Abstract
This chapter discusses the attitudes of some eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century authors to the existence of evil in the form of death, suffering and destruction. Their reactions ranged from optimism to pessimism, from the search for some reason for consolation and hope to a materialism that denounced the illusions inspiring such a quest. The chapter opens with Voltaire’s reaction to the Lisbon earthquake of 1755, which led him to doubt that “all is well” and describes his debate with Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who, instead, insisted on finding in nature a source for his sentimental optimism and saw society as the cause of evil. The Swiss biologists Albrecht von Haller and Charles Bonnet believed in a providential order of nature and reasserted the principles of plenitude, thereby explaining evil as a consequence of the necessary imperfection of created beings. Compensation was a key concept for them as well as for many other authors, such as the French philosopher Jean-Baptiste Robinet and the English writer, journalist and science populariser Oliver Goldsmith. But invoking compensation to explain evil as part of the economy of nature could be turned into a justification of it in its perverse form, as shown by the case of the Marquis de Sade. Some Enlightenment philosophers, such as d’Holbach and La Mettrie, voiced a materialist rejection of the belief in nature as a benign mother taking care of her creatures. A consistent materialism inspired the Italian poet and philosopher Giacomo Leopardi’s pessimistic view of nature as an indifferent “step-mother”.
O incomprehensible decrees of Providence, grant me, I beg, a moment’s clear view of your laws if it is not your design to drive me to revolt against them!
—Marquis de Sade
O Father, deep and dark Wisdom, you well know what the evil of the world is for, but the world does not know it
—Marie Noël
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Notes
- 1.
Besterman (1956: 16). On the Lisbon earthquake and its impact on European culture, see Lütgert (1901), Gastinel (1913–1914), Rohrer (1933), Hazard (1938), Kendrick (1956), Weinrich (1986), Stuber (2003), Braun and Radner (2005). On Voltaire’s reaction, in addition to Besterman, see also Havens (1929, 1941); C. Luporini (1955); Wade (1959). On the problems caused by natural catastrophes for philosophers in both the eighteenth-century and today, see Placanica (1985).
- 2.
See, for example, Remarques sur les pensées de Pascal (1728), Traité de métaphysique (1734), Métaphysique de Newton (1740).
- 3.
“Quoi! Le monde est visible, et Dieu serait caché?” (Voltaire [1756a], 1: line 34).
- 4.
“Quelque parti qu’on prenne, on doit frémir, sans doute. / Il n’est rien qu’on connaisse, et rien qu’on ne redoute. / La nature est muette, on l’interroge en vain; / on a besoin d’un Dieu qui parle au genre humain.” (Voltaire 1756b: lines 164–166). Trans. Antony Lyon, “Sur le désastre de Lisbonne”, 2018 (http://www.antonylyon.com/blog/2020/7/11/occasional-translations-voltaire-rimbaud-and-foucault, retrieved 20 March 2022). I am grateful to Antony Lyon, Director, Humanities Program, UC San Diego, for allowing me to quote from his translation of Voltaire’s poem.
- 5.
“Je ne suis du grand tout qu’une faible partie: / Oui; mais les animaux condamnés à la vie, / tous les êtres sentants, nés sous la même loi, / vivent dans la douleur, et meurent comme moi. / Le vautour, acharné sur sa timide proie, / De ses membres sanglant se repait avec joie; / Tout semble bien pour lui: mais bientôt à son tour / Une aigle au bec trenchant dévore le vautour; / L’homme d’un plomb mortel attaint cette aigle altière: / Et l’homme aux champs de Mars couché sur la poussière, / Sanglant, percé de coups, sur un tas de mourants, / Sert d’aliment affreux aux oiseaux dévorants. / Ainsi du monde entier tous les members gémissent; / Nés tous pour les tourments, l’un par l’autre ils périssent: / Et vous composerez dans ce chaos fatal / Des malheurs de chaque être un bonheur général! / Quel bonheur! ô mortel et faible et misérable, / Vous criez “Tout est bien”, d’une voix lamentable; / L’univers vous dément, et votre propre Coeur / Cent fois de votre esprit a réfuté l’erreur. / Eléments, animaux, humains, tout est en guerre. / Il le faut avouer, le mal est sur la terre: / Son principe secret ne nous est point connu. / De l’auteur de tout bien le mal est-il venu?” (Voltaire 1756b: lines 105–128). Trans. Antony Lyon, 2018 (see note 4).
- 6.
Voltaire had the works of early statisticians, such as John Graunt and William Petty, in mind. They saw evidence of divine order in the rates of births and deaths, and in the proportion of males to females. Such arguments were commonly used (La Vergata 1990: 27–33, 40–46). In the second part of his Fable of the Bees (1729) Bernard Mandeville argued that more males were born because men live a more stressful and dangerous life than women, bearing “the Brunt of all the Toils and Hazards that are undergone by Sea and Land”, including war. As there was equilibrium through destruction in the animal world, so was war a way to restore the balance between sexes: “the Earth, without War, […] would have been over-stocked”, and “the World would constantly have had a great Superfluity of Men, if there never had been any Wars” (Mandeville 1924, II: 259). A circular reasoning indeed (Scribano 1980: 26).
- 7.
See Vercruysse (1964) for Voltaire’s sarcastic comments on the 1760 edition of the highly successful work by the Dutch physician Bernard Nieuwentjit’s (or Nieuwentyt, or Nieuwentydt) L’existence de Dieu démontrée par les merveilles de la nature (Het regt gebruik der werelt beschouwingen, ter overtuiginge van ongodisten en ongelovingen (1715).
- 8.
On Voltaire and Leibniz, in addition to the works mentioned in note 1, see Brooks (1964).
- 9.
- 10.
“Vielleicht ist unsre Welt, die wie ein Körnlein Sand, / Im Meer der Himmel schwimmt, des Uebels Vaterland¸/ Die Sterne sind vielleicht ein Sitz verklärter Geister, / wie hier das Laster herrscht, ist dort die Tugend Meister, / Und dieses Punct der Welt von mindrer Treflichkeit / Dient in dem grossen All zu der Volkommenheit: / Und wir, die wir die Welt in kleinsten Theilen kennen, / Urtheilen auf ein Stück, das wir vom Abhang trennen.”
- 11.
“Soll Gott, der diesen Leib, der Maden Speis’ und Wirth, / So väterlich versorgt, so prächig ausgeziert, / Soll Gott den Menschen selbst, die Seele nicht mehr schätzen? / Dem Leib sein Wohl zum Ziel, dem Geist sein Elend setzen? / Nein Deine Huld, O Gott, ist allzu offenbar, / Die ganze Schöpfing legt Dein liebend Wesen dar. / Die Huld, die Raben nährt, wird Menschen nicht verstossen, / Wer groß im Kleinen ist, wird grösser seyn im Grossen.”
- 12.
“Fern unter ihnen hat das sterbliche Geschlecht, / Im Himmel und im Nichts, sein doppelt Bürgerrecht, / Aus ungleich festem Stoff hat Gott es auserlesen, / Halb zu der Ewigkeit, halb aber zum Verwesen: / Zweydeutig Mittelding von Engeln und von Vieh, / Es überlebt sich selbst, es stirbt und stirbet nie.” (ibid., II: lines 99–104).
- 13.
These lines of Haller, which are an almost literal rendering of Chrysippus’ fragment quoted in Chap. 2 (see above: 2. 3), sum up on the moral plane what Leibniz (Leibniz 1969, § 124) wrote concerning intelligence: “Nature had need of animals, plants, inanimate bodies; there are in these creatures, devoid of reason, marvels which serve for the exercise of reason. What would an intelligent creature do if there were no unintelligent things?”
- 14.
“Gott, der im Reich der Welt sich selber zeigen wolte, / Sah, daß wann alles nur aus Vorschrift halndeln sollte, / die Welt ein Uhrwerk wird, von fremden Trieb beseelt, / und keine Tugend bleibt, wo Macht zum Laster fehlt. / Gott wolte, daß wir Ihn aus Kentnüß solten lieben, / und nicht aus blinder Kraft von ungewälhten Trieben, / und gönnte dem Geschöpf den unschätzbaren Ruhm, / aus Wahl ihm hold zu sein, und nicht aus Eigenthum. / Der Thaten Unterschied wird durch den Zwang gehoben, / wir loben Gott nicht mehr, wenn er uns zwingt zu loben; / Gerechtigkeit und Huld, der Gottheit Arme ruhn, / so bald Gott alles würkt, und wir nichts selber thun. / Drum überließ auch Gott die Geister ihrem Willen”. (ibid., II: lines 49–61)
- 15.
“Ja alles was ich seh, sind Gaben vom Geschicke, / Die Welt ist selbst gemacht zu ihrer Bürger Glücke, / Ein allgemeines Wohl beseelet die Natur, / und alles trägt des hochsten Gutes Spur.” (ibid., I: lines 61–64).
- 16.
- 17.
Haller declined Bonnet’s invitation, protesting his bad health. The Swiss Johann Georg Sulzer (1720–1779) was the author of Unterredungen über die Schönheit der Natur (1750).
- 18.
- 19.
The pioneering German statistician, Johann Süssmilch, had compiled such as register for mankind, thereby demonstrating the existence of a “conserving wisdom”. On Süssmilch’s use of statistics as evidence of “divine order”, see La Vergata (1990: 33–40).
- 20.
For a more nuanced evaluation, see Vereker (1967: Chapter 10).
- 21.
That catastrophe, he added, demonstrated that “most of our physical ills are still our own work”: “Nature did not construct twenty thousand houses of six to seven stories there, and […] if the inhabitants of this great city had been more equally spread out and more lightly lodged, the damage would have been much less, and perhaps of no account. All of them would have fled at the first disturbance, and the next day would have been seen twenty leagues from there, as gay as if nothing had happened […] How many unfortunate people have perished in this disaster because of one wanting to take his clothes, another his papers, another his money?”. Earthquakes do occur “in the middle of a wilderness”, but they “cause little harm to the animals and savages who dwell scattered in isolated places, and who fear neither the fall of housetops, nor the conflagration of houses” (Rousseau 1992: 110). On the complex history of this letter, see Havens (1944), Leigh (1964), and its critical edition in Rousseau (1979a).
- 22.
Cf. Leibniz (1969), § 118. But the theme was already in Thomas Aquinas’ (Summa contra Gentiles, III, § 71: see Chapter 2, note 30).
- 23.
This view is accompanied by traditional ideas on the origin of physical evil in the passivity of matter, and of moral evil in our freedom. “God could do anything, except create other substances as perfect as his own and affording evil no purchase” (Rousseau 1997: 487). Other characters in the novel are more inclined to sentimental enthusiasm for the goodness of the world: Julie “finds in all creation nothing but causes of compassion (attendrissement) and gratitude. Everywhere she perceives the beneficent hand of providence” (ibid.: 484), and Monsieur de Wolmar is not far behind: “All characters are good and sound in themselves […] There are […] no mistakes in nature […] Everything works together for the common good in the universal system. Every man has its assigned place in the best order of things, the question is to find that place and not pervert that order” (ibid., Letter 3: 461–462).
- 24.
“The love of order which produces order is called goodness; and the love of order which preserves order is called justice” (Rousseau 1979b: 282).
- 25.
See above: 3. 3. There is, however, a capital difference between Bonnet and Rousseau: the author of evil is man. The Vicar says: “Man, seek the author of evil no longer. It is yourself. No evil exists other than that which you do or suffer, and both come to you from yourself […] Particular evil exists only in the sentiment of the suffering being, and man did not receive this sentiment from nature: he gave it to himself. Pain has little hold over someone who, having reflected little, possesses neither memory nor foresight. Take away your fatal progress, take away our errors and our vices, take away the work of man, and everything is good” (Rousseau 1979b: 282).
- 26.
- 27.
Rousseau (1992: 113). When writing this letter to Voltaire, Rousseau had not read Crousaz, whom he would define “a pedant” in Émile 1979: 126). In La nouvelle Héloïse (1761) Julie says that she does not know whether Pope or Crousaz is right, but finds the latter “boring” and prefers the former, whose doctrine at least inspires “any sort of good actions” (Rousseau 1969, vol. 2, Part 2, Letter 18: 261). In a letter of 17 January 1742 Rousseau had written that Pope’s system was “very absurd, but very coherent” (très absurde, mais très lié) and had defended it from the charge of impiety: it certainly contained, especially in the first three epistles, errors which could become dangerous in some hands, but the fourth epistle was full of “sublime maxims” (Rousseau 1965, 1: 132–137). As Rossi (1972: xvi) remarks, between Rousseau’s opinion on Pope in this letter and that in the letter to Voltaire there is not the contrast which some interpreters have seen: in both Rousseau rejects the idea that God is the last end of the chain of beings and maintains that he is transcendent.
- 28.
Rousseau (1992: 111); cf. his letter to Franquières of 15 January 1769 (Rousseau 1965, vol. 4: 1141). In the manuscript of the letter to Voltaire Rousseau wrote “the sweet pleasure of existing” (Leigh 1964: 278). On the pleasure of life, see Mortier (1964); L. Luporini (1982: 148–156). Of course, this subject cannot be studied regardless of Rousseau’s critique of society: “however ingenious we may be in stirring up our misfortunes by dint of fine institutions, we have not been able, up to the present, to perfect ourselves to the point of generally rendering life a burden to ourselves and to prefer nothing to our existence” (Rousseau 1992: 111). And in Émile: “it is by dint of agitating ourselves to increase our happiness that we convert it into unhappiness” (1979: 81). In contrast to all other animals, man has faculties in excess and desires in excess of his faculties. We cannot, however, underestimate the influence of the principle of plenitude on Rousseau, which makes him say that “life is a positive good” (Rousseau 1965, vol. 4: 1141), independent of ethical-political motives.
- 29.
Rousseau (1992: 117); cf. 112: “of whatever ills might be spread over human life, [even departing from it voluntarily] is all things considered not a bad present; and if it is not always bad to die, it is quite rarely so to live”. In his self-consoling enthusiasm Rousseau is sometimes easy to please: for example, he considers the simple interruption of pain a great pleasure (Rousseau 1769, in Rousseau 1969, vol. 4: 1141). “For is desiring that someone not suffer anything but desiring that he be happy?” (Rousseau 1992: 37). After all, these are claims that can be uttered by both an optimist and a pessimist, or rather that cover the border areas between optimism and pessimism. Being easily contented is one of the strong points of the optimist, who is, by definition, not very demanding. The idea expressed by Rousseau in the above citations reminds the words of Konrad Lorenz (2004: 42) on how flexible our ideas on the threshold of pleasure can be: “The old joke about the man who persistently hit himself on the head with a hammer because it felt so good when he stopped, here hits the nail on the head”. This is a free translation of the German original, which is more pithy: it reports an old saying of Austrian mountain folk: “Heut mach i mei’n Hund a Freud: Erst hau i eam recht und nacha hör i auf” (“Today I want to do my dog a favour. First, I’ll give him a good beating, then I’ll stop”).
- 30.
Ibid., vol. 2: 335; cit. in Pitman (1972: 67). A slightly different formulation is to be found in Goldsmith’s Preface and Familiar Introduction to the Study of Natural History, which was his introduction to R. Brookes’ A New and Accurate System of Natural History (London: J. Newbury, 1763): “It is a rule that obtains through nature, that the smallest animals multiply in the greatest proportion […] As large animals require proportional supplies from nature, Providence seems unwilling to give new life, where it has denied the necessary means of subsisting” (Goldsmith 1854, vol. 4: 395). It is interesting to note that, after paying the usual homage to the wisdom of Providence for “filling up every chasm in the great scale of being, so that no possible existence may be wanting in her universal plan”, Goldsmith asks what use are creatures such as insects, since they are noxious to man and the animals useful to him, and “the advantages of the latter [animals] cannot compensate for damage done by the former [i.e. insects]”. “Perhaps—he says in order to wriggle out of his own awkward move—the wisest answer would be that every creature was formed for himself, and each allowed to seize as great a quantity of happiness from the universal stock, as was consistent with the universal plan; thus, each was formed to make the happiness of each; the weak of the strong, and the strong of the weak, but still in proportion to every order, power of conquest, and enjoyment. Thus, we shall find, that though man may be reciprocally useful to other animals [sic!], yet in some measure they were formed for his use, because he has been endowed with every power of rendering them subservient and enjoying their submission” (ibid.: 412). To add to the ambiguity of this text, Goldsmith warns the reader, on the authority of Bacon, against final causes, as these are, in contrast with efficient causes, “obscure”…
- 31.
The Natural History of Cornwall, London, 1758: 291, cit. in Thomas (1984: 46).
- 32.
- 33.
Here a passage from the Phenomenology of Spirit comes to mind where Hegel uses a similar reasoning to illustrate the “connection of higher and lower which, in the case of the living being, nature itself naively expresses in the combination of the organ of its highest fulfillment, the organ of generation, with the organ of urination” (Hegel 2018, C. (AA.) “Reason”, § 346: 203). See also Hegel (1970a), vol. 9, Zweiter Teil, § 365, Zusatz: 492: “In many animals the organs of excretion and the genitals, the highest and the lowest of animal organisation, are most intimately connected: in the same way as speaking and kissing, on the one hand, and eating, drinking and spitting, on the other, are associated in the mouth”. For a recent assessment of Hegel’s relation to the biology of his time, see Petry 1970 in Hegel (1970b); Bodei (1975: 99–151); Zammito (2018); Wandschneider (2020); and Suzuki (2020).
- 34.
If we believe that “Nature does not make jumps” (natura non facit saltum) it is a mistake to separate man from other organisms, as Buffon does (Robinet 1763–1766, III, Book I, Ch. II). Yet, it is also a mistake to separate inorganic matter from plants and animals: if there is continuity in nature, then inanimate matter cannot exist; all matter is basically organic and animal (ibid., Book III, Ch. II, Book IV, Ch. IV). On this point criticism comes from a convinced proponent of the scala naturae such as Bonnet (Book III, Chapters III–IV). On the latter’s scornful reaction, see Sonntag (1983: 548); softer tones, with indulgence amusée (see Roger (1971: 647, note 329), in Contemplation de la nature. Robinet devotes copious space to the “animality of plants” and also to the “animality of fossils [namely, minerals]” (ibid., Books V–VI). We should note, however, that he is not always consistent: the claim “that there are only individuals, […] no kingdoms or classes or genera or species” (vol. III, Book I, Ch. VII; Book IV, Ch. III) and that “Nature cares very little for forms” (ibid., p. 261) contradict his claim (Vol. I: 58, 60, 65) that species are perpetual and that Nature sacrifices individuals to species.
- 35.
- 36.
The sort of prologue that appears comparatively unaltered in the three Justines is a parody of the moral message in Zadig. In addition to Robinet, Sade had also read Buffon and d’Holbach, and used them, at times rashly (Deprun 1968).
- 37.
“There is nothing awful in libertinage, because everything libertinage inspires is also inspired by nature […] I have already told you a thousand times that nature, needing now vices and now virtues for the perfect maintenance of the laws of her equilibrium, inspires in us the impulses (mouvements) which are in turn necessary for her. We then do nothing evil by following these impulses, whatever we may suppose their sort to be” (Sade 1795, in Sade 1990–1998, 3: 89, 172; cfr. 1999: 121–122).
- 38.
Cfr. Sade, (1795), in Sade (1990–1998, 3: 54): “Destruction being one of the chief laws of Nature, nothing that destroys can be criminal. How could an action which so well serves Nature ever be outrageous to her? That destruction on which man prides himself is, moreover, nothing but a chimera; murder is no destruction at all, and he who commits it does but alter forms, he gives back to Nature the elements which her skilled hands instantly uses to repay other beings. Now, as creations cannot but be a source of enjoyment for him who engage in them, the murderer prepares one for Nature, he furnishes her materials which she employs without delay, and the act fools have had the madness to blame becomes nothing but meritorious in the eyes of that universal agency. It is our pride that thinks about elevating murder into crime: esteeming ourselves the foremost creatures in the universe, we have stupidly imagined that every hurt this sublime creature could endure should necessarily be an enormous crime; we have believed that Nature would perish should our marvelous species be annihilated on this globe, whereas, on the contrary, the whole destruction of this species would return to Nature the creative faculty she has entrusted to us, give her back an energy which we take away from her by propagating ourselves!”
- 39.
Sade, La philosophie dans le boudoir (1795), in Sade (1990–1998, 3: 48). Others have drawn ethical and political conclusions from this consideration, apparently less violent than those of de Sade, but certainly no less cynical: see La Vergata (1990: 42–46) on Mandeville, who significantly, also makes free use of arguments invented by natural theologians. Furthermore, in practice de Sade only adds murder to the means (many of which are in fact no less aggressive) that according to Buffon are used by men to prevent excessive population growth (see Chap. 2: 2.12, and note 75).
- 40.
Cruelty, then, is a positive sentiment, original and authentic, the first impulse of every living being; it is creative energy, since it offers nature matter with which to carry out its eternal work. “Nature, our universal mother, only speaks to us of ourselves; nothing is as egoistical as her voice, and what we recognise in her most clearly is the immutable and holy advice that she gives us to procure ourselves pleasure, no matter to whose detriment. One can object that the others could take their revenge on us. So be it! Only the strongest will be right. Well, this is the primitive state of war and perpetual destruction for which the hand of nature created us and in which it is only convenient for her that we should be […] Cruelty, far from being a vice, is the first sentiment that nature impresses on us. The child breaks his rattle, bites his nurse’s breast, chokes his little bird, long before he reaches the age of reason. Cruelty is imprinted (empreinte) instinctive in animals, in which […] the laws of nature meet in a much stronger way than in us. Cruelty is much nearer to nature among savages than among civilised men; it would then be absurd to declare it a consequence of depravation […] I repeat: cruelty is in nature. We are all born with a portion of cruelty that only education modifies; but education is not in nature; it harms nature’s holy effects as much as cultivation harms trees. In your orchards compare the tree abandoned to nature’s care with that of which your art takes care by coercing it, and you will see which is the most beautiful, you will find which gives you the best fruit. Cruelty is nothing but the energy of man not yet corrupted by civilisation; therefore it is a virtue and not a vice. Strike down your laws, your punishments, your customs, and cruelty will cease to have dangerous effects, since it will never act without risking immediate rejection in the same way. It is in the state of civilisation that cruelty is dangerous, because he who is offended is almost always without the strength or the means to repel the insult; instead, in the state of incivility (incivilisation), if cruelty is exerted against the weak, thereby harming a being that yields to the strong by the law of nature, it is not in the least disadvantageous” (Sade, La philosophie dans le boudoir (1795), in Sade (1990–1998, 3: 68–69).
- 41.
In the eighteenth century there were no examples of “Darwinian” language. Diderot tried to represent a widespread behaviour when he put this prompt apologia of the law of the strongest in the name of the laws of nature into the mouth of Rameau’s Nephew: “You know the saying: ‘if one thief steals from another, the devil laughs’ […] In nature all the species prey on one another; in society all the classes do the same. We mete out justice to one another without benefit of the law”. Later on, the same character raises himself for a moment from small-time dishonesty to the heights of de Sadian criminality: “If there’s any area in which it really matters to be sublime, it is, above all else, in wickedness” (Diderot 2006: 30–31, 58). Rameau speaks and behaves like the “struggleforlifeur” Paul Astier in Alphonse Daudet’s pièce La lutte pour la vie (1890). Shall we then say Rameau is a social Darwinist ante litteram?
- 42.
The other was Condorcet’s Esquisse d’un tableau historique des progrès de l’esprit humain (1795).
- 43.
Malthus 1798, Chapters XVIII–XIX. The theological-natural part of the argument of Malthus disappeared in the second edition of the work. I discussed these problems in La Vergata (1990), Chapter 3.
- 44.
Critical editions appeared in 1991 and 1997. In the following pages I will refer to its English translation (2013; Italian text in Leopardi 1997), indicated as Z, followed by page number of the Italian manuscript and, when useful, the date.
- 45.
See Haller’s words quoted above (German originals in notes 10, 14). Leopardi tried to “excuse nature”, that is “to account for the accidental difficulties (inconvenienti) that occur in the system of nature”, by claiming that “sometimes, indeed very often, they are only relative difficulties and nature has foreseen them, but far from preventing them it has, on the contrary, included them in its great order, and arranged them in accordance with its ends. Nature is the most benign mother of the whole, and also of the particular genera and species that are contained in it, but not of individuals. These often serve to their cost the good of the genus, of the species or of the whole, and the good of the whole is sometimes also served, to their own detriment, by the species and the genus itself” (Z 1530–1531, 20 August 1821). Death serves life, and destruction serves reproduction and preservation, but only “with respect to the whole” and only accidentally, “sometimes in one way and sometimes another”, to some of its parts. Hunting serves hunters, since nature has “meant [some animals] to be food, etc., for other, stronger creatures”. And destructions that do not seem to serve immediately any end (such as that of birds that die for lack of food in a countryside covered in snow) serve nature, as “its own ends are served by this same destruction” (ibidem). These were typically natural-theological arguments, especially that most hard to die, according to which nature cares for species and genera, not individuals. Elsewhere Leopardi presented the imperfections of the system of nature as inevitable blemishes in a “machine that is very vast and composed of countless different parts”, however well thought out. These, he said, are “breakdowns that cannot be ascribed to the maker or the making”, and, if we consider the dimensions, the complexity and duration of the machine are much less serious than thought at first sight, as they do not hamper “the way of proceeding that nature had prescribed and originally laid down for things” (Z 1079–1080, 23 May 1821). As Luporini (1980: 70) comments, in such passages Leopardi was under the spell of his youthful desire to oppose “nature’s generous disorder and squandering” to “‘geometrising’ and ‘Platonic’ reason”.
- 46.
If it was established in Nature’s plan, we read in a note of 1 December 1820, that man was to become necessarily what he is now, then “either the order of nature and things is totally absurd and contradictory or we must necessarily admit a religion. Because if man had inevitably to be unhappy, as happens now, it follows that, to the first among beings, not being is better than being, and it follows not only that man should not love and preserve his life but that he should destroy it, in such a way that his very existence contains I won’t say the seeds or basis of its own destruction, but almost its formal and complete destruction. It follows that life excludes life, existence, since man would be brought into existence only to strive not to exist once he knew his true destiny. A situation that would amount to an absurdity and a fundamental and primary contradiction in nature’s system. On the contrary, if man was not meant to be what he is now, if nature had created him differently, if it had put every possible obstacle in the way of his knowing what he knows, and becoming what he has become, then it is impossible to deduce from the present state of man, and the absurdities resulting from it, anything about the true, natural primitive, and immutable order of things. Just as if an animal breaks a leg this does not enable us to deduce anything about nature as a whole, because it is a particular misfortune. So the present state of mankind in all its absurdity should be considered as a particularity, independent of the order and system that is general and destined, and constant, and primordial. For if there is also no more remedy for man, there is no more remedy even for someone who loses a leg or is crushed by a rock. As long as the malady is not the fault of nature, a flaw in the system, inherent in the universal order, but is a kind exception, a misfortune, an accidental error in the smooth running of the said system.” (Z 364–366; translation slightly modified).
- 47.
The last quotations are taken from what can be considered as an essay on its own on human sociability—Z 3773–810—written between 25 and 30 October 1823; see Raciti (2020).
- 48.
It was Friedrich Nietzsche who first represented Leopardi as a fellow nihilist (Polizzi 2017, which discusses many interpretations on this issue).
- 49.
Rousseau’s “doux sentiment de l’existence” immediately comes to mind (see above: note 27). On the relation between Leopardi and Rousseau, see Luporini (1980: 37–77).
- 50.
Leopardi derided anthropocentric teleology many times. In a fragment entitled Dialogue between two animals, e.g. a horse and a bull (Dialogo tra due bestie, p.e. un cavallo e un toro, 1820–1821, in Leopardi 1997: 610–613), mankind has become extinct, and their place has been taken by apes, who behave more or less like men. Both the horse and the bull pity men’s folly. However, the bull believes that the world is made for bulls, and that “oxiness” (buassaggine) is the best gift that nature can make for an animal, and he who is not a bull is not lucky in this world. The horse replies that it is made for horses. The subject is fully developed in the Dialogue between a Sprite and a Gnome (Dialogo di un Folletto e di uno Gnomo, written between 2 and 6 March, 1824), where the two protagonists concur in poking fun at mankind’s insignificance and their absurd belief that animals have been created for men’s benefit: pigs for meat (here Leopardi mentions Chrysippus, and refers in a note to Cicero’s De natura deorum, II, 64), or, most ridiculous, mosquitoes and fleas “to make them practice patience” (a sardonic criticism of ideas instanced in Chap. 2 of the present book). All animals, from lizards to gnats, have such beliefs (Leopardi 1982: 86–95). Here again, however, the Sprite and the Gnome themselves disagree on whether the world was created for sprites or gnomes (Blasucci 2003; Polizzi 2008: 55–102). In Voltaire’s Discours en vers various animals were also represented as thinking that the earth had been created for them only. This is a topos from Antiquity (suffice it to mention Lucian of Samosata). Enlightenment authors often criticised European customs through the eyes of foreign visitors or observers from outside, be they a “naïve savage”, as in Voltaire’s L’ingénu and in Diderot’s Supplément au voyage de Bougainville, an Oriental visitor (in Voltaire’s Zadig), or an extra-terrestrial being (in Voltaire’s Micromégas). Voltaire used animals to ridicule man’s pride in a number of contes (Battaglia 2002).
- 51.
Here is the whole passage.: “The whole of nature lacks sensation, with the exception of animals. And they alone are unhappy, and not being is better for them than being. Less unhappy, though, the less sensitive they are (both species and individuals) and vice versa. The whole of nature, and the eternal order of things is not aimed in any way at all at the happiness of sensitive beings and animals. In fact it is quite the opposite. Nor is their own nature and the eternal order of their being aimed at. Sensitive beings are naturally souffrants, a part of the universe that is essentially souffrante. Since they do exist and their species perpetuate themselves, it must be said that they are a necessary link in the great chain of beings, and in the order and the existence of this universe as it is, to which their harm is useful, since their existence is harmful to them, being essentially a souffrance. Therefore this necessity of their being is an imperfection of nature, and the universal order, an essential and eternal imperfection, not one that is accidental. If however the souffrance of the smallest part of nature, which is the whole of the animal genus taken together, deserves to be called an imperfection. At least it is a very small part and like the tiniest speck in universal nature in the order and existence of the great whole.” (Z 4133–4134; translation slightly modified).
- 52.
Or, stated with syllogistic consequentialism: “Since happiness does not seem to be able to exist except in beings conscious of themselves (senzienti se medesimi), that is in living beings, and such consciousness of oneself cannot be conceived of without self-love, and self-love necessarily desires an infinite good, and it does not seem that that can exist in the world, it follows that not only men and animals, but any being at all, cannot be or is happy, that happiness (which by its nature could not be other than good or an infinite pleasure) is by its nature impossible, and that the universe is by its nature incapable of happiness, which turns out to be a being of reason and a pure product of man’s imagination. And since moreover the absence of happiness in beings who love themselves implies unhappiness, it follows that life, or rather the feeling of this existence divided among all the beings of the universe, is by its nature, and by virtue of the eternal order and of the mode of being of things, inseparable from and almost the same as unhappiness and implies unhappiness, hence to live and to be unhappy are almost synonymous”. (Z 4137, 3 May 1825). A “being of reason” (ens rationis) is a purely mental object, or a concept without an object.
- 53.
- 54.
Brioschi (1980: 291, note 32) cites two passages from d’Holbach and Goethe that present similarities with that of Leopardi. In 1812 a fourteen-year-old Leopardi wrote a sixty-page “Compendium of natural history” (“Compendio di storia naturale”, in Leopardi 2021) using works in his father’s library, including Italian translations of Abbé Pluche’s Spectacle de la nature (5th edn. Venice 1786; see Polizzi 2008, 2021) and of Buffon’s Histoire naturelle (Venice 1791). In 1829 Leopardi was offered the chair of natural history at the University of Parma, but he refused for health reasons. He was always interested in animals (Polizzi 2003, 2008: 209–226; 2015: 45–61).
- 55.
However, there is no trace of evolution in him. He never mentioned Lamarck, nor any other pre-Darwinian speculation. His main references were mainly to the ancient problem of the eternity of matter and its relation to life and thinking, as discussed by sceptics such as Bayle and materialists such as d’Holbach: see Casini (2018).
- 56.
Leopardi knew, whether directly or, more probably indirectly, Bayle, Locke, Montesquieu, d’Holbach, Voltaire, D’Alembert, Buffon, Maupertuis, Volney, but probably not La Mettrie and Condillac. On the Enlightenment sources of his thought, see Binni (1966, 1973); Sansone (1964); Timpanaro (1969, 1982); Biral (1974); Brioschi (1980: 125–143). Timpanaro (1969) also emphasised the importance of ancient pessimism. On Leopardi as a moralist, see Luporini (1980: 4–5). On his concept of nature, see Biral (1959) and Timpanaro (1969: 380–407, 1985).
- 57.
Leopardi praised Locke for demonstrating the fallacy of innate ideas. Descartes deserves credit for destroying the errors of the Peripatetics, “but the edifice erected by him” is not more solid than theirs. Newton’s system, too, is “already tottering”: it is nothing but “a hypothesis and a fable” (Z 2708–2709).
- 58.
Z 4510–4511. The passage is quoted by Leopardi in French from an edition of Rousseau’s works published in Amsterdam in 1786 under the title Les pensées (vol. 2: 200). I used the translation in Leopardi (2013: 2059).
- 59.
On the history of the idea that “it is better not to be born”, see Brogi (2012), which contains a vast critical bibliography.
- 60.
“Nobil natura è quella / Che a sollevar s’ardisce / Gli occhi mortali incontra / Al comun fato, e che con franca lingua, / Nulla al ver detraendo, / Confessa il mal che ci fu dato in sorte, / E il basso stato e frale […] / Quella che grande e forte / Mostra nel soffrir, ne gli odii e l’ire / Fraterne, ancor più gravi / d’ogni altro danno, accresce / Alle miserie sue, l’uomo incolpando / Del suo dolor, ma dà la colpa a quella / Che veramente è rea, che de’ mortali / Madre è di parto e di voler matrigna. / Costei chiama inimica; e incontro a questa / Congiunta esser pensando, / Siccome è il vero, ed ordinata in pria / L’umana compagnia, / Tutti fra se confederati estima / Gli uomini, e tutti abbraccia / Con vero amor, porgendo / Valida e pronta ed aspettando aita / Negli alterni perigli e nelle angosce / Della guerra comune. […] Così fatti pensieri / quando fien, come fur, palesi al volgo, / E quell’orror che primo / contra l’empia natura / Strinse i mortali in social catena, / Fia ricondotto in parte / Da verace saper, l’onesto e il retto / Conversar cittadino, / E giustizia e pietade, altra radice / Avranno allor che non superbe fole, / Ove fondata proibità del volgo / Così star suole in piede / Quale star può quel ch’ha in error la sede” (Leopardi, La ginestra, o il fiore del deserto, 1836: lines 11–57; Engl. tr. Leopardi 2015: 23–32; quotation from 26–28).
- 61.
Both Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, especially the latter, were acquainted with Leopardi’s poetical and philosophical work. See Polizzi (2017), which also discusses a vast literature on these issues.
- 62.
“Wille” was an unfortunate and misleading term, as Lovejoy (1911) remarked. Human volition was only one among its numberless manifestations. Lovejoy also makes an impressive list of the many senses of the concept in Schopenhauer, and of its numerous analogies with concepts in other philosophies and worldviews, from the Indian Vedanta to Schelling’s Absolute. In spite of what seems to be the prevailing usage, and in order to stress the metaphysical meaning of the term, in the following pages I write “Will” instead of “will”, when quoting from authoritative translations.
- 63.
- 64.
Schopenhauer provided plenty of examples of adaptation, in a quite traditional style. Although he did not mention Archdeacon Paley’s name, he did include the curious use of the babirusa’s teeth which, as we saw in Chap. 2, had increased Paley’s admiration for contrivance in nature (Schopenhauer 2018, Supplement to Book II, Chapter 26: 344). He went as far as praising natural theology (Schopenhauer 1889: 254).
- 65.
- 66.
As Schopenhauer himself acknowledged (albeit rather unwillingly), he developed this notion by modifying and generalising the concept of “polarity” which played a major role in Schelling’s system. He chided Schelling for indulging in “fanciful analogies”, but he recognized that these were “usually imaginative, spirited, or at least clever” (2018, Chapter 7: 90; Chapter 24: 328. For Schopenhauer, however, polarity was not, as for Schelling, the ultimate cause of dynamic tensions and processes behind phenomena. It was itself the manifestation of a more fundamental conflict. On the relation between Schopenhauer and Schelling, see Segala (2009).
- 67.
- 68.
It is useful to digress on Schopenhauer’s criticism of Lamarck, which the reader is nevertheless free to skip. Here I will use his own words in On the Will in Nature (1835) as far as possible. Schopenhauer was quick to interpret Lamarck’s vague references to the will and the needs of animals in a literal sense. “Most certainly—he wrote—the shape and organization of each animal species has been determined by its own will according to the circumstances in which it wished to live”. As a result, the structure of each animal “is adapted to its will”. This truth forces itself upon “thoughtful zoologists and zootomists with such cogency, that unless their mind is at the same time purified by a deeper philosophy, it may lead them into strange errors”. This happened even to “the immortal Lamarck”. He quite correctly perceived that the primary element determining the animal organization is the will of the animal itself. But he, too, was a victim of the backward state of metaphysics in France, where the views of Locke and of “his feeble follower, Condillac”, misled him into believing that bodies are things in themselves, that time and space are qualities of the things in themselves, and where Kant’s doctrine of the ideal nature of space and time, and of all that is represented in them, had not yet penetrated. Lamarck therefore conceived the construction of living beings as occurring in time, through a succession of forms. This was an error as gross as those produced by the absurd atomic theories of the French and the opposite “edifying physico-theological considerations of the English”. Luckily, both had been banished from Germany by Kant’s profound influence. If Lamarck had had the courage to carry his theory through consistently to its consequences, he ought to have assumed a “primary animal” which had neither shape nor organs, and then transformed itself according to climate and local conditions, “into myriads of animal shapes, from the gnat to the elephant”. But this “primary animal” (Urthier) was, as such, metaphysical and outside of time, not physical and within time. The will does not proceed from the intellect, nor could any animal, with its intellect, exist before the will had made its appearance “as a mere accident, a secondary, or rather tertiary, thing”. It is, on the contrary, the Will which is the prius, the thing in itself. Its phenomenon, that is, its manifestation as mere representation in the cognitive intellect in its form of space and time, is the animal “fully equipped, with all its organs, which represent the will to live in those particular circumstances”. Among these organs is the intellect, which, like the rest of those organs, is exactly adapted to the mode of life of each animal, whereas, according to Lamarck, it is the will which arises out of knowledge of what is necessary to live. “Behold the countless varieties of animal shapes; how entirely is each of them the mere image of its volition, the evident expression of the strivings of the will which constitute its character”. The mechanical instincts and physiological functions of animals may help explain each other mutually because the will, without knowledge, is the agent in both. The will “equipped itself with every organ and every weapon, offensive as well as defensive”. It has likewise “provided itself” in every animal shape with an intellect as a means of preservation for the individual and, above all, the species. So does the intellect everywhere, even in the most intelligent animals (including man), serve the will, and not the other way around. Every living being “remains true to its destiny, and subservient to the will” (Schopenhauer 1889: 262, 264–265, 273).
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La Vergata, A. (2023). Evil in Nature. In: Images of the Economy of Nature, 1650-1930. Evolutionary Biology – New Perspectives on Its Development, vol 7. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-31023-2_3
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