A Current of History

[dream_weaver]

After listening to the History of Philosophy: Thales to Hume again, it seemed relevant contrast some thoughts with a portion of the leading article "For The New Intellectual." 28 pages in, Miss Rand prefaces Descartes with:

From the start of the post-Renaissance period, philosophy—released from its bondage as handmaiden of theology—went seeking a new form of servitude, like a frightened slave, broken in spirit, who recoils from the responsibility of freedom. Descartes set the direction of the retreat by bringing the Witch Doctor back into philosophy. While promising a philosophical system as rational, demonstrable and scientific as mathematics, Descartes began with the basic epistemological premise of every Witch Doctor (a premise he shared explicitly with Augustine): "the prior certainty of consciousness," the belief that the existence of an external world is not self-evident, but must be proved by deduction from the contents of one's consciousness—which means: the concept of consciousness as some faculty other than the faculty of perception—which means: the indiscriminate contents of one's consciousness as the irreducible primary and absolute, to which reality has to conform. What followed was the grotesquely tragic spectacle of philosophers struggling to prove the existence of an external world by staring, with the Witch Doctor's blind, inward stare, at the random twists of their conceptions—then of perception—then of sensations.

When the medieval Witch Doctor had merely ordered men <ftni_29> to doubt the validity of their mind, the philosophers' rebellion against him consisted of proclaiming that they doubted whether man was conscious at all and whether anything existed for him to be conscious of.

Peikoff, in his lecture, christened Descartes as the "Father of modern philosophy", but did not paint him explicitly as a "frightened slave, broken in spirit, recoiling from the responsibility of freedom'. Her earlier reference to the relative political freedom in Ancient Greece was capitalized in Peikoff's lecture. She stated:

<ftni_22> Philosophy was born in a period when Attila was impotent to assist the Witch Doctor—when a comparative degree of political freedom undercut the power of mysticism and, for the first time, man was free to face an unobstructed universe, free to declare that his mind was competent to deal with all the problems of his existence and that reason was his only means of knowledge.

Peikoff echoed the political difference in Greece from the rest of the world in his opening lecture, minus the Attila/Witch Doctor analogy. What did not come through was the Slavic devotion of Descartes to the Witch Doctors ideology, at least with the intensity imbued by Rand in a terse paragraph. The opening sentence on Hume carries a similar efficacy.

<fthi_29> When Hume declared that he saw objects moving about, but never saw such a thing as "causality"—it was the voice of Attila that men were hearing.

The rationalism of the Witch Doctors and the empiricism of the Attilaists, a division later stated as: "those who joined the Witch Doctor, by abandoning reality—and those who clung to reality, by abandoning their mind."

Plato, born between 428/423 BC lived until 348/347 BC. Athens was into its decline by the time of Aristotle 384-322 BC.

A little over five hundred years later, Plotinus (204-270 AD) followed by Augustine (354-430 AD) finish laying the foundation for Plato's monument to the Witch Doctor's metaphysics.

Aquinas (1225-1274) enters the scene after Aristotle was rediscovered just under a millennia later. The Renaissance (1300-1700) and Industrial Revolution (1700-1900) soon follow, suggesting the power of Aristotle's ideas.

Descartes (1596-1650), Hume (1711-1776) and Kant (1724-1804) pined for the good ole days, bereft the responsibility of freedom. Most men do not notice such considerations.

<ftni_39> The men in the other professions were not able to step back and observe. If some men found themselves leaving their farms for a chance to work in a factory, that was all they knew. If their children now had a chance to survive beyond the age of ten (child mortality had been about fifty percent in the pre-capitalist era), they were not able to identify the cause. They could not tell why the periodic famines—that had been striking every twenty years to wipe out the "surplus" population which pre-capitalist economies could not feed—now came to an end, as did the carnages of religious wars, nor why fear seemed to be lifting away from people's voices and from the streets of growing cities, nor why an enormous exultation was suddenly sweeping the world. The intellectuals did not choose to tell them.

Philosophy is like Adam Smith's invisible hand. Smith used the term to describe the unintended social benefits of individual actions. Is a term 'an invisible foot' needed to describe the unintended social detriments of individual actions? Why multiply concepts beyond necessity? Most individual actions are rooted in what individuals believe (rightly or wrongly) to be the right thing to do. In order to get from Plato's Form of the Good to God, Peikoff half jokingly suggest only need remove an 'o'. Betwixt the Witch Doctor and Attila, Rand suggested that

<ftni_20> |S|ecretly, each of them believes that the other possesses a mysterious faculty he lacks, that the other is the true master of reality, the true exponent of the power to deal with existence. In terms, not of thought, but of chronic anxiety, it is the Witch Doctor who believes that brute force rules the world—and it is Attila who believes in the supernatural; his name for it is "fate" or "luck."

A page earlier she observes that "|b|oth of them are incomplete parts of a human being, who seek completion in each other: the man of muscle and the man of feelings, seeking to exist without mind."

The benevolence of Adam Smith allows for an invisible hand to be extended out to help raise and climb a social extension ladder. To conceive of an invisible hand clenched into a fist can readily be used to pummel an antonym to the previous metaphor.

Ignoring the 'human ballast'—the rest of mankind—the invisible hand is made somewhat visible here:

<ftni_20> A man's method of using his consciousness determines his method of survival. The three contestants are Attila, the Witch Doctor and the Producer—or the man of force, the man of feelings, the man of reason—or the brute, the mystic, the thinker. The rest of mankind calls it expedient to be tossed by the current of events from one of those roles to another, not choosing to identify the fact that those three are the source which determines the current's direction.

In Francis Bacon's poignant aphorism: Nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed.

[New Buddha]

6 hours ago, dream_weaver said:

Descartes (1596-1650), Hume (1711-1776) and Kant (1724-1804) pined for the good ole days, bereft the responsibility of freedom. Most men do not notice such considerations.

Descartes left France and moved to the more liberal Netherlands because he was basically an Atheist.  He was also very much aware of the imprisonment of (his contemporary) Galileo for ideas which contradicted the teachings of the Catholic Church.  Descartes' ideas regarding Causality were in direct opposition to the Church, which attributed all Cause to the will of God.  Descartes tried to present a quasi-Naturalist account of causality which was very much influenced by the burgeoning field of Fluid Mechanics which dominated much of Science in his day.  Descartes' published works did NOT represent his true beliefs.  They were a compromise to keep him out of jail.

Hume was hounded for being an Atheist. He gave a psychological/naturalist account of epistemology which eschewed Divine Revelation as propagated by the Church.  And for this, he was castigated by society, and denied employment.  Hume's sin was to suggest that knowledge was not dependent on deductive reasoning and Divine Revelation, but rather, Man should look ONLY to evidence provided by the senses.

Kan't reading of Hume "awoke him from his slumber" because he realized that Hume's epistemology THREATENED religion.

Lumping Hume and Kant into the same group is wrong.  Hume did not "pine for the good ole days".  He was a fearless pioneer of a Naturalist account of epistemology -- and paid a great price for doing so.  So did Descartes.  Kant, on the other hand, was a mystic, as typical of a Lutheran.

I find it interesting that your final sentence is a quote from Bacon.  Bacon also rejected  the rote memorization of Aristotelianism/Thomism sanctioned texts, and deductive reasoning, in favor of Empiricism/experimentation.  If Rand/Peikoff understood (or had any training in Science/Mathematics/Physics/Mechanics) would they also have thrown Bacon onto the funeral pyre?

Edited July 21, 2016 by New Buddha

[dream_weaver]

Pining for the good ole days was not intended as a religious flavoring. Her usage of a recently freed slave bonded as handmaiden to theology—went seeking a new form of servitude. The pining for the bond, today would be aptly attributed as a handmaiden to the state.

 

Edited July 21, 2016 by dream_weaver

[New Buddha]

But the Empiricists (Locke, Berkeley and Hume, along with Newton, Smith, Reid, etc.) stood in opposition to the State (ie the Divine Right of Kings) and the Church of England.  Their ideas lead to the Glorious Revolution and the United States.  They were, by and large, denied full Civil Rights in England (ie participation in the traditional Peerage system).  They were the Nonconformists and Dissenting Protestants.   In lieu of Peerage, they turned to Science (the Royal Society) Engineering, Shipping, Manufacturing, Banking, etc.

The rise of Science and Capitalism did not come about via the reintroduction of the writings of Aristotle into the West and Thomism.  In fact, it was pretty much the opposite.  It took the overthrow of Aristotelian thought and Thomism (meaning the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church) for that to happen.

[dream_weaver]

Just as it was not a straight line leading to the Dark Ages, it is not a straight line coming out of the Renaissance. I included Kant at this point, with this passage in mind.

<ftni_31> Kant gave metaphysical expression to the psycho-epistemology of Attila and the Witch Doctor and to their primordial existential relationship, shutting out of his universe the existence and the psycho-epistemology of the Producer. He surrendered philosophy to Attila—and insured its future delivery back into the power of the Witch Doctor. He turned the world over to Attila, but reserved to the Witch Doctor the realm of morality.

I picked Descartes for his role as Rand's Witch Doctor and Hume for her reference to Attila. As Peikoff is getting into Kant in part 2 of the History of Western Philosophy, I'm listening as to if he is rebutting Descartes and Hume, or synthesizing them into the Critique, as it seem Rand is suggesting here.

Your tangents would tie in with other parts she wrote in her lead piece for the book. (She mentions Comte, Nietzsche, Bentham and others.)

Interestingly enough, Peikoff pointed out how Aristotle gets lumped into the Scholastic camp primarily due to Aquinas' efforts.

Edited July 22, 2016 by dream_weaver

[New Buddha]

In the Intro to Harriman's book, The Logical Leap, Peikoff says of Hume, "And it thereby dams (and damns) the torrent of skepticism unleashed by David Hume and company."

This is just wrong.

Above where its stated:

On 7/20/2016 at 5:47 PM, dream_weaver said:

When Hume declared that he saw objects moving about, but never saw such a thing as "causality"—it was the voice of Attila that men were hearing.

What Hume was "declaring" was a rejection of the Metaphysical Causation of Thomas (and Aristotle), in which all Cause in the World is determined by the direct moment-to-moment intervention of the hand of God.  Hume's rejection of Necessity meant Metaphysical Necessity.  Hume was not rejecting Causation, as such, but rather the Medieval, Scholastic un-scientific notions regarding Cause.  Newton did the same thing with regards to Gravity - and both were controversial and flew in the face of Roman Catholicism and the Anglican Church.  The Natural Rights of Locke, the Universal Laws of Newton, the economics of Smith and the Epistemology of Hume make no appeal to God or Divine Revelation.

The German Protestant Reformation, however was completely different.  It was very much about Authoritarianism and the substitution of the (Prussian) State for the Church.  Luther, Kant and Hegel were horrible philosophers and deserve condemnation.

[dream_weaver]

Skimming through W.T. Jones section on Hume, his nominalism, his discourse on the self, his wanting to deduce existence, the discarding of various abstractions as meaningless noise, are some of the various points that Peikoff raised in his History of Philosophy course. Originally published in 1952, W.T. Jones book predates both Peikoff's course and Rand's book For The New Intellectual (as well as Atlas Shrugged.)

It might help you to note that my take on "the invisible hand" is not a religious one, rather it is an extension I'm trying to base on the opening line from Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand.

Philosophy is not a bauble of the intellect, but a power from which no man can abstain.

While not religious, it does appear to raise similar contentions when broached.

[New Buddha]

1 hour ago, dream_weaver said:

It might help you to note that my take on "the invisible hand" is not a religious one

I never thought otherwise.  Smith's "invisible hand" was Rational Self Interest.  Per Smith:

"It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest." - Adam Smith.

My use of the term "hand of God" relates to Occasionalism.

One of my pet peeves against Objectivism, and the reason for my posting, is Peikoff's shallow, a-historical, revisionist take on British Empiricism - without which, by the way, the United States would not have come into existence.  I believe that Rand (a History Major) knew better, and that her statement that she was not influenced by any other philosopher than Aristotle and Aquinas is taken out of context.

I also believe that a glib take on history is one of the reasons that many non-Objectivists philosophers dismiss Objectivism as a not very serious, our well thought out philosophy.  Objectivism is very much (imho) in the tradition of British/American Empiricism.  And further more, that Rand's position on epistemology was heavily influenced by William James.

[Eiuol]

That last link is really interesting. Rand often seemed to underemphasize other philosophers besides Aristotle that impacted her. Where'd you find the link? I'll probably need to ask the author himself for the full paper, I can't find it anywhere.

[New Buddha]

I was reading some of James' Essays and became convinced that Rand had to be influenced by him.  So I googled Ayn Rand William James and found the link.  Lee Pierson is mentioned by Binswanger as having introduced him to the Psychological ideas of James Jerome Gibson, and I believe that Lee did know Rand.  I wrote him an email asking if I could obtain a copy, but never heard back.

This is a brief excerpt from James's The Principles of Psychology which was pretty much the text book for psychology for a generation or two:

 

When we conceive of S merely as M (of vermilion merely as a mercury-compound, for example), we neglect all the other attributes which it may have, and attend exclusively to this one.

....

All ways of conceiving a concrete fact, if they are true ways at all, are equally true ways. There is no property ABSOLUTELY essential to any one thing. The same property which figures as the essence of a thing on one occasion be- comes a very inessential feature upon another. Now that I am writing, it is essential that I conceive my paper as a surface for inscription. If I failed to do that, I should have to stop my work. But if I wished to light a fire, and no other materials were by, the essential way of conceiving the paper would be as combustible material ; and I need then have no thought of any of its other destinations. It is really all that it is : a combustible, a writing surface, a thin thing, a hydrocarbonaceous thing, a thing eight inches one way and ten another, a thing just one furlong east of a certain stone in my neighbor's field, an American thing, etc., etc., ad infinitum. Whichever one of these aspects of its being I temporarily class it under, makes me unjust to the other aspects. But as I always am classing it under one aspect or another, I am always unjust, always partial, always exclusive. My excuse is necessity—the necessity which my finite and practical nature lays upon me. My thinking is first and last and always for the sake of my doing, and I can only do one thing at a time. A God, who is supposed to drive the whole universe abreast, may also be supposed, without detriment to his activity, to see all parts of it at once and without emphasis. But were our human attention so to disperse itself we should simply stare vacantly at things at large and forfeit our opportunity of doing any particular act.

....

Locke undermined the fallacy [of Essence as Ontological and/or Metaphysical, my edit]. But none of his successors, so far as I know, have radically escaped it, or seen that the only meaning of essence is teleological, and that classi fication and conception are purely teleological weapons of the mind. The essence of a thing is that one of its properties which is so important for my interests that in comparison with it I may neglect the rest. Amongst those other things which have this important property I class it, after this property I name it, as a thing endowed with this property I conceive it ; and whilst so classing, naming, and conceiving it, all other truths about it become to me as naught* The properties which are important vary from man to man and from hour to hour.