuerbach’s idea that making stars into homes of reborn humans would just turn space into a comfortable hotel. Instead, he suggests, stars are not creations of utility, but are dreams of a still youthful nature.

Another point speaking against personal immortality, Feuerbach continues, is that individual life is always embodied. Spirit or God does live without a body - it is the process, where bodies are generated and destroyed - but an individual person cannot. Indeed, Feuerbach points out, when we think of an individual's immortality, we think of the soul as a kind of body, trapped in another body. Yet, he continues, soul is not a body nor is it even an individual thing, but an activity of living, just like fire is an activity in a burning body. And like fire stops, when a thing is burned up, soul vanishes when the body dies.

Feuerbach also relies on the Hegelian idea that a limit of something does not just end something, but also makes it what it is. In other words, mortality just is what makes us human beings what we are. This is nothing to be afraid of, he adds, since when this limit of ours or death is present, we are not. What death adds to our life is meaning, just like a melody adds meaning to fleeting sounds.

The analogue to melody in human life is the common memory of humankind, Feuerbach suggests. The first years of our life is something that we learn of only from the memories of other persons. Our own individual personality is thus something made by humanity outside us. The whole of our life is then a steady creation of more memories, which could be transmitted to other persons and thus universalised. When the process has finished, we still exist in spirit, as these idealised memories.

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.

Hugues Felicité Robert de Lamennais: Essay on indifference in matters of religion, volume IV; Defence of the essay on indifference in matters of religion

The rest of Lamennais argument for the divine nature of Christianity concerns mostly what could be called its emotional impact. For instance, Lamennais notes that miracles reveal to us the power of divinity, which surpasses the comprehension of human mind, and thus bolster the dogmatic side of divine revelation. I am not really interested of the question whether miracles actually have occurred, but a more interesting consideration is whether miracles are even possible. A deistic argument against their possibility, which Lamennais recounts, notes that miracles are contradictions, because they should break supposedly unbreakable laws of nature - that is, nothing could be a miracle, because if something broke what we thought was a law of nature, then the supposed law wouldn’t have been a true law in the first place.

Now, making miracles into a logical absurdity seems a sophism of the worst sort and makes one just wonder, if there is something wrong in the suggested definition of miracle, because one can surely imagine what it would be like if some divinely powered entity would break the regular course of nature. Of course, it also depends on what do we mean by a law of nature. If one means by it just a regularity, miracles could be defined as highly improbable events, on the condition that these regularities usually hold. Then again, if a law of nature means something more necessary, we could either think of all these laws as having an implicit caveat, like “unless God decrees otherwise” - and a miracle would then be just an instantiation of such a caveat - or we might think that miracles mean temporary replacement of our world and its laws with another world having different laws of nature. For Lamennais, this sophistical argument is just a proof that deists, who deny all powers from divinity, are a step away from becoming atheists, who, by the way, cannot even show that natural world has any unbreakable laws.

The very crux of the emotional argument for the sanctity of Christianity lies undoubtedly with the person of Jesus and his supposed role in the divine plan. Word of God - whatever that means, but it surely sounds like a mighty person - takes on a rather powerless position and dies just for the sake of giving humans a chance to redeem themselves. As the popularity of Christianity shows, this is a rather powerful story - who wouldn’t like it, if some person of authority sacrificed himself for others? Indeed, one might suggest that this emotional component was an essential aspect at the stage when Christianity spread over the Roman empire. Lamennais, on the other hand, takes this spread as a further proof for the divine origin of Christianity, which seems a bit too quick conclusion, since Christianity surely hasn’t been the only ideology that has gathered followers despite its meager beginnings.

Lamennais still tries to back the sanctity of Christianity by showing that Christianity has been beneficial to the development of society. I have already discussed a similar argument and noted that it is rather doubtful. What is more interesting is Lamennais’ later written defense of his work, attached at least in the edition I've been reading to the final volume. Here Lamennais returns especially to the themes of the second volume and to his account of various philosophical schools, like empiricism and idealism. In the defense, Lamennais is especially interested of what he called dogmatic school of philosophy, the major proponents of which were supposedly Descartes, Pascal, Malebranche, Leibniz, and rather interestingly, Francis Bacon, whom otherwise one might have included with the empiricists. The defining characteristic of this “school” Lamennais finds in reliance on individual human reason. It doesn’t take Lamennais long to find some clear difficulties e.g. in Cartesian reliance on human reason - as Descartes himself attests, the very criterion he suggests, or clarity and distinction of ideas, works as a criterion only if he already supposes the existence of a benevolent divinity, who can guarantee the connection between clarity/distinction and truth. Lamennais thinks that even the famous I think therefore I am falls because of this mistake, since it can at most now show that we must believe in our own existence, not that we have any basis for this belief.

While Cartesian fundamentalism does break at obvious places, Lamennais regards as its worst offence the culture of individual reason it has propagated - after Descartes, everyone believes she can find the truth by following her own opinions. Lamennais explicates his own chosen criterion by saying that instead of individual reason he advocates for common sense or reason, that is, the authority of generations and generations of Church doctrine. He does note some of the more obvious criticisms against his position, especially on the question whether we can truly say that Catholic Christianity is the best authority to rely upon. Unfortunately, he really does not have any better basis for this assumption, except to point to his four criteria of unity, universality, perseverance and sanctity, all of which we have found wanting.

Hugues Felicité Robert de Lamennais: Essay on indifference in matters of religion, volume II

With the second volume of his essay, De Lamennais enters the region of epistemology. It is especially the question of the foundation of all certainty that interests him. He considers three possible answers to the question, all of which he finds wanting. First of these answers is the classical empiricism, in which certainty is based on sensations - Lamennais calls this possibility materialism. His criticism is predictable: sensations give us no certainty on anything, because we do not know how or even whether they are connected to a thing existing independently of sensation.

The second answer Lamennais considers is idealism, which he says to be exemplified by Berkeley and Kant. This pairing might raise some eyebrows and even more suspect is Lamennais’ suggestion that such an idealism based certainty on sentiment. Lamennais does not offer a serious justification of this characterisation, but one might suspect that it is especially the post-Kantian idea of intellectual intuition as the method of philosophy, which lies behind his suggestion. In any case, Lamennais can quickly note just that sentiment is no better a foundation than sensation, because different people have diverse sentiments of same topics.

The final answer is Cartesian dogmatics, which in Lamennais’ opinion bases everything on reasoning. Although Lamennais regards dogmatics most favourably of the three answers, he is quick to point out that all reasoning must have some starting point or use some axiom which is not based on further reasoning. Thus, even reason is no final answer to the question of certainty and Descartes must accept the bane of Pyrrhonian skepticism.

Having denied the validity of these three answers, Lamennais introduces his own solution. Certainty, he says, cannot be based on thoughts of a single individual, but this does not mean that it couldn’t be based on a group of individuals. Indeed, Lamennais insists, whenever we are arguing and come to a standstill, we ask the opinion of other people. In other words, it is the intersubjective criterion of authority, which Lamennais takes as the foundation of certainty. There is certain feasibility in this ideas, since e.g. when discussing a difficult scientific theory, we are more likely to accept the opinion of an expert than that of a layman with a clear feeling about the correct solution, because the expert is more of an authority than the layman. Still, what we could consider an acceptable authority and what Lamennais considers it to be are two different things.

It is then no wonder that when Lamennais starts to consider the existence of God that he uses the common opinion of all humanity as a proof of this existence. He does mention more meatier proofs, notably what Kant called an ontological proof - surely God must exist, since he is just “that who is” or the epitome of all existence, which must exist, never mind what else there is. So convinced Lamennais is of his authorial justification that he puts all the other proofs he uses in a footnote.

The existence of God is not just some very theoretical statement, which doesn’t concern human life, Lamennais thought. Instead, a number of important truths follow from the existence of God, he said. Notably, humans, created by God, must have some laws governing their nature, just like all things, and furthermore, they must follow these laws of their nature, if they are to find true happiness. For instance, Lamennais noted, human beings need to know the truth, but as he supposedly showed, all truth is based on authority and ultimately on authority of God himself, who is supposed to know all the truth.

The purpose of Lamennais’ argument is then clearly to show that human beings need a relation to God, in order to satisfy their own yearning for truth. The relation of human being to God, then, is obviously meant to be the defining moment in religion. Yet, not just any relation to God satisfies Lamennais, but he insists that there is only one proper religion, since the natures of human being and God are not variable - they are like two puzzle pieces that can be combined in only one manner. This means that all the other supposed religions are then just falsifications of the one true religion.

The next question is obviously then what criteria we should use for discerning this true religion and distinguishing it from all false religions. Lamennais considers again the possibility to use sentiment or reasoning as a criterion - apparently sensation just has nothing to do with religion in Lamennais’ eyes. Both possibilities are easily shown to be unfeasible. Sentiment cannot be the basis of one religion, since different cultures have had different feelings about the true religion, while reason is again incapable of fending off doubts even about the simplest truths.

The only possible option left, Lamennais insists, is authority, this time of the society. God has created human being as an essentially social entity, who has to find his certainty through education given by others. Since this flow of education cannot be infinite, it must end at a stage where human beings were directly educated by God himself - hence, the need for revelation.

It is to be expected that the true revealed religion Lamennais has in mind is Christianity in its Catholic form. In the next post I shall enter into more details of the justification Lamennais gives for this thesis, but we can already note the emphasis on the unity on religion - a clear statement against any tolerance of opinions. Indeed, Lamennais is quick to dismiss all pagan religions because of such a tolerance of different viewpoints, which appears to be the worst form of idolatry. Furthermore, he regards almost all non-Christian religions as such an idolatry. The only exceptions are Judaism, which Lamennais thinks was just a temporary phase in the development of true religion and is now just a lifeless husk, and Islam, which he considers to be just another heretical form of Christianity.

François-René de Chateaubriand: The Genius of Christianity (1802)

Chateaubriand’s Génie de Christianisme falls into a genre of apologies or defenses of the worth of Christianity, with which the history of Christian philosophy began and which was popular throughout the Middle Ages. But the supposed enemy, from which Chateaubriand tries to defend Christianity, is not the pagan culture of imperial Rome nor is it the competing might of Islam, but a completely new force, namely, the Enlightenment and its criticism of religion. Thus, Chateaubriand appears to think, a completely new kind of apology is required.

Chateaubriand’s apology falls into four books with distinct themes, which I will deal with separately. The first book most resembles a traditional apologetic work in that it tries to defend the dogmas of Christianity. Yet, even here Chateaubriand has more of a pragmatic take on the question, for instance, when he tries to show that compared with other religions, only Christianity has ever had a truly working moral doctrine in Decalogue, or when he speaks in somewhat Kantian tone of a moral necessity of the belief in afterlife.

The true essence of Christianity lies, according to Chateaubriand, in its mysteries, such as Trinity and the story of fall and redemption. These mysteries reveal some deep truths about God and human beings. A common attack against these mystical doctrines had been that they were actually just influences from other religions – for instance, other religions had examples of Trinities, thus, they were not a unique element in Christianity. Chateaubriand’s tactic appears to be in a sense accept these accusations – Trinities occur all around religions, thus, there must be something important in the idea. Then again, he is also quick to point out that these other examples lack some important details which occur only in Christianity and which truly explain the importance of these doctrines.

Chateaubriand does also try his hand with traditional argumentation for the existence of God. Yet, he is quick to dismiss overtly theoretical proofs, or at least he gives one only in end notes. His main line of offence is traditional teleology – Chateaubriand points out the orderliness of the universe and especially the wondrous nature of living beings, which do things that apparently should require the aid of divine forethought (a favourite example of Chateaubriand appears to be the migration of birds and other animals). We know that Chateaubriand is here fighting a loosing battle, since these wonders of nature do have natural explanations. A similar losing battle is going on, when Chateaubriand tries to show that the chronology of the Bible is the most accurate representation of time and that the Biblical events are far more ancient than events in any other holy text.

While this lackluster start wouldn't really make the work into a classic, same cannot really be said about the next book, in which Chateaubriand tries a new tactic.

Thomas Robert Malthus: An Essay on the Principle of Population (1798)

(1766-1834)

Out of all figures I’ve thus far investigated in my blog, Malthus appears most current. Population of the world has been rising almost exponentially during the last century, and especially the Third World has suffered from this. When a superpower like China has felt forced to use such drastic measures as their former one-child-only policy, we can truly speak of a global issue.

Behind Malthus’s work lies a simple consideration. He notes that without any restraints, population would rise in a geometrical progression – if a family would have in average, say, three children, the children of this average family would have around nine children, these children would then produce 27 children and so on. This is of course a very rough estimate, but we can accept at least that the rate of reproduction would be quite high.

Now, Malthus noticed that population of his time did not show as great tendency of continuous growth, although such leaps might happen sporadically. The natural conclusion was that something restrained this growth. Malthus surmised quite naturally that it was the limited number of resources and especially food, which constrained continuous population growth. True, more people could produce more food, but the growth happened, Malthus stated, only in arithmetical progression. Malthus really had no reason to suppose that the food supply would grow in arithmetical progression, but the important point was more that the growth of food production would eventually fall greatly short of the growth of population.

What is especially interesting in Malthus’s account is his idea of the actual mechanics by which the limitedness of food supplies affects the population growth. One means Malthus indicates is misery. If there are more mouths to feed, but not that much more food to give them, people will not get as much to eat as earlier. This leads to malnutrition, diseases and ailments caused by it, and in the most extreme case, to starvation. After a while, the population will have lowered to a level, when the worst effects of misery subside – and the population starts to grow again in the more favourable conditions.

Malthus’s view of this cycle of hunger and reproduction battling one another is quite bleak, but what to do, he says, it is just a law of nature (a common excuse from people who notice a problem, but won’t do anything about it). Indeed, Malthus goes at some point even so far as to suggest that any attempt of a society to regulate this cycle is doomed to failure – if you try to give the poor something to eat, they’ll just reproduce even more and the problem is created anew. With the optimism of an English clergyman, Malthus supposes that it is all just God’s plan to awaken some moral sense in humans – when we see suffering around us, we’ll start to feel pity – and that all will be made better in the afterlife.

Malthus’s conservative stance is especially striking in his attitude toward the second check of population growth. Malthus calls this check vice, but it is pretty evident he is especially thinking of all sorts of sexual acts that do not lead to reproduction. One might think allowing this sort of “vice” would be at least a partial answer to Malthusian problematic. Indeed, it has usually been the drive for sexual pleasure and not the more ephemeral drive for reproduction that has led to unrestricted population growth – people who desire children of their own tend to desire them in some limited amount, while the desire for sexual pleasure might well exceed any assigned limits. At least we can be happy that Malthus accepts the latter need as a fact of human nature and quickly crushes all hopes of humankind ever getting rid of sexual needs. Indeed, he even quite beautifully describes an ideal marriage as a state in which highest sensual gratification is combined with social virtues, like companionship.

In a later edition Malthus introduced a third check of population growth, and this time one he regarded positively: a custom that people (and especially men) should not marry, before they have the means to provide for their family. Firstly, we might notice that Malthus never imagined this as a law, although he suggested government might give a negative incitement for it by not giving charities to poor families with lot of children. Indeed, this suggested custom is another aspect of Malthus’s idea that this world has been given to us as a place for moral growth – what better way to show one’s morality than to silence one’s desires until one can care for all their consequences?

Furthermore, Malthus’s old-fashioned morals appear in this suggestion even more prominently. Surely one can have children even out of wedlock, but this is something Malthus condemns forcefully. What is even more disturbing is the indication that marriage is a state in which reproduction is an unavoidable fact, and in a sense, even a duty. Indeed, Malthus’s view can be understood only if the person with the most to lose in child rearing – the woman, who will carry all the babies – has an obligation to always accept his husband’s wish for an intercourse. One just has to wonder what Malthus would have thought of families actually planning when and even whether to have children.

Thomas Paine: The Age of Reason (1794, 1795 and 1807)

Thomas Paine (1736-1809)

We return from France to America, to yet another of the Founding Fathers of the United States, only to quickly return to France. Thomas Paine had a hand in two revolutions, being also a member of the revolutionary Convent. As a foreigner and a known ally of a moderate republican Girondin movement, he was imprisoned, when the radicals led by Robespierre had managed to take control of the government. While in prison, Paine wrote the first part of his The Age of Reason, a book investigating Christian religion from the standpoint of Deism.

After being salvaged from impending death by the execution of Robespierre, Paine added two further parts to the book. In the prison cell, he had had no Bible to check, and the final parts are meant to accommodate for that fault: Paine goes painstakingly through various books of the Bible, finding out evidence suggesting that the book is not a work of divine revelation.

Paine's primary strategy is to point out internal incoherencies – Moses couldn't have written the first books of the Bible, because he dies before the end of the book, supposed prophecies pointing to the coming of Christ were actually related to ancient affairs of Jews and their kingdoms etc. Although this part of Paine's book was quite relevant when it appeared, it seems trite nowadays, since no one in his right mind takes Bible as a literal source of history. Of course Bible has it inconsistencies – just the existence of two different creation stories belies this. But far more interesting than such biblical nitpicking is to ask why these stories, with all their inconsistencies, have been able to cause a feeling of divinity in their readers.

A more interesting avenue of criticism lies in Paine's discussion of dreams – or the criticism itself is again quite trite (dreams of a person are no proper testimony, and even if God would have used them to reveal his will to people, this power of revelation would only hold for those who had the vision), but the machinery behind this criticism is interesting. Paine sets out an intricate picture of human mind. The driving force of mind is imagination, Paine says, and its activities are recorded by memory and regulated by judgement. Imagination works always, but memory and judgement often rest during sleep. When memory is not working, we don't have any recollection of what we have thought. When memory is working, but judgement is not, we are dreaming.

In addition to incoherence, Paine criticized the supposed immorality of Bible. Lot of this criticism is undoubtedly to the point – stories of ancient Israelites killing innocent babies are cruel. Still, Paine's disdain is also at times difficult to understand. Thus, Paine thinks that the idea of God forgiving sins would be detrimental to morality, because bad deeds would not then be punished in any way. Yet, one might say that at least in some cases true repentance is an acceptable option for external punishment.

Another part of Paine's crusade against the impious Bible is his insistence that the biblical notion of immortality is crass. Christianity speaks of bodily resurrection, but, Paine suggests, a body similar to our current body would just wind out just as our current bodies. Thus, he concludes, immortality must mean change into a completely different, more perfect plane of living. Paradoxically, Christian notion of immortality is then denied by Paine because it is too materialistic – a reason why it was easy for Christian philosophers to accept Aristotelian notion of soul.

After having thrown away all of Bible, Paine directs his reader to the true revelation of God, that is, nature. There is not much original in Paine's naturalistic theology, but we might notice one curious detail in it, namely, Paine's attitude towards mathematics. It appears that Paine thinks even mathematical truths were designed and chosen by God. Thus, mathematics becomes one of the natural sciences, because e.g. the relationships of different triangles are in Paine's eyes evidence for God's existence.

Comte de Volney: Ruines or meditations on revolutions of empires (1791) and Natural law or catechism of French citizen (1793)

Comte de Volney (1757-1820)

It has been said that at the end of 18th century two culturally important transitions occurred. One was the appearance of Kant's first Critique, the second was French Revolution. Although these events occurred in very different fields, both did shatter some truths that were long held to be incontrovertible.

While the first of these events is clearly philosophical, it might seem difficult to find any philosophy in the latter. True, there were philosophical inspirations for the revolution, especially in the earlier French Enlightenment, but if one believes elementary introductions to philosophy, it all disappeared when political tumult began.

Yet, there were philosophical writings appearing during the French Revolution and written by French persons. Writings of de Volney could be said to embody many of the themes of the revolution. Indeed, Les Ruines Ou Méditations Sur Les Révolutions Des Empires is a clear homage to French revolution. Volney's book commences with the author meeting a spirit, which allows him to view Earth, as it were a distant planet watched through an enormously powerful telescope. The spirit shows the author how states were born – it is the old theory of social contract, with people joining together, because life in natural state was too filled with dangers (especially those posed by fellow human beings).

In original societies all people were equal, Volney says, but then some people begun to gather power and form an aristocracy, or if they based their power on supposed divine ordinance, a theocracy. At the end of this development are monarchies, which are often founded by people raising one person above others in order to protect themselves from the aristocrats. It is just this division of classes that makes societies weak, Volney suggests. When majority have no say in the affairs of state, they have no motivation to defend it against external aggressors. Of course, conquest means just change of one oppressor to another.

Volney also suggests a solution to this seemingly never-ending cycle of empires rising and falling. When people are enlightened, they finally grow weary of their rulers and throw them away. Clearly referring to French Revolution, Volney tells a tale of a great Western nation removing the shackles of upper classes and giving the power to the whole people.

But revolution in one country is not enough for Volney, who desires freedom for the whole globe. What Volney finds most hindering such a universal revolution are the cultural and especially religious differences – people are lured to obey the rulers by priests, who say they hold the only access to truth. Volney lets the different religions fight with themselves and shows how all of them contain details that are held to be absurd by proponents of other religions. He also launches a common anthropological attack against all religions. Religion, Volney says, begun when people thought natural phenomena like thunder or rain were living beings that could be persuaded by gifts and prayers. Especially astronomical knowledge and moral notions developed religion into forms we know nowadays, and indeed, all religions hail from the same source. Thus, Christian story of Easter still shows influence of ancient idea of bad god of winter being banished by good god of summer.

Yet, Volney does not ascribe to atheism, but seems to uphold some form of deism, in which inexplicable force has created the world around us. Indeed, in his La loi naturelle ou Catéchisme du Citoyen français Volney suggests that this God created also the natural morality. It seems no wonder that Volney sees no difference between a law of gravity and a law of morality – both are just the way how God created the world to be like. Thus, moral law is inscribed in human heart, particularly in the pleasures and pains, which are in Volney's opinion a sure guide for good behaviour. True, Volney knows that one might lose one's health, if one is too interested of some sort of pleasure, but this excess is shown just by pains caused by such overindulgence – and it is surely no reason to go to other extremity and avoid all pleasures altogether. The true end of moral law, Volney says, is always conserving oneself. This does not mean egoism, Volney says, because human beings are naturally social and want to live in good and just societies.

I should probably note the naivete of Volney's thought and cynically remind everyone that e.g. removal of religions would most likely not remove the borders between states. Still, I find the energy and passion of his works quite refreshing. These were still times, when the idea of a progression of culture was still somewhat new and when it appeared quite believable that a sudden removal of few kings would bring the paradise on Earth. Dream of a better humanity is something we would still need today.

Thomas Jefferson (1743-1826)

It is a question raised in recent years, whether liberalism, that supposed liberator of humankind, has actually been tainted with a foul crime to humanity – I am speaking, of course, about the slavery. Many leading liberalist thinkers, like John Locke, wrote in favour of enslavement of black Africans, and especially on the western side of Atlantic, they even owned slaves. This involves a complex line of ideas that I cannot follow here, but the basic question appears to be whether the liberation of one class of humans from traditional restrictions of religious morality and the establishment of first capitalist systems might somehow have worsened the state of the people used by this enlightened persons as their household equipment.

Thomas Jefferson apparently is one of the most contradictory persons in this context: one of the largest slave holder in the country, yet, denied the right to import slaves to United States, yet, did nothing to discourage the local slave trades, yet, did plan on gradual liberation of slaves, yet, held Africans to be inferior to Europeans – a list of paradoxes that just keeps growing. This is an interesting muddle to deal with, but one which I regretfully will have to leave for specialists of Jefferson's thought.

I am now mostly interested in Jefferson's religious ideas, or more precisely, in the way how he suggested religion should be seen in the affairs of state. Of course, his religious ideas as such are also of interest. Apparently, he had constructed his very own version of Gospels, cutting up pieces of life story and sayings of Jesus from all the Gospels and putting it all together into a whole. Particularly, Jefferson had discarded all descriptions of miracles and all suggestions of the divinity of Jesus, which might suggest that he was a deist of some sort.

Although Jefferson thus disparaged all ideas of supernatural, he appears to still have been interested of Christianity – why else would he go through the trouble of picking up lines from Bible? The idea of Jesus as a mere teacher of morality was, of course, a standard line in Enlightenment. Yet, it is of interest what Jefferson appropriated from these moral teachings.

The famous Virginia Statue of Religious Freedom (1777) begins with a statement that God created human beings free (well, technically Jefferson is speaking only of ”man”, but I am giving him the benefit of doubt and assume he isn't really restricting his statement to one gender). This is a crucial assumption in many versions of Christianity – freedom is an essential precondition for human responsibility (of course, Augustine might be of a different opinion, but I doubt Jefferson really cared about Augustine in this matter).

When Jefferson speaks of God as an author of ”our religion”, that is, Christianity, it is difficult to say how serious he really is – even if Jefferson believed in God, his God probably was an author of no religion. Yet, this statement is obviously a rhetorical move – it gives an air of authority and responsibility for what Jefferson is about to say.

Jefferson's strategy is to take some of the central ingredients of Christianity (or what he sees as these central thoughts). Humans are created free, thus, we must respect their freedom in every matter. Especially this holds of religion. If God would have wanted, he could have made us follow Christiniaty by default – yet, we know by experience he hasn't. Thus, we must follow God's example in this case and let everyone decide their own religious opinions for themselves, especially as every human being is by default prone to fall in error and thus no one person's judgement on religious affairs should be followed.

Jefferson's idea concurs with modern sensibilities, and his argument is also quite beautiful, relying on central ideas of the supposed opposition. It is quite astonishing to think that two quite different influences were behind the American revolution – the freethinking deism of Jefferson and the belief in personal guidance of God by Benjamin Franklin. A more speculative thinker might even suggest that these two ideologies are still battling of the spirit of American people, perhaps in the guise of very party system of that country.

Joseph Priestley (1733 – 1804)

I am once again tackling a figure whose work lies on the borders of philosophy and science. I haven't read any one book from him, but instead, I have investigated a selection, the title of which (Priestley on science, philosophy and politics) reflects the variety of the thinker's interests. Because Priestley was also interested of religion, one might say that he played altogether four different roles.

Starting first from the role of a scientific investigator, we may note that Priestely is famous as one of the first people to separate oxygen from air. But Priestley's discovery is an important indication how different it is to do an experiment and to interpret it correctly, as he did not believe he had found a new element – instead, he thought he had managed to purify air from phlogiston, the element that supposedly caused all phenomena involving fire. Priestely quickly noted that this purified air was more invigorating than ordinary air and he also noted that plants appeared to emanate such air.

In addition to dabbling with scientific experiments, Priestly was also a historian of science and worked on an history of electrical studies. Still, perhaps most interesting work of Priestely on the topic of science are his plans for systematising scientific research. Priestly suggests that instead of founding huge societies responsible for all kinds of scientific study, there should be many small societies specialised for a small subfield in science and responsible for collecting funding for that field. In effect, Priestly is suggesting an idea common these days, that universities should concentrate their research on their strong areas.

Priestley's innovative skills were not restricted to mere research politics, but he was, secondly, an eager political thinker. His model of good society was clearly based on United States of America, as he was a stout defender of republicanism and demanded the right of citizens to have an extended field of action, in which state should have no say at all – Priestly goes even so far as to suggest that education should be no business of the state. Furthermore, Priestley speaks vehemently against any privileged class or nobility, except in case of such a class serving the needs of state. And while Priestley did condemn rebellions, he also noted that fight against tyranny was no true rebellion. In line with Priestley's rather Republican ideal of society is his insistence that criminals should be punished hardly, in order to deter anyone from committing a crime. Ironically, Priestly congratulates USA of not being a colonial power and of never falling into a civil war – a mere century would have proven him wrong.

An important part of Priestley's liberal ideal of state is a demand that all religious sects should be tolerated. This is an important element in his third role as religious thinker. Priestley was a unitarian, who thought that Christ did not have a divine nature. Indeed, his philosophical views went even farther away from the traditional religious views. For instance, Priestly denied the possibility of spontaneously working will, but insisted that all actions require some motive – even the act of going against a motive is never unmotivated. Somewhat surprisingly, in addition to basing this thesis on the universal validity of causal principle, Priestley also uses a religious argument – God could not foresee things ahead, if the events of the world would not work in a strictly deterministic manner. Furthermore, he also notes that morals would not work without complete determinism, since a randomly acting person could not be improved in any manner – she could always accidentally act in a completely different manner.

In addition to being a determinist, Priestly was also a materialist. Or, to put it better, he did not believe that there was any wide cleft between material and spiritual phenomena. Matter was not a plenuum or completely solid, but must have been full of emptyness, since it e.g. could be a medium for movement of light. And if matter was really not material in the brute sense of the word, Priestley argued, why could we not say that so-called soul is also made of matter?