Existentialism arises in response to the abstractness proffered by the post-Kantian infatuation with an absolute creative ego as spun out in the works of Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, et al., and it contrarily posits the individual as the ultimate point of interest and meaning. It is not the lone response. Some looked to ground humanity in something more certifiable than the individual. They set their foundations on positive fact and pragmatic action, on science and society.
August Comte is usually considered the prime enunciator of this positivism. He envisioned a science of man, a social science based not on religious vision or philosophical speculation, but on a scientific methodology. This social physics would analyse man as historical and social, allow man, his cult and culture, to be studied and structured upon factual foundations. Whatsoever else it may have inspired, it constituted a first step toward modern sociology.
Comte was concerned that traditional standards were dissipating, that the rise of science and the decline of religion were creating fruitless agitation both morally and mentally. The allure of traditional religion was irretrievable. A resolution between science and religion was nowhere upon the horizon. If, however, science could be successfully deployed in the concrete world, why could it not also be utilized to analyse and direct morals and society? Why could there not be a science of social behaviour?
Comte, attuned to the Darwinian currents of the day, proposed society has been in continuous evolution. At first the workings of the world were explained by the supposition of a supernatural world. Later this fundamentally theological attitude was replaced by the metaphysical. Governing gods gave way to ideas about cause and effect, ideas about a substantial base below the changeable surface. Now, however, the maturation of scientific investigation has allowed man to recognize these explanations were essentially either mystical or imaginary, and that a positive, a scientific analysis and critique are possible and requisite.
The scientific approach is not a mere amassing of empirical data. Science extracts from data, generalizes, infers regularities and laws. These laws are merely descriptions of how nature functions not explanations of causes. Neither are they absolute, for an absolute law would entail having access to all world data and perspectives. The human perspective is limited, its content is limited, and thus, even the best scientific laws are simply functional hypotheses, approximations of how things work. As they allow man to reasonably predict and manipulate nature, a scientific investigation of society, a positivistic analysis of man, can be expected to serve in establishing human progress and happiness, toward the enunciation of ideals capable of providing moral guidance, inspiration, and impetus.
The stability, dynamics, and progress of a society depend upon an equilibrium of orientations: egotism and altruism, curiosity and intellectual pococurantism, adventurousness and the need for security and the familiar, liberalism and conservatism, etc. These attitudes equilibrate each other, but progress occurs when the nobler, the more rational attitude is in the ascendant. Society under the power of the theological disposition was propelled by a type of militaristic force. When the metaphysical attitude prevailed, the animating force presented as abstract and legalistic. Only under the scientific attitude can a truly ethical, moral, and just society emerge. We return to the Platonic ideal wherein intellectual progress is simultaneously social and moral progress.[i]
Comte understood man requires an externalization of the ideal, a focal point for embrace and emulation, a God. His theophany is succinct: humanity as a whole is God. Here is the Supreme Being man ought to serve, whose perfection he ought to strive realize. Religion then is living in such manner that honesty, justice, and love flourish among all. As religion demands reaffirming outward forms, symbols and rites, Comte devised an entire system of rituals and feasts inspired by those of the Roman Church. In support of this was a clergy chosen for their intellectual and moral acuity. They were to be the moral educators, directors, adjudicators, and supervisors of this quasi-theocracy of universalized, divinized Humanity. This socio-theocratic cult is reminiscent of the revolution’s attempt to establish a religion of reason, and like that endeavour, having arisen not from the collective mind but the individual, it wanted for breadth of spirit and was soon exhausted.
Across the channel something other was brewing, as always it is. Jeremy Bentham describes moral value in terms of the usefulness of an act, reiterating materialistic Priestley’s “the greatest happiness of the greatest number” as the tone of his economically oriented socio-political ethics named “Utilitarianism”. Pleasure and pain, he opines, are at the base of whatsoever we dub good and evil. James Mill counters Kant’s transcending ego, declaring ego is given in every experience, that all consciousness is self-consciousness (Cf: Thomas Reid, in Part 17). Once again, we are muchly in a British experiment, for the empirical and practical attitude reside with near sovereignty amongst them known as a nation of shop-keepers.
Mill’s son, John Stuart Mill, carries the utilitarian empiricist torch forward. We know, can know, only upon the basis of experience: perception, association of perceptions, and memory. However, contrary to Bacon, who taught induction could leap from the particular to the universal, a thesis that had befuddled earlier British empiricism, Mill avouches we know only particulars. We cannot claim knowledge of any universal. There are no universal concepts, no certain syllogisms, no logically certain deductive arguments. We know only that which we experience and that which—on the basis of past experience—we might possibly experience.
We can know nothing of a thing-in-itself. We cannot even know such an entity exists. Why then do we keep talking about it? We do so because continued experience, memory, and association stir us to expect more experience, to suppose some underlying permanence to experience. We confusedly leap from a permanent possibility of perception to a permanent base underlying perception, an independently existing substantiality, a substance. We may say the same regarding the ego. It is merely a succession of experiences, a possibility of experience. Yet, how can a succession be aware of the whole? While this presents an irresolvable quandary, it is better to accept the irresolvable than fly off into the untenable supposition of a spiritual substance.
If the notion of soul represents either an irresolvable issue or untenable idea, the same holds for God. There is no conclusive evidence for or against, but the claim of an omnipotent and benevolent deity cannot be supported by the torturous reality we call the universe. Metaphysics and theology are baseless. Upon what then can society base its values, its ideals, its goals?
According to Mill, the correct response is science whose investigations provide us laws of approximate validity. In this sense we may look upon man as part of deterministic Nature. Yet man does not act as if under compulsion in his acts. Actions may be predictable, but man does not feel at a loss for liberty in his actions. Man feels himself the source of his actions, responsible for his actions; they make him, give him his particular and unique character. Is this not sufficient basis to claim man is free? Is not the consciousness of freedom sufficient to establish the practical reality of freedom? What then is it man desires to freely do? It is be happy. While man in himself is self-centred, this solitary situation is ameliorated by society wherein man learns his happiness resides not in self-satisfaction but in fostering the greatest good for the greatest number.
Thus, while Bentham was predisposed toward an ego-centric and hedonistic base of action, Mill believes there are qualitative differences regarding pleasure and pain he failed to properly weigh. Some pleasures are intrinsically better, of a higher order, such that, for example, the intellectual always trumps the sensual, the altruistic the selfish. Ever practical, there are two great caveats. First, regarding altruism, the command to love neighbour reads “as thyself” not “more than thyself”. Second, regarding sociality, the establishment of the greatest happiness of the greatest number implies the greatest possible individual freedom.[ii] This laissez-faire doctrine may itself demand it be exercised with caution, but as men become better educated, they will become more socially and morally aware, knowing rightly will become doing rightly, and the ideal of society will be realized.
Herbert Spencer builds on the work of Mills and Darwin. The universe evolves from dis-integration to integration, differentiating, and moving constantly from the simple to the more complex. Sheer, indefinable and constant energy weaves out life, consciousness, intelligence, and within intelligence general ideas and the principles governing logic and moral action. The absoluteness behind or beyond this unfolding of energy is always an unknowable, something best described as a groundwork for the evolution of energy; it cannot be bedizened with exalted qualities and presented as the God of traditional religion.
Of the ego or soul, all that can be said is that it is sometimes intimated as accompanying physical energy. Social norms follow the evolutionary pattern of advancing integration: men progressively coagulate into families, tribes, nations, etc. At the evolutionary apex the egotistical and the altruistic will coincide, and both society and individual will be in complete harmony, stability, and fulfilment. Therefore, whatsoever might interfere with this process is to be avoided. The social construct must simply act to keep peace internally and externally, to allow each the greatest possible freedom. The end of moral conduct is again conceived in terms of the utilitarian greatest good for the greatest number.
Traditional religion, which had provided a ground for sanctioning and censoring morals, was rooted in fear. Nature was primitively experienced as animated by kindred spirits that needed to be appeased or praised. Ancestors also were experienced in dreams and visions as necessitating placation and honour. The living world and the living past were sensed as making demands upon man, and man devised ceremonies to manage these claims. The ceremonies became institutionalized. The institution expanded to became the guarantor of the worth or wanting of every action. Religion, like all entities, evolved, but scientific man stands beyond religion’s appeal and grasp.
Emile Durkheim reiterates the idea that society has priority over the individual, that man is primarily social. Society is the basic, irreducible unit of humanity. It is a psychological organism from which the individual is an abstract, a logically distinguishable part. Group consciousness supersedes self-consciousness. The group mind is the primitive, the fundamental, the formative, the source of all values. As there are sundry groups, so too are there many collective minds, each with distinctive values and moral standards. Every collective and collective mind is in evolution, and within this plasticity so also are all the encultured and varied ideas regarding good, beauty, and truth. (Cf: G. Vico, in Part 18)
Friedrich Lang noted there is a distinction between judgements of truths and judgements of value. Ernst Mach noted a scientific truth is a conceptual shorthand, a convenient and wholly utilitarian summary of a number of experiences. Charles Pierce viewed the world process as a movement from disorder into order, and introduced the idea of chance into evolution. He claimed the evolutionary aspect of scientific truth was applicable even to the rules of logic. Under his pen utilitarianism is rebranded as pragmatism. Wilhelm Wundt looked upon philosophy as the locus for systematizing, distilling, and unifying the findings of science. Wundt understood the ego as a fragment of a ceaselessly active universal will. The soul of man is, as such, an activity—social and constantly creating within the social milieu. Knowledge is wholly social in nature, the font of the fundamental distinction between subject and object, and the generator of all general ideas the ultimate of which–self, world, and God—are the requisite items for transcending the bounds of science. The work of these investigators form a cyclorama to the theories of William James.
William James claims sensations, perceptions, sense data are not discrete bits of information arranged into a mosaic whose varied parts can be abstracted one from the other and variously related. There is no data which is not given as related to other data. Experience is a continuum of discriminately and intentionally chosen items, all continuously flowing, eddying, and coalescing into “things” and “substances”. Concepts are not, as Aristotle thought them to be, universal. They are mere organizations of particulars, mental tools, meant to allow man to navigate the world. They are utilitarian devises whose value is relative to the consequences they can provide. There is one undifferentiated psychic stream out of which arise the distinctions twixt subject and object, sensation and concept, etc. Thus, the content of consciousness, while multiple, is singular. Consciousness is a stream into which data submerges, coagulates, arises in varied relations, dissolves.
The stream of consciousness itself evidences expansion and contraction. In this it reveals a vast and encircling field of possible experience. While most experience resides within a normative, quotidian bound, there are experiences that touch upon some farther shore. There are moments when a subconscious bourne opens, its contents enter the consciousness, and their sudden appearance causes them to be experienced as something external. The religious experience, the feeling of being apprehended in relation to something solemnly other, exemplifies an expansion, an experiential flow from beyond the accustomed.
The religious experience is often received as another who is akin, sympathetic, encouraging. While it remains an experience beyond the ordinary, it is nevertheless an experience, and upon this experience metaphysical speculation becomes justifiable. Its justification and truth is its utility–its ability to arouse peace and happiness, wholeness and satisfaction in the midst of life’s challenges. Thusly assayed, the religious experience may be interpreted as denoting a consciousness like unto our own, as personal. Belief in a personal God becomes a pragmatic truth, the occasion for a beneficial conversion [literally: a turning] to positivity, optimism, a more inclusive vision of reality (understood as by subconscious force psychologically, by supernatural grace theologically). Such experience, integration, and abreaction are indicative of the healthy soul. Not all are healthy. Some cannot rise to optimism and the optimal, they reside in morbidity, pessimism, surrender, adiaphora, powerlessness.
James’ pragmatic God is not the traditional God of occidental thought. An all merciful God is an absurdity in a cosmos of pain and suffering. A God who fills the universe allows no room for novelty. A God who is all powerful leaves no room for freedom. God can only be God if like unto man, a God who knows limitation, frustration, suffering. Only such a God is relatable. Only such a God can work with man and man with such a God. This is the God open to risk, to chance, to freedom, to partnership with man toward the winning of the ultimate prize—the salvation of the world, the wholesome most integration of man and cosmos. Within such a theology, a belief in immortality takes on practical value; it satisfies a certain moral and aesthetic thirst. But these beliefs, God and immortality, resonate out of fringe experiences. Their marginality leaves them susceptible to doubt. They can be held only if one has the “will to believe”, to continuously give a positive impetus to life, to make life worth living.
While God, howsoever conceived, is beyond rational proof, philosophy ought to analyse the sundry notions of the divine, distil the essentials, hypothesize, test, and verify the results toward building a consensus view among believers. The manifestations of the divine may vary greatly, but there is behind them a common groundwork, an emotionality that is pragmatically attuned to the uncertainty of life and moves towards a remedy, a higher estimation that buoys the believer through life.
With the ideas of God and soul judged on the basis of their utility James was mindful of the potential for relativism and eclecticism. To anchor them he claims they are essential and primitive items of the field of unconsciousness; they reside beyond the conscious stream into which they are reflected. Despite the profundity of this insight, it remains under investigated and unconfirmed, and does not, therefore, definitively decorticate the spectre of relativism he wished to avoid.
John Dewey built upon the work of James renaming pragmatism instrumentalism as regards theory and meliorism as regards ethics. A thought is merely a tool, an instrument for dealing with reality. Reality is an entity open and pliable to human action. Human action is not guided by fixed ideas but by the light of experience which seeks to move toward the better, the more viable situation. The moral life is the life lived cognizant of the individual’s responsibility for broadening human power and co-operation. There is no knowledge of an absolute. The traditional view of God, which in Dewey’s mind in a farraginous imbroglio of ideas, is an unknowable, and a deterrent to the advance of man. While the reading of the very readable Dewey can certainly entice one with his very American bravado, I have always sensed there is some subtle ingredient absent from his empressment. Perhaps it is merely that he has never excited me to critique.
Berkeley had enfleuraged earlier empiricism into spiritualism. Lang attempted to do the same for his day. But the nineteenth century’s coup de mane comes from men who were on the horizon of a new science, psychology, for which James, Pierce, and Wundt provided the reconnaissance.
[i] As this equation of intellect and moral rectitude echoes Plato, he would concur. I am not adverse to the proposition, but do harbour an elephantine reservation. I am not of a mind that intelligence is in ascendancy. I have before me rather consistently the biblical vision of mountains leaping with joy, of justice and peace kissing, and they are poetically put aspirations worthy by which to live. However, the faith of modern man in his “advancement” seems to hinge more on technological savvy rather than on an “evolved” intelligence. We know a great deal about how things work; we are sadly deficient when it comes to being one with the other, to being with oneself. We may possess more access to information about one another than our ancestors, but I detect little difference in our openness and sensitivity toward one another. Modern man is not man of the antique world, the mediaeval world, the renaissance world. That, however, does not make us something more. We have merely acquired differing sensitivities and skills, and we have therein lost certain sensitivities and skills. Cult and culture were once like a couple in love; today they are more like a couple in contempt. Individual freedom was once latched to social responsibility; today society is expected to be responsible for virtually every personal choice. Memory was once the staple of learning; information at a finger-tip has atrophied that ability. Dialogue was once a personal artistry; communication has defaulted to commoditized bits and bytes. Many who have deep faith in evolution consider it something that is always a steady and positive progression rather than something that can be painfully circuitous, moving less in forward leaps than in seemingly directionless spurts. If man’s morality is in ascent to higher planes, it is anfractuously so, and certainly not of an all-embracing nature. If our technological advancements mirror a growth in intelligence we would have that discerning eye within well focused, wisdom would abound, and this world would bask in a greater light than the ignis fatuus of affluence, acquisition, and advertisement. We are far from that bound where mercy and truth, lion and lamb embrace. Social scientists and their epigones need be cautious in blithely coarctating the ideal and the “just around the corner”. Christianity legitimately claims salvation is from on high, from beyond us and our history, precisely because, try as we might, we are singulars, or in a biblical word, sinners, and the apotheosis of self ever is shredding sociality. Luther is prescient in his psychological evaluation of the human essence as justus atque peccator, as at once trustingly hopeful but flawed.
[ii] To this end, Mill became an early advocate for the full emancipation of women. In 1869, a generation before the National Union was founded, he published his long held views as The Subjection of Women. He may have objected Aristotle’s deductive logic was nothing but inductive logic misinterpreted, but to deny women equitable freedom was illogical by any logic–confessedly one of those glorious evolutionary spurts wherein mind and morals accord.