PHILOS 3NN3 - ENLIGHTENMENT NOTES

Week One

➔ Descartes - Discourse on Method

◆ As soon as I had acquired some genre notions in physics and had noticed as I began to

test them in various [articular problems, where they could lead and how much they

differ from the principles used up to now, I believed that I could not keep them secret

without sinning gravely against the law which obliges us to do all in our power to

secure the general welfare of mankind

◆ For they opened my eyes to the possibility of gaining knowledge which would be very

useful in life, amd of discovering a practical philosophy which might replace the

speculative philosophy taught in the schools

◆ Through this philosophy we could know the power and action of fire, water, air, the

stars, the heavens and all the other bodies in our environment, as distinctly as we know

the various crafts of our artisans,; and we could use this knowledge… for all the purpose

which it is appropriate, and thus make ourselves, as it were, the lords and masters of

nature.

Week Two

➔ Isaac Newton

◆ People believed sunlight to be the purest and only form of light, however Newton

argued sunlight to be an accumulation of different forms of light.

◆ No deduction from an accepted principle, no matter how general or clearly derived

from past phenomena, can therefore pass for absolutely or physically certain, without

careful and continued experimental verification

 ◆ I have not been able to discover the cause of those properties of gravity from

phenomena, and I frame no hypotheses; and hypotheses, whether metaphysical or

physical, whether occult qualities or mechanical, have no place in experimental

philosophy.

◆ In this philosophy particular propositions are inferred from the phenomena, and

afterwards rendered general by induction, thus, it was that… the laws of motion and of

gravitation were discovered. And to us it is enough that gravity does really exist, and

act according to the laws which we have explained, and abundantly serves to account

for all the motions of the celestial bodies of our sea.

◆ Law of attraction:

● Criticized by philosophers who follow Descartes teachings; Descartes proposed

that things only move due to impact, things cannot operate without impact or

contact.

◆ Hypothesis (Newton) - speculative conjecture that no experiment can confirm or refute

● It may seem to explain something, but since it cannot be experimentally tested,

really it is an obstacle to the advance understanding

◆ Aristotle - science is the science of causes; scientific knowledge is knowing causes

● Descartes agreed with this notion, that science is based upon causes

◆ Newton - scientific knowledge without any knowledge of causes. Nothing but a

mathematical rule for prediction

● Argues science does not require causes

➔ Georges-Louis Leclerc, Le comte de Buffon

◆ Natural history: it is a third alternative to science

◆ Believes science to be endless, not finite

◆ “Experiments must be sought, systems must be feared”

◆ 1749: Natural History, vols 1-3

 ● Vol 1. Premier Discourse. Geological history of earth

● Vol 2. Theory of reproduction

● Vol 3. Human cultures and character

◆ Later:

● Vols. 4-15: History of quadrupeds

● 16-24: history of birds

● 25-29: history of minerals

● 30-36: supplements

➔ Buffon, Natural History, vol 1. History of the earth

◆ Descartes, principles of philosophy

● Speculative account of the origin of the earth and the solar system.

● Matter is inert, the early universe one continuous inert mass

● Receives a motion by God.

● Cosmic bodies form

● The earth arises from a cooling star

◆ Newton

● Heavily disagreed with Descartes claims

● Time is an inert, transcendent dimension in which natural changes are

situated.

◆ Leibniz

● Space and time are thing in themselves, solely a matter of relations among

things

◆ Emill du Catelet

● Time is therefore in reality nothing else than the order of successive beings and

one forms the idea of it only insofar as one considers it as the order of their
 succession. Thus there is no time without thus, beings successively arranged in a

continuous series

➔ Vol 2: theory of reproduction

◆ Organic molecules and internal molds

◆ The molecules are the most primitive form life takes, theta rise automatically from the

early chemistry of the new planet

◆ All more complicated organisms are rapports among multitudes of these molecules.

◆ All living bodies contain a surplus of these molecules

➔ Vol 3: Human cultures and characters

◆ Accepts linnaeus’ classification of humans amount primitives

◆ Defends unity of the human species

◆ Allows possible degeneration under the influence of climates, which could result in

varieties in the human species

◆ First idea of races

➔ What is a species

◆ Traditional answer: logical collection of similar individuals

◆ Buffon: nor similarity, instead reproductive compatibility

◆ Species are “only a constant succession of similar individuals which reproduce

themselves.

➔ Linnaeus

◆ Binomial classification

◆ Systema Naturae

◆ Classification created to know what was there, especially for newly introduced species

◆ It is science, even if it does not use math, experiments, etc

➔ D’Alembert

◆ Spirit of systems vs systematic spirit

 ◆ The spirit of systems: seek a closed, finished system, a final truth. The old way of

philosophy.

◆ The systematic spirit: priority of method, being methodical or systematic in whatever

questions one investigates

◆ Linnaeus - The spirit of systems

◆ Buffon: the systematic spirit, the priority of method, no ideal of closed final science

➔ Chain of being: a linear hierarchy that stretches from inanimate substances through plants,

animals. Human beings, to God. Everything in the universe has its place on the chain.

➔ Principle of plenitude: no gaps in the chain. Everything that can be created was created.

➔ Nature makes no leaps (natura non facit saltus). The chain of being is continuous.

◆ No two blades of grass are entirely the same.

◆ Descend by imperceptible degree

➔ Against Linnaeus

◆ Systematic arrangements are an arbitrary order created by our mind

● Argues some species do not correlate to Linnaeus’ system. Such as a clam,

where will it fit in Linnaeus’ classification? Linnaeus would state that a Clam

to be the same as worms, Buffon is not amused.

◆ Unbroken continually makes it impossible to classify life in well-defined groups

◆ Knowledge of nature is knowledge of relations rather than essences

● We do not know things in themselves, only as they are related to other things

● Knowledge concerns relations. Not substances/ its method should be

comparative, not deductive, not like geometry

● Buffon, initial discourse. “Things, in themselves, have no existence for us; nor

does giving them a name call them into existence. But they begin to exist for us

when we become acquainted with their relations to each other”.

➔ Charles-Louis De Secondat, Baron de la Brède et de Montesquieu

◆ President (chief, magistrate) of the parliament (supreme court) pf the department

(province) of Bordeaux

● Parliament in the context: not an elective body, it is a law court. The president

of this government is the presiding president of the courtroom. Also the

responsibility of the parliament to register the King’s edicts. Meaning if they do

it, they can refuse any of the King’s edicts . The parliaments act as a mediator

between the people and the king.

◆ The persian letters (1721)

● Most of the “Letters” are by Usbek, a middle-aged persian nobleman, wealthy

and learned, now in Paris, writing to his friend Rustan in Persia

○ The tale is Usbek has a concubine and he tries to manage them by

writing letters, surprise surprise, it does not bode well as tensions

between the wives grow high. He was betrayed by favourite wife, who

killed herself out of revolt. The allegory here is comparing the situation

of Paris to that of a nobleman trying to have total control over his

affairs at home, whilst being uninvolved and enjoying his time in

France. He assumes everything is good, whereas it is not the case, his

wives and servants are too afraid to speak up, resulting in continuous

tensions rising with no proper resolution.

○ Was written in the period of the growing tensions of King Louis XVI

reign and the people’s dislike.

● Oriental despotism

○ No legal or constitutional limits

○ No social barriers to the despot’s action, nothing dividing the despot’s

power, no autonomous nobility.

 ○ Officials subject to dismissal at any moment, encourages corruption

○ No legal protection of property or person

○ Cruel punishments

○ A servile

● Despot - enemy of republican governance. Unconditional rule by a single

person.

○ Under these conditions, law becomes corrupt

● Montesquieu claimed that Asian nations were locked in despotism, and how it

was natural in Asian nations, however, was unnatural in European culture.

○ What makes Asia susceptible to despotism, was due to geographical

differences and a harsh government rule - a very very inaccurate and

baseless

● The Persian Letters was a satirical allusion to Paris. It was basically describing

the conditions of France through the guise of a nation the majority of civilians

have no knowledge about.

➔ The Fable of the Troglodytes

◆ Part One. the wicked Troglodytes

● Brutal, ferocious, barbaric

● Had a foreign king, who tried to civilize them, ended being K.O’d

● The troglodytes try having another leader, but each of the people complain

about the leader, then the leader ends up getting killed.

● They eventually gave up and decided to govern their own affairs

◆ Re-enact Hobbes’ war of all against all

● Hobbes stated the humans are naturally selfish and would try to destroy each

other as a result

◆ Part Two. the virtuous Troglodytes

 ● Generally; the tale is about how the virtuous troglodytes became fruitful due to

their innate virtue and goodness, being able to think for themself and enact

their natural goodness. Needing no strict governance, as they are naturally

capable of foreseeing their affairs.

◆ Exemplify the stoic and republican quality of political virtue

◆ The overall question - are people naturally virtuous and good, needing no one to dictate

how to be virtuous since it is innate or are people naturally selfish and need

governance?

➔ The Spirit of the Laws (1748)

◆ Distinguish physical and moral causes

● Physical - local conditions of climate, terrain, air, water, etc.

● Moral - condition determined by volition, belief, and action, as in law or

religion

● Hume’s explanation:

○ “By moral causes I mean all circumstances which are fitted to work on

the mind as motives or reasons, and which render a peculiar set of

manners habitual to us.”

◆ Montesquieu rejects the question of what is an ideal government. He offers no model of

a good or bad government. He argues it depends on the circumstances, there is no

universal norm on the ideal of the government. He also refused to speculate on the

original condition, what was the state of nature. He will consider only the documented

facts of history and experience. He is not interested in ideals, he wants to deal with

reality.

➔ Montesquie’s thesis: physical causes determine moral causes.

◆ Northern people are less susceptible to pain and prefer vigorous activities like hunting

and war
 ◆ Warm climate makes people languorous, incurious, passive, and indolent. Also produces

an exquisite sensitivity. Southern people are more sensual and vice ridden than

northern people

◆ Absence of temperate climate in Asia deprives the people of the stimulus to change and

condemns them to despotism

● It is deterministic, however not racist. He does not care for race, rather the

climate and the effect that it has on people

➔ What is ‘the spirit of the laws”

◆ Spirit = passion

● Laws have no efficacy if they do not express a people’s ruling passions. The

spirit of the laws is the spirit of a people, which the laws express.

○ Law in the context of laws of nature

● Spirit or ruling passions differ depending on geography, climate, and so on.

Montesquieu, wants to investigate these differences

● Distinguish political law and civil law.

○ Political law. Statues and ordinances of a ruler.

○ Civil law. Customary and habitual relations relations among people

○ Ideally, political laws agree with civil laws, or the constitution of the

people.

➔ Montesquieu, “Spirit of the Laws”

◆ Laws

● Edicts of a ruler, spoken out, written down

● The social habits, mores, of a people. It is the spirit of these laws which

Montesquie’s titles refer to.

◆ Spirit of the laws = social habits of a people, especially about liberty and justice.
 ● The people in question have to be historically attested and the account

credibility factual

● Physical laws for physical causes. “Physical science”

● Moral laws for moral causes “social/moral science”

➔ Books 1. Laws in General

◆ “Laws, in their most general signification, are the necessary relations arising from the

nature of things”

● Hobbes. The first law of nature is, Seek peace. The original condition is war.

● Montesquier. The first law is, keep peace. Peaceful sociability is natural to us

➔ Book 2. Laws directly derives from the nature of government

◆ Aristotle: forms of government

● Rule by one, tending to tyranny

● Rule by a few, tending to oligarchy

● Rule by the many, tending to democracy

◆ Montesquieu

● Republican, with supreme power either:

○ Democratic (the whole people)

○ Aristocratic (part only)

● Monarchical, a single person governs by fixed laws (constitution)

● Despotism, a single person rules by will and caprice

➔ Book 3. Principles of the three kinds of government

◆ Each form of government has its essence of government in its constitution

◆ The principle is the passion this essence sets in motion.

◆ Principle of republican government: a spirit of virtue among the people

◆ Principle of monarchy: a spirit of honour among the people

◆ Principle of despotism: a spirit of fear among the people

➔ Diversity

◆ Diversity takes priority over unity and must be respected.

● Peaceful diversity is more important than anything else

◆ Inequality is a greater threat than diversity

● This principle was harder to accept. As there existed the long tradition of

diversity being a threat

◆ “It is not the multiplicity of religion that has produced wars; it is the spirit of

intolerance animating the one that believed itself to be dominant.”

◆ Plurality is the idea of acceptance of different ideas

◆ Unity is not the job of politics; governments should focus on preserving liberty, it is not

their task to create unity among citizens.

◆ Montesquire pursues a system of laws that works harmoniously without everyone

having to conform to another one’s belief; people being equal without absolute unity

➔ Religion

◆ Utilitarian view of religion. Its value is to foster morality and citizenship, and teach

people to respect justice, morality, compassion, and modesty.

● Montesquieu was not excessively religious, he believes the value of religion is

the teachings of morality, compassion, and modesty.

● “Every religion that is repressed becomes repressive itself; for as soon as by

some chance it can shake off repression it attacks the religion that repressed it”

● “A religion that can tolerate others scarcely thinks of its propagation.”

◆ Montesquieu designs a political system that makes it impossible for anyone to force

others to be what they want everybody to be.

◆ Humanist against fanaticism

◆ Montesquieu wants to design a political system that inhibits forced conformity among

people.
➔ Slavery

◆ Aristotle, Politics

● “For he can who can foresee by the exercise of mind is by nature lord and

master, and he who can with its body give effect to such foresight is a subject,

and by nature a slave; hence master and slave have the same interests.”

○ As all men are born equal, there exists no natural slave. The practice of

slavery promotes corruption

● “Where then is there such a difference as that between body and soul, or

between men and animals… the lower sort by nature's slaves, and it is better for

them as for all inferiors that they should be under the rule of a master.”

○ Defenders of slavery stated that slavery begins by pity on war

prisoners. - Specist

○ The laws of wars does not give rights to the victors over the losers

➔ Montesquieu

◆ “But as all men are born equal, one must say that slavery is against nature.”

◆ The practice of slavery corrupts everything it touches.

● Bad for the slave, deprived of virtue

● Bad for the master, encouraged to neglect virtue and become cruel.

● Bad for the society that tolerates it

● Even bad economics (an argument Adam Smith emphasises)

◆ The law of war does not give victors the right to enslave prisoners

➔ Colonization

◆ Persian Letters:

● The Spanish, despairing of keeping these vanquished nations subservient to

themselves, decided to exterminate them and to send out loyal people from
 Spain to take their place. Never was a horrible plan more punctually executed.

A people, as numerous as the entire population of Europe, was seen to

disappear from the earth at the approach of these barbarians who, in

discovering the Indies, seemed only to have thought of disclosing to mankind

the final degree of cruelty.. By such barbarism they retained the land under

their dominion.

◆ Men ought to stay where they are - Montesquieu argued that colonisation is not a good

idea, people should not extend their sovereignty over areas that do not belong to them.

◆ “Great conquests [are] difficult…vain…[and] dangerous.”

◆ Enlightenment never promoted colonisation - enlightenment figures were against

colonisation.

◆ Sanctions colonisation that spreads enlightenment, destroys prejudices, and promotes

enlightenment. “It is not a matter of indifference that the people be enlightened.”

◆ Montesquieu was not a member of the Philosophes, as he was a hella rich aristocrat but

an ally. His principles were not always the same as the Philosophes

➔ Uniformity of Laws

◆ Montesquieu questioned the value of uniformity in political society. So long as the

people observe the laws, “what signifies it whether these laws are the same?”

● As long the laws match the spirit, it matters not if they differ

◆ Revolutionary philosophe Condorcet:

● Uniformity in laws may be established without trouble, and without producing

any evil effects by the change.

● As truth, reason, justice, the rights of man, the interests of property, of liberty,

of security, are in all places the same; we cannot discover why all the provinces

of a state, or even all states, should not have the same civil and criminal laws,
 and the same laws relative to commerce. A good law should be good for all

men, a true proposition is true everywhere

➔ Perfectibility

◆ The passion for uniform laws is fueled by the idea of human perfectibility.

◆ Rousseau introduced this idea. Perfectibility is the essential difference between human

beings and other animals

● Human beings are inherently flawed, however have perfectibility; they can

always develop, they are not condemned to a certain point.

◆ Montesquieu does not see history in linear, progressive, perfectionist terms. History

moves like a pendulum, always restacing the same curve, with periods of darkness

following periods of prosperity.

➔ Montesquieu cannot be aligned with any position in contemporary politics

◆ Like libertarians, liberty is the highest good

◆ Like conservatives, liberty must be constrained by laws and personal interest

subordinated to common good.

◆ Like progressives, advocates economic equality and opposes colonisation and slavery.

➔ Voltaire

◆ His real name was Francois-Maries Arouet (fancy)

◆ In England, 1726-1729

◆ Publishes philosophical Letters (1733) (letters on the English Nation) on return to

France

◆ Regarded as the best playwright

◆ Life of difficulty with authority - left France as a result and went to England

◆ Voltaire dated and lived with Emile, a rich aristocrat.

➔ Philosophical Letters
 ◆ He wants his book “to make us feel a little the difference between English liberty and

our slavery, between their sage daring and our crazy superstition, between the

encouragement which the arts receive in London and the shameful oppression in which

they languish in Paris.”

◆ If there were only religion in England, one would have to fear despotism; if there were

two, they would cut each other’s throats; but they have theory, and they live happily

and in peace.”

◆ Is it clear that every individual who persecutes a man, his brother because he does not

share his opinion, is a monster… we must tolerate each other, for we are all feeble,

inconstant, subject to change and error.

● Unfortunately it was not “fit for print”, the book was considered scandalous,

all known copies were confiscated. And of course, an arrest for Voltaire was

underway.

➔ Locke, of Atheists (1689)

◆ “Those are not at all to be tolerated who deny the being of a God”

◆ “Promises, covenants, and oaths, which are bonds of human society, can have no hold

upon atheism.”

◆ “Taking away of God but even in thought, dissolves all.”

➔ Voltaire, Philosophical Letters

◆ Enter the London stock exchange, that place is more respectable than many courts. You

will see the deputies of all nations gathered there for the service of mankind. There the

Jew, the Mohammedan, and the Christian deal with each other as if they were of the

same religion and give the name infidel only to those who go bankrupt; there, the

Presbyterian trusts the Anabaptists and the Anglican accepts the Quaker’s promise. On

leaving these peaceful and free assemblies, some go to the synagogue, others go to

drink; this one goes to have himself baptised in the name of the Father, through the
 Son, to the Holy Ghost; that one has his son’s foreskin cut off and Hebrew words

mumbled over the child which he does not understand; others do to their church to

await the inspiration of God, their hats on their heads, and all are content.

➔ Letter on Locke

◆ Locke, Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690)

◆ Locke’s philosophical virtues:

● Down with metaphysics, up with psychology

● Empirical. Not how mind has to be; instead, locke looks into himself to sees

how it actually is

● Not afraid to express doubt on difficult points

◆ Descartes taught that it is impossible for a body, mere matter, to think

◆ Voltaire: calls Descartes' account on the body as sheer dogma. We do not know enough

about matter to say with certainty whether it can think.

● Hobbes - ‘i think, therefore my body thinks’- Voltaire follows a Hobbessian

ideology

◆ Voltaire makes Locke a materialist, more than he really was. Consciousness is a natural

effect of a suitably organised body

➔ Gabrielle-Émilie le Tonnelier de Breteuil, marquise du Châtelet (1706-1749)

◆ “I then began to see myself as a thinking creature.”

◆ I feel all the weight of the prejudice that universally excluded [women] from the

sciences. It is one of the contradictions of this world that has always astonished me,

that there are great countries whose destiny the law permits [women] to rule [spain,

England, and Russia had all queens around this time], yet there is no place where

[women] are taught to think.”

◆ “Life is so short, so full of duties and useless details that, having a family and a house, I

can hardly ever depart from my little plan of study to read new books. I am in despair
 at my ignorance. If I were a man, I would…dump all the useless things of life. I love

studying with more fervour than I loved society but I have realised it too late.

➔ Emilie Du Chatelet, Dissertation on the Nature and Propagation of Fire (1744)

◆ The first publication by a woman from the Paris Academic of Sciences

➔ Emilie Du Chatelet, Foundations of Physics (1740)

◆ Chapter 1. The Principles of Our Knowledge

◆ Metaphysical foundations of physics:

● Non-contradiction

● Sufficient reason

● Identity of the indiscernible

● Continuity

◆ Emilie argues the Cartsian account

◆ Voltaire strongly disliked Leibniz, because Leibniz dismissed Newton’s principles

◆ Emilie argued that Newton’s science cannot explain the attraction of gravity. There is

no metaphysics within Newton’s work.

◆ Argues there cannot be the case in which there are two distinct entities that possess

exactly the same qualities. It is either they are distinct or the same property.

◆ For every change in a state, it must be smooth, no gaps nor jumps. It must be

continuous. It is impossible for there to be a perfectly rigid body, all bodies are elastic

to some degree. She came upon this deduction by stating that if there were two

perfectly rigid bodies, it will occur that the rigid body that is at rest will have to be in

motion. The state is no longer continuous, and it became discontinued.

Week Four

➔ “We can arrive at the truth only by crawling from probability to probability”
 ➔ “If all the consequences drawn from it agree with the observations, its probability grows to such

a point that we cannot refuse our assent to it, and that is almost equivalent to a

demonstration.”

➔ Descartes: Hypothetical cosmic vortices carat sun and planets like stones caught in a whirlpool.

◆ Descartes believed since there was no fact that can disprove the hypothesis

➔ Emilie

◆ Induction: one favorable experiment does not prove anything, yet a disastrous one can

disprove hypothesis.

Chapter 2 - Existence of God

➔ 1) Everything we experience is contingent

◆ Contingent - didn’t have to exist

➔ 2) All that exists has a sufficient reason

◆ Leibniz’ principle of reason

➔ 3) The sufficient reason for a contingent thing cannot be another contingent thing

◆ Cannot occur as it will be an endless chain of contingent things causing another

➔ 4) So given that contingent things exist at all, there is a necessarily existing being that contains

the sufficient reason of all contingent beings, and that is God.

Divine Qualities

➔ Eternal - there is no beginning for God, which would require a sufficient reason, and for the

same reason no end.

➔ Immutable - God undergoes no change, which would require a sufficient reason in something

else. If a being changes, then it cannot be necessary. As necessary, God is immutable

➔ Simple - Anything that exists through the existence of parts might not exist if those parts lost

their relation. So, a necessary being cannot have parts and must be simple.

◆ Simple : no parts
 ➔ Rational - An infinity of worlds is possible only one actually exists. It must have a sufficient

reason, which must be in what distinguishes it from other possible worlds. The cause of the

world must therefore survey all possible worlds and select the single best, and only a rational

being could do that.

◆ Leibniz requires God to submit to logic

◆ Descartes claimed God is above logic

Emile du Chatelet

➔ The universe is ultimately good

➔ Not perfect, but the best possible

➔ “Best possible” means combining the greatest variety with the greatest order; or the largest

number of effects from the most economical system of laws.

◆ Emilie argues that it is a mistake on our part to attribute good or evil

◆ Any appearance of an imperfection or evil is a part of a whole, regardless if we accept

it or understand it or not.

Chapter 4 : Of Hypotheses

➔ Examples of hypotheses

◆ Ptolemy’s hypothesis - the earth is the center, and all motions are circular

◆ Copernicus’ hypothesis - the sun is the center, and all motions are circular

◆ Kepler’s hypothesis - the sun is the center, and planetary orbits are elliptical.

◆ Descartes’ hypothesis - the planets are swept around in a plenum of ether

➔ Instead of arguing for or against hypotheses, we need rules for distinguishing good ones from

bad ones.

➔ Rules for good hypotheses

◆ The hypothesis is consistent with the metaphysical principles of science, including the

principle of sufficient reason.

◆ We thoroughly know the facts that the hypothesis is introduced to explain.

Chapter 7 - Matter

➔ Atom hypothesis (epicurus in antiquity, Gassendi in modern philosophy)

➔ Refuted by Leibniz - atoms cannot be the sufficient reason for extended bodies

➔ The sufficient reason for extended bodies must be ultimate particles without extension. Leibniz

calls such particles monads.

➔ Monads have no parts and are indivisible. They have no shape nor any spatial dimension, and

no internal motions.

➔ Each is different from every other.

➔ The sufficient reason for monads is God. creating the world is creating the monads.

➔ Distinghuid force and power (= capacity or ability)

➔ Force is the sufficient reason for the existence of anything that exists. Power is a possibility of

action or passion. To activate a power requires a force.

➔ Monads have a force by which they are continually active, though they act only on themselves

there is no interaction, no causation, among monads.

➔ Monads are substances. They endure and undergo modifications, but always only produced by

their own internal force.

➔ Each monad is unique, made different from every other by its internal state, which is related to

the whole present state of the universe and to all states past and future.

➔ The universe is one single whole, all the parts linked like those of a machine and all moving to

the same end.

◆ The puzzle with monands, how do non-extended monads explain the extended…

➔ The physical bodies we perceive and interact with are composite entities arising from multiple

coexisting monads.

➔ A coexisting multiplicity must appear to perception as spatially extended. This is a condition

for us, for our representation. We apprehend a multiplicity only as spatially extended. It is not a

condition on things in nature.

➔ The things we represent are non-extended monads, but we can represent them only as spatially

extended bodies.

➔ Our perception of bodies is confused. Really there are no bodies. All that exists are infinitely

many infinitely different non-extended monads. That is the ultimate reality, what God created.

➔ But we experience this reality as a multiplicity of spatial bodies with various qualities. This is a

human mental construct, not physically real.

◆ The law of gravitational … is really a phenomenon, not a true force of nature

➔ Du chatelet defends Leibniz’s idea that ours is the best possible world.

➔ Our world is an elegant and supremely intelligent combination of the greatest variety

compatible with the greatest order.

➔ Thongs are so interconnected that nothing can be altered without altering the whole.

➔ Since the order is optimal, any alteration could only be worse.

➔ Evil must never make us doubt that good reasons are at the bottom of everything.

➔ Providentialism

◆ Leibniz, theodicy (1710)

◆ The whole universe, all of whose parts are kinked together us under [God’s]] charge, and

it should therefore be inferred that he had an infinity of considerations that together

led him TO JUDGE THAT IS WAS NOT RIGHT TO PRVENT CERTAIN ECILS

9PALMER 198)

◆ God being led to produce the most good that is possible and having all the knowledge

and all the power necessary for this, it is impossible that there might be in him fault,

guilt, or sin, and when he permits sin, it is wisdom, it is virtue (palmer 208)

◆ Alexander Pope, Essay on Man (1734)

● All nature is but art, unknown to thee;

● All chance, direction, which thou canst not see;

● All discord, harming not understood;

 ● All partial evil, universal Good:

● And, in spite of pride, in erring reason’s spite,

● One truth is clear, “whatever is, is right”.

➔ Lisbon earthquake, 1 november 1755

◆ All saint’s day

◆ Churches instantly leveled

◆ 25% of city housing was destroyed

◆ Some drew conclusion that there is no god

◆ Some drew conclusions within deism, that there is god; god is just passive and does not

interact

➔ Voltaire, resident at the court of Fredrick the Great, king of Prussia 1750-1752 (after Emilie

passes away)

◆ Any force that is an obstacle to people reasoning together is an enemy to humanity

(despotism)

➔ Voltaire - The Man of Calas

◆ October 13, 1761, Marc-Antoine Calas, eldest son of Jean Calas, a cloth merchant of

Toulouse, found hanged in his father’s shop

◆ The father is accused of murder, convicted, and publicly executed, the family deprived

of their property and banished.

● No evidence of murder, the magistrate based their case on a rumor of

Marc-Antoine wanting to convert to catholicism, and his family killing him as

a result.

● The real reason behind the death was the son wanted to become a lawyer, but

protestants were banned from going into law. So he was left in a state of

depression thus resulting in such an unfortunate act.

 ◆ In 1765, after Voltaire’s intervention, Calas was declared innocent, the family property

resorted, the widow granted a pension

● Voltaire hired lawyers to find documents on the case. Soon enough Voltaire

knew there was a grievous judgment in the proceeding. Thus he transformed

thai trail into one of the most celebrated cases in the entire 18th century

● A panel of 40 judges declared the father to be innocent, and the family was

granted their wealth back. Voltaire referred to this case as his best work

➔ Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-178)

◆ Discourse on the sciences and the arts (1750)

◆ Discourse on the origin of inequality (1755)

◆ Emile (1762)

● Julie - was loved by all, however the second work was condemned, and he was

on the run as there are two arrest warrants for him in two different countries.

◆ Social construct (1762)

◆ “I have studied mankind and I know my heart; I am not made like anyone I have been

acquainted with, perhaps like no one in existence; if not better, I at least claim

originality.”

◆ Rousseau refused the favor of the king and his pension, as he wanted to establish his

reputation as an incorruptible outsider. An individual that is not susceptible to the

glitz and glamor.

◆ Emile, first sentence

● Everything is good as it leaves the hands of the Author of things: everything

degenerates in the hands of man

○ Rousseau, there is no historical sin, it is something they fell into after

they were created. We don’t need a church, as sin is in our nature. We

 need a revolution, as we need to change those social creations that

made us evil

◆ Has the art and the sciences corrupted us or not? Has this improved humanity or

corrupt humanity

➔ Discourse on the Sciences and the Arts 1750

◆ Rousseau recounts the moment of inspiration for writing this work:

● If anything resembled a sudden inspiration, it was the motion that worked in

me as I read that. Of a sudden i felt my spirit dazzled by a thousand lights;

swarms of ideas presented themselves at me at once, with a force that the mw

into an inexpressible turmoil; i felt my head seized with a dizziness like that of

inebriation. A violent palpitation oppressed me and made my chest heave.

● Since i could no longer breathe, I let myself drop under of the trees, and there I

spent half an hour in such excitement that I rose, I noticed my jacket was wet

with tears which I had shed without noticing it. O! If i could ever have written

one fourth of what I had seen and felt under that tree

○ The arts in this context means technology, and industrial means of

production

○ The science in this context refers to formalized knowledge to certain

bodies.

● Rousseau is asking the question of all the knowledge (arts and sciences) if it has

made us better.

➔ Discourse on the Sciences and the Arts - Part One

◆ Our souls have become corrupted in proportion as our sciences and our arts have

advanced toward perfection.”

● Rousseau argues the blind love of the arts and sciences has made people

ignorant to how these. The fatal mistake is when we start paying attention to
 other people instead of our nature. Even if we may have been naive, we were

natural. Paying attention to others rather than ourselves has made us sheep,

following each other like a herd.

● It happened in egypt, the mother of science and philosophy

● Gree was only great before it was corrupted by its famous philosophers.

● Rome began to decay with the first poets

● China explicitly tied learning and scholarship to the highest offices of the state.

If knowledge can purify morals and inspire courage, the Chinese should be

wise, free, and invincible. Instead they lost their empire to the mongolians.

● Ancient athens vs sparta

○ Good example of rousseau's claims - sparta thrived as it rid itself from

indulgence of the arts.

○ Needs of the mind - brought us government and law for

○ Needs of the body - the most imperative and becomes the foundation

of everything else

● His conclusion is that human beings are not destined to sciences. We have to

accept that nature wanted to protect us from sciences. Either you are for virtue

or for the arts of science.

● To Rousseau virtue is secular, not pertaining to any religious doctrine.

➔ Discourse on the Sciences and the Arts - Part Two

◆ The arts and sciences “owe their birth to our vices.”

◆ Luxury is a vice

◆ No other reason than luxury for trade and commerce.

◆ Wealth is a luxury, also incompatible with virtue

◆ The sciences spread luxury and weaken virtue.

◆ Inventions make people unused to the virtuous disciple of labor.

◆ Printing only made things worse.

◆ We do not require philosophy for virtue, which is engraved on our hearts.

◆ The voice of nature in the heart “is the true philosophy.”

● Decenant - to love things that are harmful

◆ Therefore, let kings not disdain to admit into their councils the men most capable of

counseling them well. Let them renounce the old prejudice invented by the pride of the

great, that the art of leading peoples is more difficult than that of enlightening them, as

if it were easier to induce men to act well of their own accord than to compel them to

do it by force.

◆ Only then will we see what can be done by virtue, science and authority, enlivened by a

noble emulation and working in the corner for the felicity of mankind. But so long as

power is alone on one side, with enlightenment and wisdom alone on the other, learned

men will rarely think about great things, princes will more rarely perform noble deeds,

and people will continue to be vile, corrupt, and unhappy.

◆ To teach people to act well of their own accord is a greater challenge than to compel

them to action with violence.

◆ Rulers should use people who are accomplished in the sciences and align science with

virtue and authority

◆ Science and politics have become polarized. Power on one side, science on the other.

◆ The problem is not the existence of arts and sciences. It is their alienated relationship to

power

◆ Not abolish arts and sciences in favor of primitivism

◆ Instead, repair the relation of arts and sciences to power and government.

● Rulers should understand how to make good use of people who understand

sciences. Rulers should work to align sciences with virtue. As a result those who
 are learned are not inspired to do good things nor are nobles prompted to do

noble deeds (ironic)

➔ Lecture notes - The Saloon

◆ Elite women invented a new institution called the saloon- guests will discuss letters,

read literature. These saloons were made for these women to pursue an education

◆ Informal - for learning purposes

◆ Rousseau thought this way of bringing nobles and bourgeois on an equal footing for

wanting to learn, he called it the best accomplishment women as attributed to

humanity. However, he stated the involvement of women in scholarism is a good thing

but needs better management. Rousseau argued women needed to be educated.

● If you want men to be virtuous, get women involved

➔ Discourse on the Sciences and the Arts. Frontispiece

◆ Prometheus - foreseeing

● A titan, created human beings, taught human beings

◆ The first human being

◆ A satyr

◆ Prometheus speaks: “satyr, you do not know it”.

◆ Rousseau's explanation :

● The torch of prometheus is the torch of the sciences which is made for the

purpose of inspiring great minds…the satyr, who sees the fire for the first time

and runs toward it and wishes to embrace it, represents the common men who,

seduced by the luster of the letters, give themselves indiscreetly to studies. The

prometheus who shouts and warns of the danger is the citizen of Geneva (i.e.,

Rousseau himself) this allegory is just, beautiful and, i venture to believe,

sublime.

➔ The Danger of Enlightenment

 ◆ It values truth regardless of usefulness. Leaves the sciences unprotected against getting

lost in useless or dangerous findings.

◆ Society rests on simple working certainty, a reassuring consistency to the world as

experienced. Science teaches people to doubt their senses and assent to the non-evident.

Why is this supposed to be a good thing for ordinary people to do? How will it make

their lives better?

◆ The basis of society is opinion, not truth. Science attempts to replace opinion with

truth, which endangers society by tending to dissolve opinion without putting anything

better in its place. Hence doubt and skepticism grow.

● Almighty God you who hold minds in your hands. Deliver us from the

enlightenment and the deadly arts of our fathers, and give back to us

ignorance, innocence, and poverty - the only goods that can bring our

happiness.”

➔ Discourse on the Origin of Inequality (1755)

◆ Dijon academy prize question, 1755

◆ “What is the origin of inequality among men and is it authorized by natural law?”

◆ “The first source of evil is inequality. From inequality came wealth, for those words rich

and poor are relative, and everywhere that men are equal, there are neither rich nor

poor. From wealth are born luxury and idleness. From luxury comes the arts and from

idleness the sciences.”

◆ “Anyone who depends on someone else and does not have his resources in himself

cannot be free.”

◆ Emile :

● “Why are kings without pity for their subjects? Because they count on never

being mere men. Why are the rich so hard toward the poor? It is because they
 have no fear of becoming poor. Why does the nobility have so great a contempt

for the people? It is because a noble will never become a commoner.”

○ The significance of Geneva being a motif in Rousseau’s work is meant

to symbolize democracy. Only fictional

➔ Preface - Two New Ideas

◆ “The human race of one age is not the human race of another age.”

● Human nature is not a fixed thing; human nature is plastic, it is changeable

◆ Morality and duty flow from sentiment and feeling, not reasoning.

● Self preservation & Pity (spontaneous impulse of sympathy)

◆ Self -preservation and pity are original impulses of our nature.

◆ To follow natural law, it is enough to follow these principles.

◆ We do not require reason to do what preserves our existence, and pity is an immediate

feeling; no calculation or meditation.

◆ So natural law is a law of feeling and sentiment, not a law of reason

● Classical natural law offers no penalties for violation; Rousseau changes this

outlook, and attributes suffering and pain as a penalty for not following

natural law.

● Rousseau beliefs human beings are more like bears, we are solitary.

Domestication weakens lifeforms into being dependent.

➔ The Discourse

◆ Two inequalities

● Physical inequality. - Arises from natural differences of age, health, etc.

● Moral or political inequality.- Arises by convention.

◆ Europe’s cities

● People have infinite needs and desires, to the point of being tormented by the

thought of what they do not have.

 ● They must toil; they depend on others.

● They see themselves through other’s eyes and have learned to care about they

seem to others

◆ Rousseau constructs his image of the original human state of nature by negating all

these features of civilians.

◆ The distinctions of human nature

● Power of free choice

● Perfectibility

◆ Emile - let us set down as an incontestable maxim that the first movements of nature

are always right. There is no original perversity in the human heart. There is not a

single vice to be found in it of which it cannot be said how and whence it entered.”

◆ Rousseau's golden rule: “do what is good for you and brings least harm to others.”

➔ Pity

◆ No natural sociability/ instead, natural pity

◆ Pity is a pure movement of nature without conscious thought.

◆ The other’s distress becomes our own, and we respond sympathetically without

calculation or judgment.

◆ Establishes a bond among people that is not corrupting

◆ Maicums of pity in Emile.

● First maxim: “it is not in the human heart to put ourselves in the place of

people who are happier than we, but only in those who are more pitiable.”

● Second maxim: “one pities in others those ills from which one does not feel

oneself exempt.”

● Third maxim: the pity one has for another’s misfortune is measured not by the

quantity of that misfortune but by the sentiment which one attributes to those

who suffer it.”

➔ “As soon as [a woman’s children] had the strength to seek their food they did not delay in

leaving the mother herself; and as there was practically no other way to find each other gain

than not to lose sight of each other, they were soon at a point of not even recognizing one

another.”

◆ Women do not have feelings toward to children

◆ Men have no obligation towards their children

◆ Once children are old enough to toddle, they are able to take care of their own affairs

➔ Rousseau’s Fantastic Voyage. From original humanity to the first political state

◆ Solitary

◆ Occasional awareness of common interest and successful cooperation

◆ Rousseau states erotic love does not exist, it is a product of women

◆ 2) First family groups

◆ Distinctions of elder/younger, parent/child, father/mother, husband/wife.

◆ Prototype of property - a family’s house and land.

◆ Self-love (amour de soi) versus egoism or selfish pride (amour-propre)

● We must not confuse egoism with love of oneself, two passions very different by

virtue of both their nature and their effects. Love of oneself is a natural

sentiment which moves every animal to be vigilant in its own preservation and

which, directed by man in reason and modified by pity, produces humanity

and virtue.

● Egoism is merely a virtue that is relative, artificial, and born in society, which

moves each individual to value himself more than anyone else, which inspires

in men all the evils they cause one another.

◆ Self-love is a natural feeling, makes any animal take care to preserve its existence.

● Belongs to original human nature

◆ Egoism is artificial, arises only with the society,

 ● Objection? - if humans are naturally independent, and are self-interested, then

it can entail that selfishness is also an inherent trait of human beings. Rousseau

argues against this notion, selfishness is a product of societal concepts.

◆ Produces people who obsessively compare themselves with others

◆ 3) Settled family groups, rising population, people spending more time in each other’s

company

◆ 4) “It is iron and wheat that have civilized men and ruined the human race.”

◆ The course of rising inequality. First, property, then agriculture, the use of metals, and

the division of labor.

◆ The most thought-out project that ever entered the human mind. The wealthy say

among themselves: let us unite, and institute rules binding on all.

◆ The first lords and masters “ran to chian themselves, in the belief that they secured their

liberty, for although they had enough sense to realize the advantages of a political

establishment, they did not have enough experience to foresee its dangers

➔ Evil arises from social relations. No original evil in human beings. No inevitable evil in society

➔ The rise of civilization

◆ From a condition of isolated individuals and naive self-love

◆ To far-ranging inequalities and selfish egoism

◆ From natural inequalities

◆ To the political inequalities of rich and poor.

➔ Aristotle - human beings are naturally social and form civil associations spontaneously

➔ Hobbes - human beings are originally vicious and warlike.

➔ Rousseau - Hobbes confusing humans he sees around him with essential, original humanity

experience with society changes human nature

➔ Hobbes - people are most powerful motivated by pride

➔ Rousseau - pride is an artificial passion, the product of society, presupposing amour-propre

 ➔ Hobbes - sees England at war and decides the state of nature is a “war of all against all.”

➔ Rousseau - the origin of war lies with property, which does not exist until wealth and inequality

◆ Argues Hobbes confuses amour-propre with his notion on human nature

◆ Both Hobbes and Rousseau consider humans to be free from conventions, no original

natural obligations. No allies.

➔ Conclusion to the Discourse

◆ “The human race of one age is not the human race of another.” the human race… is no

longer able to retrace its steps or give up the unfortunate acquisitions it has made.”

◆ The soul and human passions are imperceptibly altered, as it were, change their

nature…our needs and their pleasures change their objects…and society has no

factitious passions which are the work of all these new relations and have no true

foundation in nature.”

● Reform is hopeless, Rousseau believes social inequality to always persists

◆ Despite all the labors of the wise legislators, the political state always remained

imperfect, because it was practically the work of change, and since it had been badly

begun, time, in discovering faults and suggesting remedies, could never repair the vices

begun by clearing the air and putting aside all the old materials.

◆ The uprising that ends in the strangulation or dethronement of a sultan is as lawful an

act as those by which he disposed of the lives and goods of his subjects the day before

➔ The context of the second discourse

◆ Rousseau is the first political philosopher to explicitly state that we need a revolution.

However, he does not answer on which

Week 6

➔ Denis Diderot :
 ◆ “Look carefully, and you will see the word ‘liberty’ is empty of meaning that there are

not, that there cannot be, free beings; that we are only what we are allowed to be by

the general order, our organization, our upbringing, and the chain of events.”

◆ Only one of the philosophes that completed his university degree, in Theology.

◆ Held a position in deism; however he moved past deism to atheism

◆ Least dogmatic of all the philosophers; his conclusions were hypothetical, just plausible.

● He always saw all sides of an argument

◆ Spent jail time for his atheism in his work, the letter on the blind for the use of those

who see

◆ He promised not the publish atheistical work, but this cheeky philosopher didn’t promise

not to write them.

➔ Letter on the Blind for the Use of Those Who See

◆ Knowledge is transformed sensation (a french locke) So, what about minds that do not

have the usual senses?

◆ Two cases of blindness; First, a blind man of Puiseaux

● Beauty is a value only for the sighted

● He does not understand modesty

● Honesty matters little to him

◆ Diderot follows empiricism; purses the question of Locke’s presupposition: knowledge is

the transformation of senses. Diderot asks how this applies to those who are missing

certain senses, such as the blind and deaf.

◆ Blindness does not pertain to the lack of something, but a different way of perception.

➔ Dr. Nicolas Saunderson - Lucasian professor of Mathematics

◆ Against the Design argument for the existence of God

● Word is older than people think and has changed over time
 ● Poorly adapted beings have been swept away, leaving the adapted. A mindless

mechanical effect.

● Hence, adaptive order can arise by an accidental cause.

● Order is not proof of intelligent design.

● What is the connection between good order and God? How can one infer to

God with good order?

◆ “The world is a composite, subject to revolutions which all indicate a continual

tendency to destruction: a rapid success-sion beings which follow on after each other,

push each other, and disappear; a passing symmetry, a momentary order”.

◆ “If you wish me to believe in God, you must make me touch him”.

➔ Diderot, Philosophical Thoughts

◆ Men have banished divinity from their midst; they have relegated it to a sanctuary; the

walls of a temple are the limits of its view; beyond these walls it does not exist. Madmen

that you are, destroy these enclosures which obstruct your horizon; liberate God; see

him everywhere where he actually is, or else say that he does not exist at all.

● Religion has become an empty ritual.

● Churches make people forget about nature

● But God is more in evidence in nature than in a church.

● Either God is another name for nature, or God does not exist at all.

➔ Diderot, Encyclopédie, ou dictionnaire raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers

◆ Encourages readers to choose their own path with their knowledge

➔ Diderot, article from volume 1: Autorite politique

◆ “No man has received from nature the right to command others.”

◆ “The crown, the government, and the public authority and possessions belonging to the

whole body of the nation.”

➔ Jean D’Alembert
 ◆ “Everything impelled us to go directly to the workers.”

◆ “We took the trouble of going into the shops, of questioning them, writing at their

dictation, of developing their thoughts and drawing therefore the terms peculiar to

their professions, of setting up tables of these terms and of working out definitions for

them.”

➔ Diderot

◆ “It often happens that unless one does the work oneself, unless one operates a machine

with one’s own hands, and sees the work being created under one’s own eyes, it is

difficult to speak of it with precision. Thus,several times we had to get possession of the

machines, to construct them, and a hand to the work. It was necessary to become

apprentices, so to speak, and to manufacture some poor objects ourselves in order to

learn how to teach others the way good specimens are made.

➔ D'Alembert, Preliminary Discourse to the Encyclopedia of Diderot

◆ The spirit of systems versus the systematic spirit.

◆ The philosophy of the Encyclopedia synthesizes the rationalism of Descartes Discourse

on Method with the empirical spirit of Locke and Newton.

◆ The Cartesian Legacy

● The encyclopedia is rational in method, relying on reasoning rather than

authority.

◆ The Empirical Legacy

● Repudiate the aspiration to a final system

● Anticipate a future of on-going collaborative scientific research

➔ Three elementary mental powers:

◆ Memory

◆ Reason

◆ Imagination
➔ All knowledge from sensation

◆ Memory passively builds up a stick if sensations are received.

◆ These may be reflected upon, which is reasoning, when we compare, combine, and judge

sensations.

◆ Or they can be imitated, which is the operation of imagination.

➔ These three powers form the system of human knowledge

◆ History - knowledge from memory

◆ Philosophy - knowledge from reasoning

◆ Fine art - works of imagination

➔ D’Alembert - it is perhaps in the artisan that one must seek the most admirable evidence of the

sagacity, the patience, and the resources of the mind.”

➔ Plato. Banausic activities - Banasoi, derogatory term for people who work with their hands

◆ Why is it that banausia and working with one’s hands is a matter of reproach? Shall we

not say that it is because that part which is by nature the best in a man is weak, with

the result that it is unable to rule the beasts within him, but serves, and can learn

nothing but the means of flattering them?

➔ Aristotle - we think the manual workers are like certain lifeless things which act indeed, but act

without knowing what they do, as fire burns- but while the lifeless things perform each of their

functions by natural tendency, the laborers perform them through habit

◆ The virtue of a citizen…will belong only to those individuals who are released from

occupations which provide the necessities for life.

➔ Preliminary Discourse, Part Two

◆ Four geniuses of modernity:

● Bacon spurred the hostility to systems. He demanded utility for knowledge and

taught experiments
 ● Descartes emboldened philosophers to trust their own minds, sweeping away

barbarism and dogma

● In newton natural philosophy finds its final form

● Locke carries Newtonian experimentation into the study of the mind. Locke,

“reduced metaphysics to what it really ought to be: the experimental physics of

the soul.

➔ The Philosophy of the Encyclopedia

◆ A human being has no innate knowledge but acquires ideas through the senses.

◆ The world obeys laws which we can discover through observation and experimental

reasoning.

◆ Human nature is continuous with the rest of animal nature, and it is not originally

fallen or sinful

◆ People are naturally social and reasonable, and from these capacities they arrive at

common ideas of morality and justice

◆ The advance of science and the improvement of society require intellectual freedom and

religious tolerance.

➔ Diderot’s Description of a virtuous person

◆ To be happy in this world a man needs to do nothing more than be virtuous. Sense and

experience alone will show that there is no vice which does not entail some misfortune

and no virtue which is not accompanied by some happiness; that it is impossible for the

wicked to be completely happy and for a good man to be completely unhappy and that

in spite of self-interest and the attraction of the moment there is nevertheless only one

path to follow.

➔ The Conversation Between Diderot and D’alembert

◆ Materialism

● Can matter think? - Locke

 ● I think, therefore body thinks - Hobbes

◆ Ancient Atomism

● Democrtius and Epicurus

◆ New Atomism of the Seventeenth Century

● Hobbes and Gassendi

● Matter is intrinsically inert; a body is a dead lump that moves only by impact

◆ Newton. Matter is a universal system of attractions, a vast economy of masses and

forces

◆ Post-Newton: regard gravity as a primary quality of matter

➔ Diderot. A new concept of matter

◆ Motion a primary quality

◆ Sensibilité (sensibilité)

● A primary quality of matter

● A power of receiving the impressions of external objects and producing

movements in proportion to the intensity of the impression.

● To have this power is to be alive

● All bodies have something of it

◆ From the elephant to the flea, from the fela to the living and sensitive molecule, the

origin of all, there is no point in nature which does not suffer and enjoy.

◆ All creatures intermingle with each other, consequently all species…e everything is in

perpetual flux… every animal is more or less man; every mineral is more or less plant;

every plant is more or less animal”.

➔ D’Alembert: How can we account for the first generation of animals?

➔ Diderot: If you're worried by the question ‘which came first, the chicken or the egg’, it is because

you suppose that animals were originally the same as they are not. What madness! We can no

more tell what they were originally than what they will become.
 ◆ What is maddening about this comparison is that it is treating the egg and chicken as

separate entities. It is like drawing a circle and asking where it begins.

➔ From Sensibilité to Penseé

◆ Problems for materialism

● Nature’s order - where does it come from if not divine design?

○ We cannot suppose how the condition of the world was

● Unimaginable continuity from microbes and instinct to Reason, Logic, and

Abstract Thought.

➔ When we see the metamorphosis of the embryo bringing closer the different kingdoms by

imperceptible degrees… who would not be impelled to believe that there was only a prototype of

all beings? -Diderot

Montaigne, “Of Cannibals”

Abbé Guillame - Thomas Raynal

➔ Anonymously, Diderot contributes some 700 pages, especially to the last 1780 edition.

◆ Trade with them, take their goofs, bring them yours, but do not place them in chains

◆ If I had to civilize savages, what would I do? I would do useful things in their presence,

without saying or prescribing anything to them. I would maintain an air of working for

my family alone and for myself.. And I would leave the remainder to time and the force

of example.

➔ Of the spanish in america

◆ They fancied these people had no form of government because it was not vested in a

single person; no civilization because it differed from that of madrid; no virtues because

they were not of the same religious persuasion; and no understanding because they did

not adopt the same opinions.

➔ Of the dutch in South Africa

 ◆ Their attitude will be that of benevolence; their look that of humanity: but cruelty and

treachery reign at the bottom of their hearts… you must with agree with their

extravagant opinions or they will massacre you without mercy, for they believe that the

man who does not think like them is unfit to live… do not address them with

representations of justice, which they will not listen to, but speak to them with your

arrows

◆ All morality consists in the maintenance of order. Its principles are steady and uniform,

but the application of them varies at times according to the climate and the local and

political situation of the people.

1765

➔ The encyclopedia is still coming out, volume 17 appears that year

➔ Emilie de catelet has been dead for 15 years.

➔ Voltaire has gone and returned from his visits to Frederick the Great, King of Prussia and is

settled in his Geneva estate

➔ Rousseau is a recluse and fugitive, living under the protection of aristocratic patrons.

Continental criminal procedure

➔ No presumption of innocence or equality before the law

➔ Punishments unregulated and ad hoc

➔ Objective punishment is vengeance, lex talionis, eye for an eye. Defend the majesty of the law

English justice

➔ Accusatory

➔ Open trial with counsel for defendants

➔ Jury

18th Century Movement for Penal Reform

➔ Traditional criminal law

◆ Excessive - too many cruel and harsh punishments

 ◆ Irregular - the law is a tangle of discontinuities and exceptions

➔ A new image of offenders: the criminal has broken a contract with society “society must be

protected”/

➔ Goal of punishment: create psychological obstacles to repetition and imitation

➔ Intensity of punishment should correspond to the har crime brings to society

➔ Target of punishment is the non-criminal public- those who have yet to commit a crime.

Cesare Beccaria - on crimes and Punishments

➔ Inhumane, insane, uncertain

➔ Was against the death penalty

➔ In order for punishment not to be, in every instance, an act of violence of one or many against a

private citizen, it must be essentially public, prompt, necessary, the least possible in the given

circumstances, proportionate to the crimes, dictated by the laws.

➔ For a punishment to attain its end the evil which it inflicts has only to exceed the advantage

derivable from the crime…all beyond this is superfluous and for that reason tyrannical.

➔ The purpose of punishments can only be to prevent the criminal from inflicting new injuries

on… citizens and to deter others from similar acts… such punishments and such method of

inflicting them ought to be chosen, therefore, which will make the strongest most lasting

impression on the minds of men and inflict the least torment on the body of the criminal.

➔ Crimes difficult to prove

◆ Including adultery, homosexuality, infanticide, suicide

◆ Beccaria: rather than punish them, better to change the conditions that induce people

to commit them.

➔ Death Penalty

◆ Is the death penalty useful?

◆ No. it is inefficient in its effect on those who witness it, the emotional impact

short-lived
➔ Torture

◆ A normal part of criminal procedure. Purpose to obtain a confession and identify

confederates.

◆ A jurist, writing in 1554:

● The good judge is always compassionate… he must start carefully and

moderately, then rigorously, and finally very rigorously indeed, according to

the gravity of the crime and the degrees of proof against the accused and the

nature of his replies. He must take no notice of the screams, cries, sighs,

trembling, or pain of the accused.

➔ Beccaria: Torture is unjust and cannot work.

◆ Unjust

● If the crime is certain, torture is not needed

● If the crime is uncertain, torture is unjust. Innocent until proven guilty

◆ Does not work

● Com[;es victims to use the shortest method to relive their torment.

● Hence, torture tends to acquit the guilty but robust, and condemn the innocent

but weak.

○ Volaire although agrees with Beccaria, he is not as passionate in

rebuking torture. Voltaire thinks of cases in which torture can be

justified.

➔ Beccaria’s Utilitarianism

◆ The imperative of enlightened rationality is to maximize utility, individual and social.

◆ Justice and injustice defined by what is useful or harmful to society.

◆ Crimes defined by their harm; punishment is harm to prevent further harm.

◆ Beccaria coins the motto of utilitarianism- the greatest good for greatest number
 ● The greatest good = the quantity of happy people; not the degree of happiness

but the amount of happy people

◆ For Bentham, that means rational choice should maximize the quantum of happiness in

terms of sensations of pleasure.

◆ For Beccaria it means maximizing the number of happy people. The best method to do

so is that of equality and social justice.

➔ Scottish Enlightenment

◆ David hume, francis Hutcheson, adam Ferguson, Adam Smith

◆ 1707. Union between scotland and england

◆ Scottish Kirk, Presbyterian (scottish calvinism)

◆ Hume

● Some hate me because i am not a tory, some because i am not a whig, some

because i am not a christian, and all because I am a scotsman

➔ Scottish Enlightenment

◆ Opposition to rationalism

● It fuels opposition to the argument )hobbes, rousseau) that consent is the basis

of legitimate government.

● It is rationalistic because it tries to trace contemporary social forms back to a

reasonable origin, a rational beginning, like signing a contract.

◆ Time and habit, not origin, legitimate rule.

◆ People consent to government because they are habituated to it

◆ Disconnect political authority from divine law and utilitarian calculation.

➔ Hume. “tis not contrary to reason to prefer the destruction of the whole world to the scratching

of my finger”.

◆ Whatever makes such a preference wicked has nothing to do with reasoning.

 ◆ Reason cannot find anything directly agreeable or disagreeable. It judges solely the

efficiency of means to ends.

◆ Whether those ends are virtuous or vicious depends on sentiment and is not deduced by

reasoning.

◆ Morality is not a phenomenon of reason or divine law.

● More like politeness than like religious devotion

● Arises from social feelings = moral sentiments.

➔ Adam Smith (lessgoo) - theory of moral sentiments

◆ moral - social

◆ Moral sentiments

● How selfish soever man may be supposed, there are evidently some principles in

his nature which interest him in the fortune of others and render their

happiness necessary to him, though he derives nothing from it except the

pleasure of seeing it.”

◆ Two questions for moral philosophy

● What does virtue consist of? What make character excellent

● Why do we prefer one conduct to another or consider one blameworthy and

another

The Theory of Moral Sentiments

➔ Psychology of Moral Judgment

◆ To judge another’s motive is

● To imagine your motive if you were in the other’s position,

● To imagine the approval or disapproval your action would receive from an

impartial witness.

◆ We can turn the disinterested spectator on ourselves and moderate our action in light

of others’ predictable response.

 ◆ Reflection on our own conduct begins in judging others. We become aware of ourselves

when we become aware that others are aware of us. We evaluate ourselves as we

imagine others evaluate us.

➔ Sympathy

◆ Not the same as compassion or pity

◆ A power to imagine another’s situation and feel as the other does. Imagining the other’s

feelings.

● In every passion of which the mind of man is susceptible the emotions of the

bystander always correspond to what, by bridging the case home to himself, he

imagines should be the sentiments of the sufferer.”

● “Whatever is the passion which arises from an object in the person principally

concerned, an analogous emotion springs up, at the thought of his situation, in

the breast of every attentive spectator.”

➔ Sympathize with lunatics

◆ We sometimes feel for another a passion of which he himself seems to be altogether

incapable; because when we put ourselves in his case, that passion arises in our breast

from the imagination, though it does not in his from the reality”.

➔ Sympathize with the dead

◆ These examples show that sympathetic feelings are illusory. We respond to our own

imagination.

◆ Impartial spectator is not the criterion of right or good.

◆ Sympathy need not imply approval. To sympathize is to imagine the feeling. Whether

having that feeling in that situation is proper is another question.

➔ Fools love honors

➔ The virtuous love the worthiness of honour

➔ The revolution in france

◆ 1789

● May: Estates-general convened

● June: estates-general proclaimed the National assembly. They make the law

● July: Fall of the Bastille

● August: Feudal privileges abolished. Declaration of the rights of man and

citizen.

○ No more aristocats

◆ The revolution started because King Louis the XVI was broke and imposed new taxes

➔ Declaration of the rights of man and citizen

◆ The representatives of the French people, organized as a national assembly, believing

that the ignorance, neglect, or contempt of the rights of man are the sole cause of public

calamities and of the corruption of governments, have determined to set forth in a

solemn declaration the natural, unalienable, and sacred rights of man, in order that

this declaration, being constantly before all the members of the social body shall

remind them continually of their rights and duties….

➔ Therefore, the national assembly recognizes and proclaims, in the presence under auspices of the

supreme being, the following right of man and the citizen

◆ Article 1 - men are born and remain free and equal in rights. Social distinctions may be

founded only upon the general good.

◆ Article 2 - the aim of all political association is the preservation of the natural and

imprescriptible rights of man. These rights are liberty, property, security, and resistance

to oppression

◆ Article 3 - the principle of all sovereignty resides essentially in the nation. No body or

individual may exercise any authority which does not proceed directly from the nation.

➔ Timeline - French Revolution

 ◆ 1790 July - french catholic stripped of privileges and properties

◆ 1791 - first revolutionary constitution

◆ 1792 september - monarchy abolished. National convention convened to rule in its

place

◆ Revolutionary armies initiative preemptive war with Austria, Great britain, Spain, and

Russia

◆ 1793 January - King Louis XVI executed.

◆ 1993 June - a new second revolutionary constitution proclaimed.

➔ 1793-94 - The Terror - constitution suspended, government passes to a committee in public

safety. Its head, Maximilian Robespierre.

➔ Opacity - non transparency; mortified by the idea of things going on without their knowledge.

➔ Two factions in the revolutionary government

◆ Jacobins, committed to popular sovereignty. Under robespieree’s leadership

◆ Girondists, cautions about popular sovereignty. Includes many former aristocrats

➔ Robespieree was suspicious of private estates/privately owned things.

◆ He transformed all economic problems into political issues.

➔ Robespiree died on the guillotine July 27, 1794

◆ 1795-99 - the directory. An unelected committee of fice rule France. Overthrown by

Napoleon, 1799

➔ French colony of saint dominque, 4800 sailing miles from france

➔ In 1799, 32,000 europeans, 250000 african slaves

➔ 30,000 slaves are imported each year. One third die in the first year

➔ Toussaint Bréda, aka Toussaint Louverture - born in slavery around 1749

◆ 1791 80000 slvaes rebel

 ◆ Their leaders address the colonial assembly: we are your equals, then, by natural right,

and if nature please itself to diversify colours within the human race, it is not a crime to

be born black nor an advantage to be white.

◆ They praise the french revolution: the fortunate revolution…which has opened for us the

road which our courage and labour will enable us to ascend, to arrive at the temple of

liberty, like those brave Frenchmen who are our models

➔ Haitian General Jean-Baptise Belley - address to the National convention in paris

➔ May 1791 - toussaint addresses his soldiers

➔ 1801 - haitian constitution

➔ 1802 - Napoleon reintroduced slavery

➔ Toussaint was lured into a trap, arrested and transported to france. April 7, 1803. Found dead in

his cell.

➔ William Wordsworth “To Toussaint Louverture” 1803

◆ toussaint - the most unhappy of men!-....where and when wilt thou find patience? Yet

die not! Do thou wear rather in thy bonds a cheerful brow; though fallen thyself, never

to rise again, live, and take comfort! Thou has left behind powers that will work for

thee_air, earth, and skies- there’s not a breathing of the common wind that will forget

thee! Thou hast great allies: thy friends are exultations, agonies, and love and man’s

unconquerable mind.

Feminism in the French Revolution

➔ antoine-Nicolas de Condorcet, “On Admitting Women to the Rights of Citizenship”

◆ The equality of rights established between men in our new constitution has brought

upon us eloquent declamations and ceaseless derision; but until now, nobody has been

able to provide a single reason against this equality of rights, and this failure has not

been for want of talent, nor for want of trying. I am so bold as to believe that the same

will be the case when it comes to the equality of rights between the sexes.
 ◆ …the complete annihilation of the prejudices that have brought about an inequality of

rights between the sexes…it is vain for us to look for a justification for this principle in

any difference of physical organisation, intellect, or moral sensibility between men and

women.

➔ He argues the notion is false that women are not guided by reason, but states that women are

guided by feminine reason. He genders reason, as feminine reason and masculine reason.

➔ O;ympe de Gouges, “declaration of the rights of women and female citizens”

◆ The revolutionary declaration of rights

● The representatives of the french people, organises as a national assembly,

believing that the ignorance, neglect, or contempt of the rights of man re the

sole cause of public calamites and of the corruption of governments, have

determined to set forth in a solemn declaration the natural, unalienable, and

sacred rights of man.

◆ De Gouges

● The mothers, daughters, and sisters who together make up the female

representatives of the nation, considering ignorance of, neglect of, or contempt

for the rights of women to be the sole causes of public misfortune and

governmental corruption, they have resolved to set out, in a solemn

declaration, the natural, inalienable and sacred rights of woman.

● Consequently, the sex that is as superior in beauty as it is in the courage that it

needs to endure the suffering of childbirth, acknowledges and declares, in the

presence and under the auspices of the supreme being, the following rights of

woman and of the female citizen.

● Article 1.

● Article 11. The free expression of thoughts and opinions is one of the most

precious rights of women given that this liberty ensures the legitimacy of
 fathers and their children. Any female citizen and therefore freely declare “i am

the mother of your child” without a barbarous prejudice forcing them to hid

the truth.

○ It is the idea that women should not be considered as ‘the sex’ or the

sexual ones. As men too are also sexual. In this quote De Gouges is

presenting that men and women are on equal footing in sexuality.

● Women has the right to mount the scaffold; she ought equally to have the right

to mount the tribunal

○ If women have the right to be executed, it only entails that a woman

should be able to have the right to be in the tribunal

➔ Mary Wollstonecraft

◆ Thoughts on the education of daughters

◆ A vindicitation of the rights of men

◆ A vindication of the rights of woman

◆ Origin and progress of the french revolution

◆ Novels - Mary: a fiction and The wrongs of a woman, or Maria.

➔ Reason is not gendered, “no characteristic difference in sex”.

➔ Politically Wollstonecraft is a republican

➔ Montesquieu. Principle of a republic is virtue. Wollstonecraft concurs. Her idea of virtue

emphasises equality.

➔ Montesquieu. Skeptical of republicanism because sceptical or eligible, society-wide virtue.

➔ Wollstonecraft. Republican virtue begins in families. The middle class supply the virtuous

ballast for successful republican states.

➔ Reason and virtue are without gender si is imagination and desire

➔ Virtue begins in families. Virtue begins where children grow up. The family is the balance of

republican virtue.
 ➔ She criticised rousseau especially on his notion on women. But agreed with Rousseau’s notion on

perfectibility: the capacity to become better. Our character is not stagnant

➔ Modesty

● Not feminine

● Simply rational

● Prudent reflection, especially on mistakes

● The regulation of female conduct by modesty re-conceived as ideal human

conduct