Liberal Humanism is characterized by opposition
to claims to knowledge or truth solely by appeal to authority,
whether Church, State, or Antiquity. [24]
"Theocentric, authoritarian, and static"
culture was challenged. In its place Enlightenment thinkers advocated
a new "anthropocentric, liberal, and progressive"
vision of culture. [25]
1. Skepticism with respect to concepts and percepts which lead one astray, a major frailty of human understanding. Reality is hidden. (Idols of the Tribe) [26]
2. Based on the misinformation outlined in (1) above, idiosyncratic ways of thinking and seeing are projected onto the world (reality). Problem of subjectivity. (Idols of the Cave)
3. While language is natural and essential to human life, it often leads to the propagation of delusions and the postulating of fictitious entities. (Idols of the Marketplace) [27]
4. Philosophical organization of knowledge into totalizing systems and methodologies that are inherently misleading. (Idols of the Theater)
Critical analysis, empirical observation, and
caution are required to avoid being trapped by these idols.
Problem:
Bacon uses a particular scientific method as a way out of "idolatry",
but could be accused of being seduced by a particular type of
scientific system and methodology, leaving him open to the charge
that he has succumbed to an "idol of the theater". (See
(4) above.)
Hume refuses the seduction to which Bacon fell prey.
He claimed that all knowledge is based on sense impressions. (Thesis of Empiricism) Impressions must be traced back to their original sensations in order to determine what they represent or indicate, e.g. causality. [Note the role of deductive reason and absolute certainty, which is not mentioned by Surber.]
But if something as basic as causality cannot
be explained and known with certainty, it's unlikely that more
complex phenomena will yield to adequate explanation.
Shaftesbury and Hutcheson argue that individual moral judgment provides a natural basis for cultural critique. [Note: Reason is given to each in equal measure for purposes of distinguishing good and evil and to allow one to act accordingly. Thus, in the eyes of God, we are all moral equals. This Christian belief persists in only slightly modified form throughout the Enlightenment and into the present. The separation of antiquity and modernity is not as radical and complete as some may think.] [1]
Natural law is grasped by human reason. However, natural physical laws (e.g. laws of gravitation) are more easily discerned than natural moral laws.
Reason, according to Hobbes, is at the service of the passions. Desire determines what we seek; reason determines how best to achieve it. That the function of reason.
Locke, on the other hand, made use of the notion of enlightened self-interest to argue that reason is not wholly subservient to desire. Reason allows us to impose constraints on desire in order to act for a long range good.
Moral sense theorists (Shaftesbury and Hutcheson) claimed that there is an innate pleasure associated with moral behavior and a corresponding pain associated with immoral behavior. Thus, moral sense was a passion that functioned independent of desire and reason. [This also provided a basis for their aesthetic theory based on the same inner sense.]
Hume critiqued both approaches:
Surber attempts to distinguish this approach from that of moral critique. Whereas moral critique deals with what ought to be the case but is not, the libertarian critique assumes principles widely shared but violated in a given instance. [30]
"Right" and "liberty" must be understood with respect to a more comprehensive philosophical view.
Naturalist/Essentialist View of Human Nature: Humans are born free and have a natural right to liberty. Liberty is the absence of external constraints on one's actions. Rights are violated when illegitimate constraints are imposed.
Contractarian View of Human Nature: No rights are possessed by nature, but are brought into being through a reciprocal agreement. This approach served the political needs of libertarians since it allowed one to claim that there is no absolute, a priori right to rule and, thus, no justification for a hierarchy based on inheritance and the divine right of kings to rule over their subjects.
Problems:
1. It's hard to avoid the commitment to some universal rights, e.g. to freedom. But how do you distinguish "natural" rights from conventional rights? Cf. slavery. [32]
2. Contractarian views often attempt to distinguish "natural freedom", which is a necessary initial condition for a legitimate contract, from "artificial freedom", which is the freedom one achieves in civil society subject to laws that one accepts "freely". When these laws come into conflict with one's "natural freedom", e.g. a higher moral law or obligation, does one have the right to refuse? Is this a natural right? Who says?
3. Rights are often assumed to exist even though it may be impossible to exercise them, e.g. right to work without the necessary training. Does one also have the right to adequate training? How about the right to the resources necessary to get that training? Etc.
The historical critique of culture is based
on the assumption that reality is not grasped directly, but interpreted
by means of concepts and explanatory models. Thus, the constructs
developed by scientists should themselves be subject to critique.
[Cf. Bacon's views.] [33]
However, since history is made by humans, we can understand it better than the natural world. What Vico proposed was an understanding of "our own condition as the outcome of a process of development that preceded us. Neither moral conviction nor a modern doctrine of rights and liberty but only a scientific grasp of our current cultural state as emergent from its historical past could provide a basis for critical discourse." [35]
His emphasis was on the history of language, myths, etc. He also advocated contextual interpretation, i.e. understanding an historical culture in its own terms, not in terms of our present conceptual framework. [34]
Vico's General Principles Underlying Historical
Development:
1. Economic and political organization is linked with art, literature, rhetoric, law, and philosophy.
2. Societies pass through predictable stages "driven by social reconfigurations resulting from disturbances in kinship and economic relations". [35]
Attempts to apply mathematical methods of the physical sciences to the study of history. He did pioneering research in the mathematical theory of probability in hopes of using it to evaluate aspects of collective decision making.
Condorcet's Assumptions Regarding Historical
Progress:
1. Individual development provides a microcosm of cultural development. Knowledge is gained and used to alter external conditions. [37]
2. Progress occurs in stages defined by obstacles that must be overcome before it is possible to move on to the next stage. The movement is from dependence, ignorance, and superstition to power, knowledge, and enlightenment.
He helped advance a notion of modernization,
i.e. scientific and technological development leading to cultural
transformation.
Reason, Hume argued, did not provide an adequate foundation for knowledge or action. This challenge and critique of reason was taken up by Kant. But he recognized that the tool one had to use was reason itself. Thus, what was called for was a kind of self-critique.
[It's worth noting that the inadequacy of "reason" was the inadequacy of a certain kind of reason, viz. deductive reasoning and its corresponding goal of absolute certainty. When these conditions are weakened and one allows probability as a basis for knowledge, the obstacles to knowledge are significantly lessened, at least to the extent that extreme skepticism is avoided. But notice, then, the importance of concepts (one's understanding of such key terms as "reason", "knowledge", etc.), methods (mathematical proof) and standards (absolute certainty) in arriving at one's philosophical point of view.]
Three senses of "reason" in Kant's critical philosophy:
1. pure reason: consistent and systematic thinking as such, i.e. formal logic dealing with the form of reasoning, not its content.2. theoretical reason: systematic thinking with regard to specific content, based on sensory awareness of nature, leading to knowledge of the natural world.
3. practical reason: systematic thinking with regard to moral aspects of human experience.
It was important for Kant (as it was for Plato
and others) to distinguish knowledge from opinion
(or belief).
Pure reason limits what any human can think, i.e. it establishes the conditions necessary for thinking consistently. In this way, it provides the basis for the other forms of reason -- theoretical and practical.
Theoretical reason limits what a human can know through observation and the application of mathematical laws describing what is observed. Theoretical reason is reliable provided one remains within the bounds of human observation. With this answer to Humean skepticism, Kant justified the operations of modern (Newtonian) science.
Note also that while pure reason allows us to formulate ideas (eternal life, God, an infinite universe, etc.), theoretical reason cannot provide scientific answers to the veracity of such concepts or their implications since theoretical reason is limited to what can be observed in space and time.
Thus, the forms of reason are legitimate only within their proper domains.
Kant also observed that humans are held responsible for certain actions. But this makes sense only if those actions are freely chosen. Thus, we must be free in the sense of having a free will. Note, however, that this is a conclusion reached not by scientific, theoretical reason. It follows that pure and theoretical reason are not the only forms of reason. Viewed not just as a physical object in space and time subject to the deterministic laws of nature, but as a moral being, i.e. a person, which transcends the natural world, practical reason is invoked. This is its proper domain.
Practical reason is reason -- not a passion. It has its own laws consistent with pure reason but outside the domain of theoretical reason.
The rational basis for Kant's moral stance
is based on the categorical imperative.
"Any cultural practice or institution that involves the manipulation, degradation, or exploitation of another human being is one to which neither I nor any other rational being can reasonably consent. Such a practice or institution is wrong, not because it violates the terms of a contract or because some moral sentiment makes it seem painful to me, but because I would be irrational and thus fundamentally inhuman if I were to countenance such a thing in the case of others while rejecting it in my own case. The same judgment, of course, could be applied to others who would except themselves from practices or institutions that they would nonetheless permit in the case of individuals other than themselves." [41]
Rights then are "the political expression
of the moral constraints" derived from the categorical imperative.
And states are the vehicles for maintaining those rights.
For Kant, culture is civilization or cultivation of enlightenment, talent, and beauty.
Matthew Arnold's approach to cultural critique
was viewed by him as a disinterested attempt to propagate "the
best that is known and thought in the world". High"
& "low" culture distinguished. [43]
* Jere Paul Surber, Culture and Critique: An Introduction to the Critical Discourses of Cultural Studies, Boulder: Westview Press, 1998.
1. "Good sense is the most evenly distributed commodity in the world, for each of us considers himself to be so well endowed therewith that even those who are the most difficult to please in all other matters are not wont to desire more of it than they have. It is not likely that anyone is mistaken about this fact. Rather, it provides evidence that the power of judging rightly and of distinguishing the true from the false (which, properly speaking, is what people call good sense or reason) is naturally equal in all men." René Descartes, Discourse on Method, trans. Donald Cress, Indianapolis: Hackett, 1980, 1. This statement by Descartes is nearly identical to that of Montaigne's "On Presumption", Essays Book I, Chapter 17. [return]
© T. R. Quigley, 1998