Truth as a ‘passionate affirmation of desire’

In William James’ The Will to Believe faith and religion finally move out of the realm of the superstitious and ’spiritual’ to that of human experience. Religion moves beyond the narrow concept of institutionalized religion, and faith no longer need refer to faith in a supreme being. Truth, knowledge, reality and self are all recognized as being emergent complex culturally constructed notions that are contingent upon their historical and cultural context. There is nothing fixed, static or universal about these ideas. The irrational or ‘non-intellectual’ aspects of our being are acknowledged as being as important (or more so) as our rational side. 

 

Truth exists and is true because “we want to have a truth.” (P 9) James prefaces that comment with the observation that

our belief in truth itself, for instance, that there is a truth, and that our minds and it are made for each other, - what is it but a passionate affirmation of desire, in which our social system backs us up? (P 9)

Science for James is only one manifestation of our desire and search for truth and understanding of our situation in the world. Science, mathematics and logic are part and parcel of our ’selves’ which also develop belief systems and desires, all of which form a complex web of interactions. He suggests that human nature ‘needs’ all of these mechanisms to continue being. Regarding science he states that 

without an imperious inner demand on our part for ideal logical and mathematical harmonies, we should never have attained to proving that such harmonies lie hidden between all the chinks and interstices of the crude natural world. Hardly a law has been established in science, hardly a fact ascertained, which was not first sought after, often with sweat and blood, to gratify an inner need. (P 55)

So, we are inclined to logical explanations, to empirical observations, to theorizing, to believing, to desiring etc. and therefore find those aspects in things and the world around us. It’s just as destructive to treat science and rationality ‘religiously’ as it is to rely on belief and desire irrationally. Reason and passion, science and art, truth and imagination: these all need to be conjoined rather than treated as either/or polarities. Science to James had become estranged from its own purpose in a way. He suggests that science, through a sort of ‘fear’ of being deceived or mistaken, has developed scientific techniques of verification that have become the real goal of science. Science had come to the point that truth in itself was no longer of paramount importance, but rather that “it is only truth as technically verified that [is of] interest…” (P 21)

 

We must move beyond our intellectual capacities because science can only tell us about things which exist. To be able to decide between the value of things (real or imaginary) requires us to use faculties other than logic, mathematics and science. James says that we need to consult what “…pascal calls our heart.” (P 22) Pascal’s notion of the heart enters into moral and aesthetic territory and acknowledges what I have been repeatedly referring to as the ineffable. Science may show us what things consist of, and how to accomplish certain things, but it will always be incapable of telling us why  and what we should do and to evaluate the inherent value in things. 

 

We believe in certain possibilities and so we pursue those very possibilities. Our opinions can become ‘more true’ by pursuing our interests doggedly with whatever faculties we may have and which may prove to be fruitful. We will recognize even the rationality of something only by “…certain subjective marks…which affects [us].” (P 63) We will recognize when things ‘are right’ because they will feel right and the results will be of value to us. Again we’re back to invoking the ineffable. While James recognizes our propensity to scientific exploration and the simplifying nature of categorization he believes (as do I) that we are only willing to simplify things insofar is that provides us with some particular value or use and, importantly, that we reject ideas when they dissolve away “…their concrete fullness.” (P 66). So, the need for simplicity of explanations must be balanced with the fecundity of experience. We desire both and must have faith that our conceptions of the world will constantly renew that balance. 

 

Hume’s Natural Religion

David Hume in Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion seems to be questioning the Cartesian mind/body dualism in no uncertain terms when he says that there is “…nothing more repugnant to common experience, than mind without body…: (P 171) Hume squarely places human ideas and their limits within the totality of human experience. All human ideas, including religion and reason are under scrutiny. 

 

Reason really comes across in Hume’s writing as nothing more than a somewhat mysterious instinct. Reason has no real significance in our empirical world. Our sense of knowledge, truth and reality are all contingent on our empirical interaction with the world. To Hume, things are beyond our ability to know in any universal neo-Platonic sense. We impose our concepts on the world thereby in constituting the world. While this is an almost common thread in philosophy today, Hume seems to be foreshadowing this mode of thought. Human thought becomes a world-making and meaning-making ‘machine’ that imposes our perceptual/mental structures on the world at large. 

 

Religion and theology in general is seen primarily as a form of propaganda to Hume. Religion to him is a form of social control and one that mostly creates misery and melancholy in people. Hume, through Cleanthes says that

the proper office of religion is to regulate the hear of men, humanize their conduct, infuse the spirit of temperance, order, and obedience; and as its operation is silent and only enforces the motives of mortality and justice, it is in danger of being overlooked, and confounded with these other motives. When it distinguishes itself, and acts as a separate principle over men, it has departed from its proper sphere, and has become only a cover to faction and ambition. (P 220)

Hume refers to his form of thought as one of anthropomorphism: where human concepts are imposed on the world rather than humans apprehending a world of ‘divine’ origin. 

Paley’s Mechanistic World

William Paley’s Natural Theology seems to be a reaction and response to find ‘rational’ arguments for religion in the face of the scientific revolution. Paley was a theist who wanted to provide empirical proofs of a ‘God’s’ intelligent design and order of the universe. Throughout his arguments runs the background model of a mechanistic universe: a machine designed by a ‘God’ within which humans live their lives. One can see this mechanistic paradigm that Carolyn Merchant proposes in The Death of Nature, and the impact it has on our world view. 

 

Again, as with many of the texts we’ve been encountering, Paley ascribes the unknown or unknowable to a ‘God.’ He suggests that we shouldn’t allow what we don’t know to overshadow what we do. His rhetoric is strong and doesn’t allow any doubt to enter the reader’s mind. He posits the example of coming across a watch, and that that is evidence of a maker. He takes that, by analogy to extend to nature in general. He uses words and phrases like: “…the inference,…is inevitable…[and] raises no doubt in our minds of the existence and agency of such an artist… (P 8 Further on Paley insists that “there cannot be design without a designer…” (P 12). This statement can lead in two directions to my mind, although only one for Paley. While we may all agree that there can be no design without a designer, the extension to nature and a ‘God’ is odd. Perhaps it is our perceptual/cognitive apparatus, or modality of being in the world that projects the notion of design onto nature: that nature may not be ‘designed’ by anything other than our own experience of it. He doesn’t acknowledge the contingent and constitutive power of our experience in shaping our own objectivity. 

 

He appropriates the term ‘contrivance’ to describe elements of nature, belying his mechanistic and instrumental model. In no uncertain terms Paley says:

the contrivances of nature surpass the contrivances of art, in the complexity, subtlety, and curiosity of the mechanism; and still more, if possible, do they go beyond them in number and variety; yet, in a multitude of cases, are not less evidently mechanical, not less evidently contrivances, not less evidently accommodated to their end, or suited to their office, than are the most perfect productions of human ingenuity. (P 16)

He continues to compare and contrast a telescope with the eye of a fish, and concludes that “the fact is, that they are both instruments.” (P 17). The fact is, seems completely unsubstantiated and very positively put forward. His rhetoric is relentless. Continuing with his description and ‘explanation’ of the eye, particularly focusing on the mechanical aspects and similarities to a telescope, Paley asks “can any thing be more decisive of contrivance than this is?” (P 20) He uses by analogy the concept of a contrivance applied to the natural world to make his argument. He assumes that we all happily accept this analogy and then builds an argument that is internally, logically coherent on insofar as we accept his initial premises: an acceptance that seems unfounded. 

Thinking through Pascal’s Pensees

Pascal’s form in the Pensees make an interesting 17th century precursor to Nietzsche’s aphoristic writings in the 19th century. Thoughts and fragments variously developed with no strong narrative thread although after reading the entire book certain themes weave their way throughout the fabric of the text. 

 

Pascal clearly owes much to Cartesian dualistic thought. Mind/body, reason/imagination are never far from the surface. He also has a clear discomfort with the notion of the contingent: universals can be the only truth (maybe a neo-Platonist thread too?) while the contingent and historically situated are to be reviled and cast away as false. From this need for the absolute and universal comes also a static notion of human being. 

 

On initial reading I felt almost nothing resonate with me. My disinterest in the religious has been turning into something more akin to distaste, so Pascal’s constant  use of ‘God’ to ‘explain’ things was off-putting to say the least. It seems to be a common strategy in many of the texts we’ve been reading to resort to ‘explaining’ things that we don’t (or possibly can’t) understand by referring to a ‘God’ of some sort. This does move us away from the infinite regress problem, but it does seem the ultimate unassailable explanatory cop out. If we can’t figure something out then it must be due to ‘God’s’ doing. Sure. Why can’t we live with the notion of certain things being too dynamic and mutable to ‘explain’ in a fixed, static manner, or with certain things being possible unknowable? 

 

After discussion, further reflection and re-reading the text I have come to feel some of what I believe Pascal was getting at. His constant critique of the limits of reason made sense to me. Pascal was really picking away at the limitations of reason and of those who considered reason sacrosanct. He recognized that there may be ‘forms of knowledge’ that may not be rooted in mathematical logic and consistency. Although he couldn’t abide by attributing this to any bodily basis of meaning-making due to its historical contingency and finite materiality (so he always fell back on notions of ‘God’ etc.) he seems to have touched on something compelling. The more I read Pascal’s aphorisms the more they struck me as being informed by an essentially ‘aesthetic’ impulse which he ascribed to the divine. I see the basic sense of these thoughts as aesthetic and discuss this in my paper The Lure of the Ineffable. 

 

Pascal treats imagination peculiarly: as enigma, both good and evil. For example in aphorism 44 regarding imagination, Pascal says: “It is the dominant faculty in man, master of error and falsehood,…” and further that “this arrogant force, which checks and dominates its enemy reason,…makes us believe, doubt, deny reason; it deadens the sense, it arouses them….” And then, contradictorily he says: “Imagination decides everything: it creates beauty, justice and happiness, which is the world’s supreme good.”

 

Pascal goes on in aphorism 45 to say that nothing in man’s experience can possibly lead him to truth without ‘grace.’ Without God’s grace we can only wallow in error. He states explicitly that both reason and the sense do nothing but deceive us. Because it is possible to be deceived by our senses or reason incorrectly he jumps to the conclusion that we cannot do otherwise. Strange leap. 

 

His aesthetic sensibilities begin showing in aphorism 110 where he opens by stating that “we know the truth not only through our reason but also through our heart.” he goes on to state, and I believe that this is crucial to seeing Pascal’s aesthetic impulse, that

We know that we are not dreaming, but, however unable we may be to prove it rationally, our inability proves nothing but the weakness of our reason, and not the uncertainty of all our knowledge…. For knowledge of first principles, like space, time, motion, number, is as solid as any derived through reason, and it is on such knowledge, coming from the heart and instinct, that reason has to depend and base all its argument…. Principles are felt, propositions proved, and both with certainty though by different means. It is just as pointless and absurd for reason to demand proof of first principles from the heart before agreeing to accept them as it would be absurd for the heart to demand an intuition of all the propositions demonstrated by reason before agreeing to accept them.

This is a remarkable statement really: something I would almost expect to hear emanating from the lips of a postmodern art theorist! Pascal defers to ‘God’ though, where the postmodern theorist would likely not. What Pascal is saying is in sync with my experience in the world (through art and otherwise). I see this as a primarily aesthetic stance accepting that what we ‘know’ is not simply rational: that the rational is a modality of our experience but not the only one. 

The Forces of Humanity: Michel Serres’ Natural Contract

No longer the heroic individual, the subject, the tribe or society, mankind through relentless population growth has become equivalent in power to the tectonic plates of geology. Through the brilliant metaphor of the “…dense tectonic plates of humanity,” Serres has reconstituted humankind’s relationship to the earth. In Serres’ model, humanity has become a natural force as potentially destructive as any earthquake or meteor strike, as any tsunami or forest fire. Humanity becomes environment: “From now on there will be lakes of humanity, physical actors in the physical system of the Earth. man is a stockpile, the strongest and most connected of nature. He is a being-everywhere. And bound.” (P 18) Nations and continents are weighed upon by humanity: “Europe weighs at least a quarter-billion souls…it behaves like a sea.” (P 16) Humanity through its sheer volume, its size exists as a physical force.

 

Humanity, through mechanistic and disinterested science has conquered nature. The Cartesian and Baconian project of the production of order, of mastery of the natural, of the cultivation and control of nature through mathematical reason and science has come to full fruition and we no longer experience ‘nature’ as natural any more. The developed world, living in cities, no longer has direct experiential connection to our own sustenance. “The climate never influences our work anymore.” (P 28) We industrially cultivate land to provide us with what we need. Any land that can’t be cultivated has long been relegated to the ‘useless,’ now only to provide places to pollute without affecting us individually or in our collectivity: the wasteland of the deserts and the polar ice caps. The essential in our societies take place indoors: we no longer have a relationship with nature: “we communicate irrepressibly. We busy ourselves only with our own networks.” (P 29) Wild weather, geo-thermal disasters and other forces of nature now collide with the plates of humanity. We only notice ‘nature’ when it ‘misbehaves,’ reminding us of its existence. 

 

Serres is suggesting that we have moved from cosmologies where ‘God’ is at the center of the universe, to where ‘man’ is at the center, and that now, we must move to a model where the Earth and its things must be at the center and humankind at the edges. Or as he puts it, “…things all around and us within them like parasites.” (P 33). The parasite is, of course, abusive by nature. The parasite destroys its host even though that means the extermination of the parasite itself. Serres posits a contractual metaphor for our relationship to the earth when he says: “law tries to limit abusive parasitism among men but does not speak of this same action on things. If objects themselves become legal subjects, then all scales will tend toward an equilibrium.” (P 37) At this point we haven’t included the ‘world’ in our legal models. To Serres objects must become legal subjects for any change to occur. The objects of the world can’t be relegated to forms of appropriation. 

 

A call to arms then!

Back to nature, then! That means we must add to the exclusively social contract a natural contract of symbiosis and reciprocity in which our relationship to things would set aside mastery and possession in favor of admiring attention, reciprocity, contemplation, and respect; where knowledge would no longer imply property, nor action mastery, nor would property and mastery imply their excremental results and origins. An armistice contract in the objective war, a contract of symbiosis, for a symbiont recognizes the host’s rights, whereas a parasite-which is what we are no-condemns to death the one he pillages and inhabits, not realizing that in the long run he’s condemning himself to death too. (P 38)

Serres may be an optimist in making this call. What makes him think that there’s something we can do to stop environmental destruction? Can a parasite change its parasitic ways? Can natural forces do anything other than what they do? If humankind is a parasitic natural force then what makes anyone think that this could change? How fated are we to our own ‘natures?’ 

 

Serres is saying that in our exclusively social contracts we have left the world out of our plans. A natural contract would ostensibly re-establish a relationship between humanity and the objects of the world we live in. So, perhaps we are not parasites by nature, but have become parasitic by dismissing our relationship to the world. Maybe we need to reconsider the Cartesian mind/body dualism as something more disjunctive: a mind/body/world ‘tri-alism’ (? maybe trichotomy? Hmmm). Maybe we have made a split artificially between mind and body and the environment around us. Many currently would say in response to the Cartesian project that the mind and body have never been separate and that we should go further to say that the mind, body and world have never really been separate. What constitutes the boundaries between these so-called separate entities? By focusing on the mind/body ’split’ and its reconstitution we have been leaving the world out of the equation. Human being has been dis-placed and needs to find its place in the world again. If we are to  move away from a parasitic reality the world has to become central to us. 

Darwin’s Language of Evolution

Darwin’s On the Origin of Species was a ground breaking book in many respects. Certainly what he was proposing was new. The implications for the future were enormous, particularly regarding genetic modification and the ethical issues we currently face in that arena. How he proposed it all though was firmly anchored in the harbour of Baconian science in terms of his language and methodology. He relies explicitly on inductive reasoning as Bacon proposes science should. His use of language and reason have an overtly anthropocentric bias as well.

 

Darwin uses anthropocentric language throughout the book. A typical example can be found in the chapter entitled The Struggle for Existence. The chapter title sets the tone. While he explicitly acknowledges that he is using the chapter title “…in a large and metaphorical sense…” (P 165) he does rely on this, and similar, metaphor throughout. I somehow doubt that plants are actually struggling to reach the sun. They simply grow to reach the sun successfully or they do not and die as a result.  He doesn’t go as far as ascribing a will to plants at least!

 

The metaphor of struggle though ties the conception of evolution to ‘man’s’ goals. If a plant struggles, then only the fit plants survive, as is the case with nations: a model of social advance if you will. There is an unspoken dark side with ethical implications to all of this. If our society has overcome many obstacles to living and has significantly lessened peoples’ struggle then how does natural selection continue its project? Perhaps by developing advanced medicine we are allowing the notion of helping the ‘unfit’ to live, which could be seen as going against ‘human nature.’ How many genocidal fantasies could this view fuel?

 

What is humankind’s role in evolution? Is there one at all? Is nature a machine that just runs on its own? Is there a role for God in all of this? Darwin regularly refers to the evolutionary process as attempting to achieve ‘perfection.’ In relation to what? Similarly he often associates beauty with natural complexity. Perhaps unwittingly there’s an aesthetic aspect to Darwin’s science. This science is presented as the ultimate story in opposition to previous creation mythologies. The mythology of science then, as the ultimate arbiter or revealer of truth. This could be an interesting avenue to explore. Darwin, like Bacon, present their science as dispassionate by nature. Perhaps we can see this dispassionate science as leading us to potential disaster and possible annihilation by being guided by a simply mechanistic model of the universe. Maybe the small aesthetic inklings in Darwin’s language constitute an unwitting recognition of the problem with a dispassionate science. 

 

Maybe an ‘aesthetics of science’ needs to be developed (I’ll do a search to see if this has been pursued by anyone: if anyone knows of any references regarding this please drop a comment!)! An aesthetics (or erotics?- let’s embody science!) of science would allow a non-instrumental view of science. Currently science and all of its associated technological development has an overtly instrumental bias. This narrow view may be at the root of some of the problems of the mechanistic, Baconian science that is Darwin’s pedigree. 

 

 

Merchant’s Paridigms of Nature and Use of Reason

Carolyn Merchant’s The Death of Nature is a compelling study of how shifting views of nature have influenced human thought and action throughout the centuries in Europe. She argues that an organic cosmology was eventually supplanted by a mechanistic model of nature sometime between 1500 and 1700. She suggests that to understand this paradigm shift one needs to adopt an ecological perspective. By this she means taking “…an earth’s-eye view of history.” (P 42) With this change in perspective “historical change becomes ecological change, emphasizing human impact on the system as a whole…. Instead of dichotomizing nature and culture as a structural dualism, it sees natural and cultural subsystems in dynamic interaction.” (P 43) Merchant sees the historical subjugation of women in European society as tightly intertwined with this shift, as ‘natural’ concepts of nature-as-woman were replaced by mechanistic models which tacitly gave ‘permission’ to control and exploit natural (and feminine!) resources. Nature was no longer seen as a vital living organism, but rather, as a clockwork mechanism whose parts can be interchanged at will and ad infinitum: this is what constitutes Merchant’s ‘death of nature.’ Concomitant with this change was a change in the concept of self “…as a rational master of the passions housed in a machinelike body…[rather than] as an integral part of a close-knit harmony of organic parts united to the cosmos and society.” (P 214)

 

For all her criticism of science’s mechanistic views of our world, Merchant’s book has a tone of scientific authority throughout. She presents a homogeneous, compelling and seemingly irrefutable argument. Her extensive research and painstakingly precise arguments present a very linear, progressive narrative throughout and by association projects that linearity onto Western European history. She seems to adopt, consciously or otherwise, a Cartesian form of deductive reason and explanation. She posits premises, makes a mathematically logical argument and then comes to conclusions. In doing this she presents models or paradigms either explicitly or implicitly. She uses the very methods of those she criticizes to undermine their positions (this isn’t a criticism on my part!) which brings to the foreground the deeply constitutive nature of models or world views. 

 

This method of argumentation, while effective in its relentless linearity, leaves some assumptions unsaid. Implied in her view point (and in common with Descartes etc.) is that what isn’t rationally knowable isn’t knowable at all. More aggressively put, one could say that what isn’t rationally knowable doesn’t constitute knowledge in any way. Anything outside of this mathematically mechanistic rationality becomes either wholly subjective, and therefore considered valueless for humankind, or is ascribed to ‘the divine,’ in which case it becomes unassailable. The subjective becomes marginalized. The human perspective through perception and the subjective is devalued in this model. 

 

At the same time Merchant uses metaphor and imagery throughout the book. Metaphor is very effectively and transparently used, although often on further reflection it seems that metaphor leads the argument in an insidious way. An example where Merchant’s use of metaphor seems to be a stretch occurs on page 171 where she states:

Here, in bold sexual imagery, is the key feature of the modern experimental method-constraint of nature in the laboratory, dissection by hand and mind, and the penetration of hidden secrets-language still used today in praising a scientist’s ‘hard facts,’ penetrating mind,’ or the ‘thrust of his argument.’ The constraints against penetration in Natura’s lament over her torn garments of modesty have been turned into sanctions in language that legitimates the exploitation and ‘rape’ of nature for human good.

Interesting use of imagery! It does smack somewhat though, of adolescent word play and doesn’t (at least for me) constitute much of an argument or any form of legitimation at all. 

 

From even this one example it is clear that Merchant values her imagination and uses it effectively in developing her arguments. Imagination and reason seem more closely allied than she and Descartes et al would likely be willing to admit. 

 

So how rational is reason? There seems to be a strong component of irrationality in not only Merchant’s arguments but all those she cites and all of the texts we’ve been reading during this course as well. Emotions and hunches seem to figure prominently in all of these thinkers’ writings. The leaps of logic required to generate thought that is genuinely new seems to be an intrinsic part of the thinking process: reason and emotion seem very tightly integrated. 

 

There are intimations of value throughout the book and these ideas as well. There seems to be no value ascribed to something unless it is clearly practical: that there is a clearly defined use-value. This is a very utilitarian view of value, but seems to be dominant in our society. To a large degree many see uncultivated nature as having no value. There have been numerous proposals to dump garbage and toxic wastes in the ‘wasteland’ of our deserts and polar ice-caps. Because these areas aren’t amenable to cultivation and human habitation they’re seen as being useless for anything but dumping waste materials. 

 

So, are there other value systems and are they as important (as valuable) as use-value? I have no immediate answers to this, but it seems a question worth pursuing.

 

 

Science, Reason and Humanism: thoughts on Bacon and Descartes

The 17th century, under the influence of writers like Bacon and Descartes, saw a paradigm shift into an era of humanism: a move away from the centrality of the Divine to the supremacy of the individual, scientific method, and human concerns. The self, albeit disembodied, became the center of experience and of knowledge. Through primarily visual observation of logically devised experiments nature was to be apprehended, controlled and ordered.

 

Bacon in The Great Instauration states his intent unequivocally as follows:

For the end which this science of mine proposes is the invention not of arguments but of arts, not of things in accordance with principles, but of principles themselves; not of probable reasons, but of designations and directions for works. And as the intention is different, so accordingly is the effect; the effect of the one being to overcome an opponent in argument, of the other to command nature in action. (P 21)

To command nature in action! No mincing of words here. The purpose of Baconian science is clearly to control and order nature for the use(s) of humankind. His method of choice was inductive reason: one based on empirical observation of carefully constructed experimental procedures. He insisted on what he felt was a new form of induction though: one “…which shall analyse experience and take it to pieces, and by due process of exclusion and rejection lead to an inevitable conclusion.” (P 23) Bacon explicitly rejected deductive reasoning. (P 22) He didn’t accept the a priori as acceptable ‘proof’ of anything. 

 

In developing his experimental method, Bacon also largely dismissed the senses except for their role in observing experiments themselves. The result of the experiment was to be supreme. And as far as the senses go, Bacon had a clear visual bias. He states in no uncertain terms that he will “…admit nothing but on the faith of eyes…” (P 29) Visual observation was central to his evaluation of experimental results. Visual confirmation of repeatable experiments was central to his, and our, scientific method. The senses being suspect and needing logical experiments to determine truth was an early step in disembodying the mind.

 

Descartes, in Discourse on Method, made the disembodied soul central to his conception of truth and knowledge. His famous cogito ergo sum made the split between mind and body complete. The senses again are suspect because they “…sometimes deceive us…” (P 24) The only thing Descartes could be sure of was that he was thinking. The body and its senses were not central to his notion of being or our experience of place. Reason was the ultimate arbiter of truth. He specifically rejects the role of the senses and of imagination in determining ‘truth.’ (P 29)

 

This emphasis on the 1st person present tense, establishes a strong move towards an anthropocentric, humanist view. This marks a profound ascendancy of the individual, or the centrality of human thought and experience rather than that of the divine. This allows a movement from sacred and social duty to the importance of individual self-fulfillment. We may be seeing the inevitable result of this progression in the continuing development of humanism to our time, where self-fulfillment of the individual may be the primary motivating force in people’s lives. 

 

Reason in Plato & Lucretius

Observations on The Timaeus and On The Nature Of Things.

It must be the historical distance from these writers that makes the use of the term ‘reason’ or ’science’ very strange. The reasoning or logic in these two works seem hardly scientific in the current sense of the term. There seems to be a disdain for empirical observation and experimentation in the science of Plato and Lucretius: they both rely heavily on a priori reason to build their arguments and come to ‘conclusions.’

 

There are differences in their approaches though. Lucretius is certainly more concerned with observable phenomena than Plato, and so has a somewhat more empirical bent to his arguments. Because of this, Plato’s reasoning can be seen to take a more ‘top down’ approach as opposed to Lucretius’ ‘bottom-up’ approach. Lucretius is concerned with emphasizing the importance for each individual in a society of pursuing and exhibiting exemplary behaviour. Were all citizens to follow that directive then society would organize itself accordingly. Plato sees the state and it’s laws as the major factors in determining the behaviour of individuals. For Plato, the idea of individuals determining the behaviour of the state is absurd. 

 

Still, the forms of reasoning found in these and other classical texts seem odd to me in most cases. There seems to be a mania for unified theories to explain everything. So while what each writer is trying to say varies, their reasoning processes have much in common and are dominated by the search for single unifying principles. Their use of rhetorical devices to lead the argument and substantiate various premises seem benign on the surface, but are quite misleading when observed more closely. To avoid the infinite regress problem in their search for ‘first principles’ ‘God’ always ends up being the cause.

 

An example of odd reasoning: in Plato’s Timaeus section 44 (P 111) regarding ‘diseases of the body’ he says: “The origin of diseases should be obvious. The body is composed of four elements-earth, fire, air, and water; and disorders and diseases are caused by an unnatural excess or deficiency of any of them,…” I’m not sure how any of this is ‘obvious’ by any means. This could only be obvious to one situated in that particular historical and cultural context. How would one go about experimentally verifying such suppositions?

 

Lucretius, who doesn’t apparently depend on a particular ‘God’ (although his thought seems fairly mono-theistic) develops a system of principles based on arguments with an internal, almost mathematical precision, yet without ‘real’ explanations of the initial causes of phenomena. He makes simple assertions based on observed phenomena without pursuing what could be called scientific or experimental justifications. Lines 89-142 provide a good example of these assertions. He advises us to “…remember that the whole universe has no bottom and thus no place where the ultimate particles could settle;…” and then adds “since this is an established fact…” These ideas are speculations without any form of verification, yet his whole atomic theory is based on such ‘facts.’ He builds a sort of internal cohesion in his system and that in itself suffices as ‘explanation.’ From this observation he elaborates a theory of how various substances have come to be dependent on the movement of ultimate particles. If one accepts his initial proposition then there is a coherency to the model, but he offers no good reason to accept those propositions at all.  Reason and speculation don’t seem very far apart in the thought of these two writers. 

 

Further on Paine

 

• Class discussion.

 

• The relationship between organized religion and the social order.

 

• Importance of the 1st amendment and the ‘establishment clause’ specifying the separation of state and religion
  • Because of his imprisonment in France, Paine really needed to invalidate the marriage of church and state which resulted in his imprisonment

 

• What is the meaning of God?
  • See also Thomas Jefferson

 

• What would be an appropriate God for rational people

 

• Democratization of God

 

• The New Testament
  • Paine’s criticisms of the inconsistencies between the four gospels
  • Perhaps the new Testament is the 1st postmodern text!? Offers a polyvalent view of Christ’s life in a fragmented, contingent, postmodern way.

 

• The 18th century’s return to Plato is evident from the text.
  • See Charles Taylor re ‘authenticity’ or sincerity
    • Re Paine Part I, Page 2 “…mentally faithful to oneself”
    • The notion of self actualization

 

• Job ch. 18 and Psalm 19 were of particular importance to Paine.