Abstract
Benedict Spinoza (1632–1677), David Hume (1711–1776) and Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) are each, in different ways, important in the development of ethical thought in the West. They interface with paganism and the issue of idolatry in diverse and interesting ways. For the pagan, Spinoza’s contribution is to be found in his pantheistic understanding of godhead and/or the cosmos. In this, he follows in the tradition of Xenophanes and Parmenides – if not also Democritus, Epicurus and the Stoics. The importance of these thinkers and especially Spinoza is that they oppose what has become the prevailing theological view in the West of God as a transcendent and totally separate or distinct being from the manifest world. Pantheism (‘all-God’) stresses the identity of the divine with the universe. Both Hume and Kant, by contrast, are theists though in substantially different ways. Hume may be variously described as a hedonist, utilitarian, phenomenalist and, above all, as a skeptic, but even as a Christian he draws knowledge of God from nature, and theism for him is accepted on a basis of probability rather than empirical observation. Hume raises questions that challenge pagan understandings of the miraculous or magical, but he does not deny belief in the extraordinary and marvelous – seeing it instead as something natural to the human. In contrast to the abstract achievement of Spinoza, Hume offers to a pagan a refreshingly liberated approach to ethics that is grounded despite a concomitant epistemological uncertainty. Like Hume and Spinoza, Kant dismisses ritual behavior as worthless. He is closer to the latter in formulating a metaphysically based ethics, but for him nature is something secondary. Unlike with Spinoza, for Kant the physical is no part of or a vehicle for the divine. Nevertheless, though his thought has much less affinity with paganism than does that of Hume and Spinoza, Kant is still important for both understanding pagan ethics and ethics as a whole.
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Notes
- 1.
Ethics I Proposition 14 [II/56] (Curley 1996: 9): “Except God, no substance can be or be conceived.”
- 2.
Spinoza (Short Treatise on God, Man, and His Well-Being 1.8. See further, Ethics I Propositions 29 & 31 [II/71f] and II Axiom 5 [II/86] {Curley 1996: 20f & 32}) draws on Thomas Aquinas’ distinction between natura naturans and natura naturata to consider the former as nature as a self-contained being and the latter as the dependent modes and substantial things of nature. Basically, natura naturata is understood as passive nature (Corrington’s ‘nature natured’), while natura naturans is used to express active or creative nature – the vital process of becoming in contrast to the actual forms and qualities of all things that exist (Corrington’s ‘nature naturing’). But continuing more in the direct line of Thomistic thought, by the High Renaissance, natura naturans is identified as God per se.
- 3.
- 4.
Ethics II Proposition 49 Scholium IV-A [II/135-6].
- 5.
Ibid. Scholium IV-B (Curley 1996: 68).
- 6.
Spinoza considers that the fundamental ‘affects’ are joy/pleasure, sadness/pain and desire/human appetite – with everything else from gladness to remorse, from hope to fear, from pity to indignation, from pride to scorn, and so forth arising from these three basic affections. For Spinoza’s ‘Definitions of the Affects’, see the Ethics III [II/190–204] (Curley 1996: 104–113).
- 7.
DesJardins (1999: 145).
- 8.
Note that as much of a materialist as is Hobbes, he does not consider free will and determinism as incompatible. This became known as the doctrine of Compatibility. While the human is restricted by natural law, there nevertheless is the freedom to follow natural inclinations in the same way that water, though pulled by gravity or contained by banks, otherwise flows freely. See Leviathan Part 2 Chapter 21 Paragraph 1 (Hobbes 1651).
- 9.
Ethics V Proposition 42 [II/308] (Curley 1996: 180).
- 10.
Ibid. IV Proposition 37 Scholium 1 [II/237] (Curley 1996: 135).
- 11.
Ethics IV Appendix XXVI [II/273].
- 12.
For Spinoza, all thought and action that relates to God or godhead (Deus sive Natura) constitutes religion. Morality itself concerns the desire to do good under the auspices of reason. And, finally, the joining together of reasonably moral men and women is true amity. Spinoza equates friendship with honor (ibid. IV Proposition 37 Scholium 1 [II/236] – Curley 1996: 134f).
- 13.
In the Ethics, Spinoza moves away from any projection of human attributes to God (e.g., I Proposition 8 Scholium 2 [II/49] - Curley 1996: 4). For Spinoza’s presentation of the Mosaic fall of Adam and the subsequent recovery of freedom through “the patriarchs, guided by the Spirit of Christ,” see IV Proposition 68 Scholium [II/261–262] (Curley 1996: 152).
- 14.
While still in his twenties, Hume published his authoritative three volume Treatise of Human Nature (1739). Because this work was not received well by the public, he was forced to abandon his hopes for an academic career. He worked variously as a librarian and a diplomat (Austria, Italy and France) and eventually became Under-Secretary of State in London. Continuing to write as a political essayist and historian, he gained some success with his Essays Moral and Political (1741–1742) as well as Political Discourses (1752) and even greater renown with the History of England in six volumes (1754–1762). He recast Book I of the Treatise as An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (1748) and Book III as An Enquiry Concerning the Principle of Morals (1751). In 1757, he produced The Natural History of Religion, but the complementary Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion did not appear until 1779, 3 years after his death, because his friends had persuaded him not to publish it. Martin Bell tells of the visit 7 weeks before Hume’s death by James Boswell, the biographer of Samuel Johnson. Boswell found the philosopher “calm and cheerful” despite holding to the prospect of there being no afterlife. Bell (1990: 1). See also MacIntyre (1998: 171).
- 15.
Darshan is the Hindu term for experiencing (literally ‘seeing’) the divine.
- 16.
Treatise on Human Nature 415 (II.3.3).
- 17.
Hume adopts what amounts to a utilitarian criterion for determining the good and social approval. Along with Francis Hutcheson, he apparently follows Shaftesbury’s ‘moral sense theory’ that holds that human beings retain a natural ability to differentiate between right and wrong (An Enquiry Concerning the Principle of Morals V Part II 187–190; Selby-Bigge 1975: 230–232). Moral sense theory distinguishes between the spectator, the agent and the receiver. The spectator observes the acts performed by the agent and judges them in terms of approval or disapproval according to the feelings of pleasure they arise in the spectator. The receiver of the act also responds on the basis of the agreeable or disagreeable feelings it occasions. When Hutcheson speaks of ‘the greatest happiness for the greatest numbers’, he is concerned with how many receivers are beneficially affected by the conduct of the agent.
- 18.
Personal communication (7 March 2014).
- 19.
In An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding X (Selby-Bigge 1975: 118), Hume refers to “the strong propensity of mankind to the extraordinary and the marvelous … This is our natural way of thinking … to believe and report, with the greatest vehemence and assurance, all religious miracles[.]”.
- 20.
Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion I (Bell 1990: 45f).
- 21.
Ibid. VIII (p. 97).
- 22.
Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion XI (Bell 1990: 115).
- 23.
An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (Selby-Bigge 1975: 155 n. 1).
- 24.
Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion XII (Bell 1990: 139).
- 25.
- 26.
Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion X (Bell 1990: 112).
- 27.
Hume himself clearly recognizes human iniquity: “Man is the greatest enemy of man. Oppression, injustice, contempt, contumely, violence, sedition, war, calumny, treachery, fraud; by these they mutually torment each other: And they would soon dissolve that society which they had formed, were it not for the dread of still greater ills, which must attend their separation” (Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion X [Bell 1990: 105f]).
- 28.
Hume. ‘Of Superstition and Enthusiasm’ in Essays: Moral, Political and Literary. Elsewhere, Hume states that perhaps “no view of things are more proper to promote superstition, than such as encourage the blind amazement, the diffidence, and melancholy of mankind” (Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion XII (Bell 1990: 123)).
- 29.
Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion XII (Bell 1990: 131).
- 30.
Ibid. (133). “Thus the motives of vulgar superstition have no great influence on general conduct; nor is their operation favourable to morality in the instances, where they predominate.” (134). For MacIntyre (1998: 174f), not only is Hume “notoriously inconsistent,” his weakness lies precisely in his moral conservatism. Apart from his defense of suicide, Hume is mostly interested in explaining – rather than criticizing – the rules behind the moral status quo that he accepts.
- 31.
Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion XII (Bell 1990: 134). In referring to the self-referential altruism that is part of the good life, Mackie (1977: 170) employs Hume’s term ‘confined generosity’ and claims that this, along with self-love, is not only the best “we can reasonably hope for” but is an important ingredient in the inevitable social arena of cooperation, competition and conflict.
- 32.
Hume’s skepticism is twofold. It is both an epistemological approach to all knowledge and, specifically, it is an argument against both the notion of an a priori transcendent yet inscrutable deity and the argument by design for an a posteriori ‘anthropomorphitic’ God. For Hume, polytheism is as credible as either theism or skepticism. But more broadly his epistemological skepticism seeks to establish an all-pervasive philosophical uncertainty. We can never have definite knowledge of cause and effect. At best, we can only presume on the basis of probability that the sun will rise tomorrow or that if I hit the tennis ball with my racket it will ricochet. Hume considers matters of fact simply to be empirical probabilities, whereas conceptual relations (e.g., between numbers or ideas) constitute a priori knowledge (refer to Hume’s A Treatise of Human Nature I, Part III, Section I ‘Of knowledge’ and Section II ‘Of probability; and of the idea of cause and effect’). All experience is phenomenal in “that everything, which appears to the mind, is nothing but a perception” (ibid. 243).
- 33.
A Treatise of Human Nature I, Part III, Section VI ‘Of the inference from the impression to the idea’. See also, ‘Of the Reason of Animals’ in which Hume claims: “To consider the matter aright, reason is nothing but a wonderful and unintelligible instinct in our souls” (228). Nevertheless, Hume argues that the soul itself is simply a collection of varying impressions in constant movement (300).
- 34.
In addition to the skeptics already mentioned, some others who have used skepticism concretely in the development of their thought include Pico della Mirandola (1463–1494), Desiderius Erasmus (1467–1536), Henry Cornelius Agrippa von Nettesheim (1486–1535), Marin Mersenne (1588–1648), René Descartes (1596–1650), Pierre Gassendi (1592–1655), Blaise Pascal (1623–1662), Joseph Glanvill (1636–1680), Pierre Bayle (1647–1706), François Voltaire (1694–1778), Gottlob Ernst Schulze (1761–1833), William Kingdon Clifford (1845–1879, Josiah Royce (1855–1916), George Santayana (1863–1952) and Stanley Cavell (b. 1926). Kant is to be included here as well. Indeed, Reese (1999: 709) contends that the modern concern of philosophy with epistemology is invariably a concern with, if not endorsement of, skepticism.
- 35.
Kant develops his understanding of epistemology in his Kritik der reinen Vernunft (Critique of Pure Reason; 1781, revised 1787). See Smith (1978). A shorter version of Kant’s first Critique is to be found in his Prologemena zu einer jeden künftigen Metaphysik or Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics that Will Be Able to Come Forward as Science (1783). See Beck (1950). This was followed by the Kritik der practischen Vernunft (Critique of Practical Reason; 1788) in which Kant is concerned with morality. See Beck (1956). As an initial sketch of his key ideas in the second Critique, Kant published Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten in 1785. See Ellington (1981). In his Kritik der Urtheilskraft (Critique of Judgment; 1790), Kant turns to aesthetics. See Pluhar (1987). Some of the other important works by Kant are Metaphysische Anfangsgründe der Naturwissenschaft (Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science; 1786 – see Ellington 1975), Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der blossen Vernunft (Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone; 1793: Palmquist 1992; etext:3–5, however, argues that a more accurate translation of the title of Kant’s book on religion should be: Religion within the Bounds of Bare Reason) and Metaphysiche Anfangsgründe der Rechts- und Tugendlehre (Metaphysics of Morals; 1797).
- 36.
For the possibility of predication, Kant borrows from Aristotle the notion of categories: substance, quantity, quality, relation, place, time, position, possession, action and passivity. These are the concepts by which understanding organizes the data acquired through the senses. Kant considers that there are four ‘types’ of predicative conditions upon which a concept depends: quantity (unity, plurality, totality), quality (reality, negation, limitation), relation (inherence/subsistence, causality/dependence, community) and modality (possibility-impossibility, existence-nonexistence, necessity-contingency). Modality refers to whether the predicate is already contained within the concept or not.
- 37.
Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals 429. Nevertheless, MacIntyre (1998: 198), referring to the logical emptiness of Kant’s universalized moral precept in terms of verification, claims that “in practice the test of the categorical imperative imposes restrictions only on those insufficiently equipped with ingenuity.”
- 38.
Harvey (2005).
- 39.
Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone 5.4.2.2 [161] (1793): “…whatever be substituted for the moral service of God, it is all one and all equal in value” [vide https://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/ethics/kant/religion/religion-within-reason.htm (accessed 14 July 2014)]. Nevertheless, in the Critique of Practical Reason (Chapter II), Kant affirms that “The doctrine of Christianity … alone satisfies the strictest demand of practical reason.” While he allows that the Cynics are concerned with simplicity of nature and common sense, Stoics with wisdom and Epicureans with prudence, for him Christian morality is distinguished by its ‘holiness’.
- 40.
Miller (1995: 83). See in particular Chapter II (“Of the Dialect of Pure Reason in defining the Conception of the ‘Summum Bonum’”) in Kant’s Critique of Practical Reason” for the necessity to assume the immortality of the soul (IV) and the existence of God (V) if the moral law is to be achieved and harmonious with happiness.
- 41.
- 42.
“Critique of Aesthetic Judgment” B.29 [268] – “General Remark” under “The Dynamically Sublime in Nature”: http://oll.libertyfund.org/titles/1217 (accessed 14 July 2014).
- 43.
The Critique of Practical Reason Chapter II.
- 44.
Ibid.
- 45.
Critique of Judgment 4 B. 29 – vide Bernard (1892/1914).
- 46.
Palmquist (1992; etext:12). In his Lectures on Ethics (83f), Kant claims that “supernatural religion is not opposed to natural religion, but completes it.”
- 47.
Ibid. pp 10f.
- 48.
See also “Humanism – Confucian and Western” in Chap. 14 supra.
- 49.
- 50.
Bron Taylor, however, comments that “Religion-legitimated imperialism, misanthropy, and homophobia, and antipathy toward ‘vermin’ and ‘pests’ among non-human beings, I hope, pagans will not want to honor” (personal communication of 7 March 2014).
- 51.
In contrast to Kant’s moral law as unobtainable without God’s grace (vide Palmquist 1992; etext:17–19), in his An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals V Part II 187 (Selby-Bigge 1975: 230), Hume appears almost to be obliquely discounting the remoteness of Kant’s ethics: “Virtue, placed at such a distance, is like a fixed star, which … is so infinitely removed as to affect the senses, neither with light nor heat.”
- 52.
Pagan freedom includes the ongoing search for the honorable in social philosophy, environmental ethics, biodiversity, animal welfare, humanitarian toleration and the necessities of compromise. Being honorable involves more than snap decisions but instead and much more often great patience, sincere contemplation and honest sensitivity in order to find the winnowing rod for an ethical solution. One focus entails determining whose freedoms are being abrogated and why along with determining the necessity for the loss to any party involved. Of course in some types of emergency situations, a prolonged reflection is not commensurate to the making of the decision at hand. In such cases, the decision-makers might be allowed the privilege of choice and even the freedom occasionally to make honest mistakes.
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York, M. (2016). The Western Philosophical Tradition. In: Pagan Ethics. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-18923-9_5
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