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And Thomas de Quincey is perhaps the clearest prose representative of what many of the English Romantics absorbed from German philosophy: Here I pause for one moment to exhort the reader never to pay any attention to his understanding when it stands in opposition to any other faculty of his mind. The mere understanding, however useful and indispensable, is the meanest faculty in the human mind, and the most to be distrusted; and yet the great majority of people trust to nothing else—which may do for ordinary life, but not for philosophical purposes.[90]
Germany’s rising star was also signaled by the popularity of Germaine de Staël’s Germany (1813), a book that had a major impact on French, English, and American intellectual life. In the United States, Madame de Staël’s book inspired many budding intellectuals to take up the study of German language and literature. It was read by the young Ralph Waldo Emerson, later to become America’s leading man of letters. In conjunction with her book’s popularity, the 1810s and 1820s also began a trend of young intellectuals going to Germany to study. This group included many of those later prominent in
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Analytic philosophy is not however a variant on Hegelian speculative or Husserlian phenomenological philosophy (although Bertrand Russell was a Hegelian and a partial Kantian early in his career, and Gilbert Ryle was an early exponent of Husserl’s approach.) Analytic philosophy developed out of nineteenth-century positivism.
At the beginning of the twentieth century, Bertrand Russell best foreshadowed what was to come. In the final chapter of an often-read introductory book, The Problems of Philosophy (1912), Russell summarized the history of philosophy as a repeating series of failures to answer its questions. Can we prove that there is an external world? No. Can we prove that there is cause and effect? No. Can we validate the objectivity of our inductive generalizations? No. Can we find an objective basis for morality? Definitely not. Russell concluded that philosophy cannot answer its questions and so came to
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It is not the case, they argued, that philosophy asks questions that, unfortunately, are just too difficult for us to answer—philosophy’s questions themselves are not even intelligible; they are pseudo-formulations. Foreshadowing postmodernism’s anti-realism, for example, Moritz Schlick wrote of the meaninglessness of propositions about an external world: “Does the external world exist?” is an unintelligible question, for “both its denial and affirmation are meaningless.”[95] And if we cannot speak meaningfully of an external world, then ascribing cause and effect to the world is also
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Philosophy has no content such as metaphysics, ethics, theology, or aesthetics. Those are all meaningless inquiries and should be dismissed.[97]
Philosophy is not a content discipline but a method discipline. The function of philosophy is analysis, elucidation, clarification.[98] Philosophy is not a subject: its only role is to be an analytical assistant to science.
By the middle of the century, the dominant conclusion about perception was that it is theory-laden. The biggest names in the philosophy of science—Otto Neurath, Karl Popper, Norwood Hanson, Paul Feyerabend, Thomas Kuhn, and W. V. O. Quine—despite wide variations in their versions of analytic philosophy—all argued that our theories largely dictate what we will see.[99] Putting their point in Kant’s original language, our perceptual intuitions do not conform to objects but rather our intuition conforms to what our faculty of knowledge supplies from itself. This conclusion about perception is
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Accepting that the propositions of logic and mathematics are not based in experiential reality and so do not tell us anything about that reality leads one to the question of where logic and mathematics come from. If they have no objective source, then their source must be subjective.
The neo-Kantian option, emphasized by the nativists and the coherence theorists, held that the basic propositions of logic and mathematics are innate in us or necessarily emerge psychologically once we start to use words. And some such neo-Kantians scandalized the purer Kantians by holding out the hope that such innate or emergent propositions reflect or represent in some way an external reality.
It was the neo-Humean option, therefore, emphasized by pragmatists such as Quine, Nelson Goodman, and Ernest Nagel, that prevailed.
Conceptual relativism follows directly from such nominalism: We could have decided differently what concepts to adopt; we could have and still could carve the world up differently.
If all concepts are nominal, then one consequence is that there is no basis for a distinction between analytic and synthetic propositions.[105] All propositions then become a posteriori and merely contingent. Logical relativism is the next consequence. Logical principles are constructs of concepts. What counts as a principle of logic, then, is not dictated by reality but is rather up to us: “the principles of logic and mathematics are true universally simply because we never allow them to be anything else.”[106]
But what if someone does not like the consequences of adopting a given logical principle? What if conversational or social practices change? If the rules of logic and language are conventional, what is to stop someone, for whatever reason, from adopting different conventions? Absolutely nothing. The rules of logic and grammar then can be as variable as other conventions, such as performing greeting rituals by shaking hands, hugging, or rubbing noses. No form of greeting or system of logic, then, is more objectively right than any other.
The idea that science speaks of reality or truth is an illusion. There is no Truth; there are only truths, and truths change.[109]
Richard Rorty, the best known of the American postmodernists, generalizes the point to antirealism. As Kant had said two centuries ago, we can say absolutely nothing about the noumena, about what is really real. Rorty’s anti-realism is the exact same point: To say that we should drop the idea of truth as out there waiting to be discovered is not to say that we have discovered that, out there, there is no truth. It is to say that our purposes would be served best by ceasing to see truth as a deep matter, as a topic of philosophical interest, or ‘true’ as a term which repays ‘analysis.’ ‘The
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Speaking of the post-Kuhn era in Anglo-American philosophy, historian of philosophy John Passmore has stated flatly and accurately: “The Kantian revival is so widespread as scarcely to lend itself to illustration.”[111]
Analytic philosophers had, for whatever reasons, decided that they liked science and so had picked its concepts and methods to analyze. But now they had to ask, as Paul Feyerabend urged them to ask, Why is science special? Why not analyze theology’s concepts and methods? Or poetry’s? Or witchcraft’s?[112] Having abandoned discussion of “truth” as useless metaphysical speculation, analytic philosophers could not say that science’s concepts were truer or that science’s method was special because it got us closer to truth. The analytic philosophers of the 1950s and 1960s were only able to say
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Summarizing the state of the profession in the middle part of the century, Brian Medlin wrote that “it is now pretty generally accepted by professional philosophers that ultimate ethical principles must be arbitrary.”[113] Their arbitrariness could be rooted in sheer acts of will, or in social conventions, or, as argued by the leading Logical Positivists, subjective emotional expression.[114]
Postmodernism is the first ruthlessly consistent statement of the consequences of rejecting reason, those consequences being necessary given the history of epistemology since Kant.
Postmodernism is the first synthesis of the implications of the major trends. In postmodernism we find metaphysical antirealism, epistemological subjectivity, the placing of feeling at the root of all value issues, the consequent relativism of both knowledge and values, and the consequent devaluing or disvaluing of the scientific enterprise.
Despite the postmodernists’ billing of themselves as anti-metaphysics and anti-epistemology, their writings focus upon those themes almost exclusively. Heidegger attacks logic and reason to make room for emotion, Foucault reduces knowledge to an expression of social power, Derrida deconstructs language and turns it into a vehicle of aesthetic play, and Rorty chronicles the failures of the realist and objectivist tradition in almost-exclusively metaphysical and epistemological terms.
Postmodernists split over whether those core feelings are determined biologically or socially, with the social version running as the strong favorite. In either case, however, individuals are not in control of their feelings: their identities are a product of their group memberships, whether economic, sexual, or racial. Since the shaping economic, sexual, or racial experiences or developments vary from group to group, differing groups have no common experiential framework. With no objective standard by which to mediate their different perspectives and feelings, and with no appeal to reason
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Postmodernist reactions to the prospects of a brutal post-modern social world then fall into three main categories, depending on whether Foucault’s, Derrida’s, or Rorty’s variant is given primacy. Foucault, following Nietzsche more closely in having reduced knowledge to an expression of social power, urges us to play the brutal power politics game—though contrary to Nietzsche he urges that we play it on behalf of the traditionally disempowered.[116] Derrida, having followed Heidegger more closely and purified him, deconstructs language and retreats into it as a vehicle of aesthetic play,
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If a deep skepticism about reason and the consequent subjectivism and relativism were the most important parts of the story of postmodernism, then we would expect to find that postmodernists represent a roughly random distribution of commitments across the political spectrum. If values and politics are primarily a matter of a subjective leap into whatever fits one’s preferences, then we should find people making leaps into all sorts of political programs. This is not what we find in the case of postmodernism.
Michel Foucault, Jacques Derrida, Jean-François Lyotard, and Richard Rorty are all far Left. And so are Jacques Lacan, Stanley Fish, Catharine MacKinnon, Andreas Huyssen, and Frank Lentricchia. Of the major names in the postmodernist movement, there is not a single figure who is not Left-wing in a serious way. So there is something else going on besides epistemology.
But even given that fact, the dominance of Left thought among postmodernists is still a puzzle—since for most of socialism’s intellectual history it has almost always been defended on the modernist grounds of reason and science.
As modernists, the socialists argued that socialism could be proved by evidence and rational analysis, and that once the evidence was in socialism’s moral and economic superiority to capitalism would be clear to anyone with an open mind. This is significant, because so-conceived socialism committed itself to a series of propositions that could be empirically, rationally, and scientifically scrutinized.
Capitalism is exploitative: The rich enslave the poor; it is brutally competitive domestically and imperialistic internationally. 2. Socialism, by contrast, is humane and peaceful: People share, are equal, and cooperative. 3. Capitalism is ultimately less productive than socialism: The rich get richer, the poor get poorer; and the ensuing class conflict will cause capitalism’s collapse in the end. 4. Socialist economies, by contrast, will be more productive and usher in a new era of prosperity.
In theory, the free-market economists have won the debate.
In theory, the moral and political debate is more up for grabs, but the leading thesis is that some form of liberalism in the broadest sense is essential to protecting civil rights and civil society in general—and the liveliest debates are about whether a conservative version of liberalism, a libertarian one, or a modified welfarist one is best. Many Leftists are re-packaging themselves as more moderate communitarians, but that repackaging itself shows how far the debate has shifted toward liberalism.
Postmodernism is the academic far Left’s epistemological strategy for responding to the crisis caused by the failures of socialism in theory and in practice.
Postmodernism is born of the marriage of Left politics and skeptical epistemology.
The key part of that explanation requires showing why classical liberalism, despite its flourishing culturally, had become a dead issue in the minds of most intellectuals, especially European intellectuals. No matter what troubles the anti-liberal Left and Right ran into, a serious reconsideration of liberalism was not going to happen.
Rousseau is the most significant figure in the political Counter-Enlightenment. His moral and political philosophy was inspirational to Immanuel Kant, Johann Herder, Johann Fichte, and G. W. F. Hegel, and from them transmitted to the collectivist Right. It was perhaps more inspirational to the collectivist Left: Rousseau’s writings were the Bible of the Jacobin leaders of the French Revolution, absorbed by many of the hopeful Russian revolutionaries of the late nineteenth century, and influential upon the more agrarian socialists of the twentieth century in China and Cambodia.
The first great frontal assault on the Enlightenment was launched by Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778). Rousseau has a well-deserved reputation as the bad boy of eighteenth-century French philosophy. In the context of Enlightenment intellectual culture, Rousseau’s was a major dissenting voice. He was an admirer of all things Spartan—the Sparta of militaristic and feudal communalism—and a despiser of all things Athenian—the classical Athens of commerce, cosmopolitanism, and the high arts.
In his Discourse on the Origin of Inequality, Rousseau started his attack at the foundation of the Enlightenment project: Reason. The philosophes were exactly right that reason is the foundation of civilization.
Rousseau wanted to demonstrate that “all the subsequent progress has been in appearance so many steps toward the perfection of the individual, and in fact toward the decay of the species.”[127]
So they started to make improvements, those improvements culminating most strikingly in the agricultural and metallurgical revolutions. Undeniably, those revolutions improved mankind’s material lot—but that improvement has in fact destroyed the species: “it is iron and wheat that have civilized men and ruined the human race.”[128]
Scott Alexander, Comanches, and agriculture as Moloch.
Physically, as humans became wealthier they enjoyed more comforts and luxuries. But those comforts and luxuries caused physical degradation. They began to eat too much food and to eat decadent food, and thus became less healthy. They came increasingly to use tools and technologies, and thus became physically less strong. What was once a physically hardy species thus became dependent upon doctors and gadgets.[130]
But the story gets worse, for the ongoing social conflicts generated a few winners at the top of the social heap and many oppressed losers beneath them. Inequality became a prominent and damning consequence of civilization. Such inequalities are damning because all inequalities “such as being richer, more honored, more powerful” are “privileges enjoyed by some at the expense of others.”[133]
Civilization, accordingly, became a zero-sum game along many social dimensions, the winners gaining and enjoying more and more while the losers suffered and were left increasingly far behind.
Reason, according to Rousseau, is opposed to compassion: Reason generates civilization, which is the ultimate cause of the sufferings of the victims of inequality, but reason also then creates rationales for ignoring that suffering. “Reason is what engenders egocentrism,” wrote Rousseau, and reflection strengthens it. Reason is what turns man in upon himself. Reason is what separates him from all that troubles him and afflicts him. Philosophy is what isolates him and what moves him to say in secret, at the sight of a suffering man, ‘Perish if you will; I am safe and sound.’[134]
“The sciences, letters, and arts”—far from freeing and elevating mankind— spread garlands of flowers over the iron chains with which men are burdened, stifle in them the sense of that original liberty for which they seem to have been born, make them love their slavery, and turn them into what is called civilized peoples.[135]
Fortunately, history provides us with good models, for looking back upon most tribal cultures we find that their societies, maintaining a middle position between the indolence of our primitive state and the petulant activity of our egocentrism, must have been the happiest and most durable epoch. The more one reflects on it, the more one finds that this state was the least subject to upheavals and the best for man.[137]
“I took another guide, and I said to myself, ‘Let us consult the inner light; it will lead me astray less than they lead me astray.’“[142] Rousseau’s inner light revealed to him an unshakeable feeling that God’s existence is the basis for all explanations, and that feeling was to him immune to revision and counter-argument: “One may very well argue with me about this; but I sense it, and this sentiment that speaks to me is stronger than the reason combating it.”[143]
At the foundation of all civil societies, Rousseau argued, one finds a religious sanction for what its leaders do. The society’s founding leaders may not always genuinely believe in the religious sanctions they invoke, but their invoking them is nonetheless essential. If the people believe that their leaders are acting out the will of the gods, they will obey more freely and “bear with docility the yoke of the public good.”[144] Enlightenment reason, by contrast, leads to disbelief; disbelief leads to disobedience; and disobedience leads to anarchy. This is a further reason why, according to
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Further: so fundamentally important is religion that the ultimate penalty is appropriate for disbelievers: While the state can compel no one to believe it can banish not for impiety, but as an antisocial being, incapable of truly loving the laws and justice, and of sacrificing, if needed, his life to his duty. If, after having publicly recognized these dogmas, a person acts as if he does not believe them, he should be put to death.[147]
In the new society, the leadership expresses the “general will” and enacts policies that are best for the whole, thus enabling all individuals to achieve their true interests and their true freedom. The requirements of the “general will” absolutely override all other considerations, so a “citizen should render to the state all the services he can as soon as the sovereign demands them.”[149]
And so to counteract these socially destructive individualistic tendencies, the state is justified in using compulsion: “whoever refuses to obey the general will will be forced to do so by the entire body; this means merely that he will be forced to be free.”[151]
