2015

Happy new year to all my readers, and good luck in 2015!

What can be our wish in the new year? Something old and something new?

I am afraid that peace to the world and loving one another may be too much wishful thinking.

As to a number of other wishes, please, do be careful what you wish for. Someone bought himself a dog to punish a neighbor, and the dog bit the owner…

Seriously speaking, there is one missing element in the world today, that can drastically reduce the plague of war and the intensity of terrorism. It happens to be the sine qua non of healthy international relations, but alas, in terribly short supply…

Let there be respect!!! It cannot possibly cost more than a barrel of Russian oil…

BACK TO METHUSELAH

The Russians refer to him as Bernard Shaw: just the way he wanted,--- but for some reason the West knows him by the full name, and in order not to confuse the reader I shall retain the full name. The Russians would not mind, as they know both his names, while the Westerner may be more at ease with the more familiar version.

The great George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950) belongs in this section for several unquestionably compelling reasons. But if I were to answer the familiar question Why Shaw? I’d rather, instead of naming these objective reasons, trump them all with my subjective ones, boiling down to the author’s prerogative: just because I want it so. However, I shall start his philosophical validation with a few objective arguments, which, of course, are by no means wanting.

The question whether Shaw can be called a true philosopher is downright incompetent. He is obviously not made in the mold of academic philosophers, but he is the epitome of a true philosophizer, in the eyes of the Russian Intelligent. Technically speaking, Montaigne was merely a philosophize,r but his membership in the Philosophers’ Club has never been disputed.

Shaw himself makes an explicit claim to philosophy, that is serious enough not to be dismissed on account of its unconventionality. Most of his plays have philosophical preludes, which are occasionally much longer than the plays themselves. The play Man and Superman (the title obviously influenced by Nietzsche) has this explicit subtitle: A Comedy and a Philosophy. The play Back to Methuselah has an eighty-seven-page long Preface; its chapters include some inherently philosophical (in the normal academic sense) titles, such as In Quest of the First Cause, The Humanitarians and the Problem of Evil, Darwin and Karl Marx, The Poetry and Purity of Materialism, The Moment and the Man, etc.

My subjective reasons are many. In my youth, I saw a staging of Shaw’s interesting play about the American Revolution: The Devil’s Disciple, at the Vakhtangov Theater in Moscow, where two assumed scoundrels end up as heroes. The play had a lasting effect on me. Generally speaking, Shaw used to be a highly respected figure in Russia. A devout socialist, he visited Russia, and had conversations with Stalin, whom he admired, and whom he later defended in the West against the charges which today the West takes for granted. Such Russian partiality to Shaw, on account of his Soviet sympathies, translated into an added admiration and popularization of Shaw’s works, could not have failed to rub on me, but there were other reasons for my own partiality for him, too. I have found much in common, or at least in harmony, between my interests and his. For instance, I have always been very much intrigued by the Biblical story of Adam and Eve, and also by the roles of God and of the Serpent in the Garden of Eden, and Shaw explores all of this in Part I of Back to Methuselah (In the Beginning), returning to them in the Coda to Part V (As Far As Thought Can Reach). My own thinking on this subject is different from Shaw’s, but his treatment of the subject has added more fuel to my thinking, for which I am grateful to him beyond measure.

Aside from Back to Methuselah’s fertile exploration of the Adam and Eve theme (which necessarily reverts in Shaw to the present and the future of mankind), there is one particular observation of genius, on his part, which I have frequently referred to elsewhere. You cannot trust history, as you cannot trust any non-fiction, but fiction, and fiction alone, you can trust without any reservations. My theory of the truth of fiction has a direct link to Shaw’s magnificent saying, and although my train of thought takes me into a uniquely special area of contemplation, I must reiterate its perfect affinity with Shaw’s quip, again and again.

And finally, an almost random selection from the multitude of my favorite Shaw aphorisms:

A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable, but more useful than a life spent doing nothing. It actually goes to the heart of the endeavor of every great system-building philosopher. These systems may all be mistaken, but their value is certainly above anything produced by anyone who has never dared.

Gambling promises the poor what property performs for the rich--- something for nothing. How true! And particularly with regard to the Lottery system, which is, obviously, the most common type of gambling for the poor, although millions of financially disadvantaged Americans engage in the other, more explicit “Las Vegas” kinds of gambling.

Life does not cease to be funny when people die, just as it does not cease to be serious when they laugh. As is often the case with Shaw, another example of profundity, which gets deeper and deeper all the more we think about it.

The liar’s punishment is not in the least that he is not believed, but that he cannot believe anyone else. This may be a truism, had it not been so exquisitely true. It is also great psychology, which, at its best, is indeed founded on certain rather elusive truisms.

The worst sin toward our fellow creatures is not to hate them, but to be indifferent to them: it is the essence of inhumanity. Once again, this ought to go without a comment, being self-explanatory.

Silence is the most perfect expression of scorn. Silence is gold, they say, but Shaw says, Silence is scorn. Is he right? From his own perspective, he is just as right as the more familiar saying, from its own.

A government that robs Peter to pay Paul can always count on the support of Paul. This is a most excellent socio-political utterance, which has far-reaching sociological consequences. It is a great mistake, though, which America is making all the time, to project it into geopolitics. Financial generosity does not translate into gratitude, unless it is coupled with unconditional respect of the giver for the taker. Unfortunately, the latter is seldom the case.

Truth is the funniest joke in the world. Well, you know, having lived over sixty years, I have had numerous occasions to ascertain that this is perfectly true. I guess this realization comes with experience.

“I am a Millionaire. That is my religion.” This is, of course, not Shaw himself speaking, but an actual millionaire of his creation. From my long-term observation, I have found out for myself that the richer a man gets, the less need he has for the church (unless “church” is the business which is making him rich) and for religion as such (the latter, unconditionally). Among the rich, money is, indeed, their most sincere religion, and their only credible church.

Before I leave Shaw until further notice, I shall capitalize on an excellent opportunity to build a bridge from this entry to the series on Henri Bergson in the Magnificent Shadows. Such an opportunity is afforded to me by something Bertrand Russell wrote in the introductory paragraph to his chapter on Bergson.-- “Bergson’s irrationalism made a wide appeal quite unconnected with politics,” he says, “for instance, to Bernard Shaw (how refreshing it is to find Russell calling Shaw the correct, Russian, way!), whose Back to Methuselah is pure Bergsonism.” By quoting Russell here, we are very pertinently killing two birds with one stone: going back to our entry’s title, and asking the leading (to the parallel series of Magnificent entries) question: What is Bergsonism, that Back to Methuselah is made of? For those readers who do not remember the answer, do go back to Bergson, please, will you?…

 

HALF A PHILOSOPHER, HALF A MATHEMATICIAN

The great mathematician, logician, philosopher and linguist Friedrich Ludwig Gottlob Frege (1848-1925) once said that “Every good mathematician is at least half a philosopher, and every good philosopher is at least half a mathematician.” This may not be true in each and every case, but this is certainly true of Frege, whose brilliant achievements not just in mathematics and logic, but, specifically, in the philosophy of logic, philosophy of mathematics, and philosophy of language, are of outstanding importance.

My first acquaintance with Frege was at an early age through reading Bertrand Russell’s History of Western Philosophy, where, in the chapter The Philosophy of Logical Analysis, Russell (who happened to be one of very few people capable of appreciating Frege before anyone else did) writes the following: “In philosophy ever since the time of Pythagoras there has been an opposition between the men whose thought was mainly inspired by mathematics and those who were more influenced by the empirical sciences. Plato, Thomas Aquinas, Spinoza, and Kant, belong to what may be called the mathematical party; Democritus, Aristotle, and the modern empiricists, from Locke onwards, belong to the opposite party. In our day, a school of philosophy has arisen which sets to work to eliminate Pythagoreanism from the principles of mathematics, and to combine empiricism with an interest in the deductive parts of human knowledge. The aims of this school are less spectacular than those of most philosophers in the past, but some of its achievements are as solid as those of the men of science.

The origin of this philosophy is in the achievements of mathematicians who set to work to purge their subject of fallacies and slipshod reasoning. Russell now begins his list of such mathematicians with Leibniz and Cantor. The next man of importance was Frege, who published his first work (Begriffsschrift) in 1879, and his definition of “number” in 1884 (in The Foundations of Arithmetic); but in spite of the epoch-making nature of his discoveries, he remained wholly without recognition until I drew attention to him in 1903. It is remarkable that before Frege every definition of number that had been suggested contained very elementary logical blunders. It was customary to identify “number” with “plurality.” But an instance of “number” is a particular number, say 3, and an instance of 3 is a particular triad. The triad is a plurality, but the class of all triads which Frege identified with the number 3 is a plurality of pluralities and number in general of which 3 is an instance is a plurality of pluralities of pluralities. The elementary grammatical mistake of confounding this with the simple plurality of a given triad made the whole philosophy of number before Frege a tissue of nonsense in the strictest sense of the term “nonsense.”

From Frege’s work it followed that arithmetic and pure mathematics generally, is nothing but a prolongation of deductive logic. This disproved Kant’s theory that arithmetic propositions are “synthetic” and involve a reference to time. The development of pure mathematics from logic was set forth in detail in the Principia Mathematica, by Whitehead and myself.

Developing Russell’s explanation of Frege’s historical accomplishment, I may paraphrase it by saying that, prior to Frege, number was seen even by the greatest mathematical minds of all time as a simple plurality, or a plurality of the first order, whereas three men in a boat, or three oranges, or three sisters are all such simple pluralities, while 3, as a number common to all, of them becomes in reality a second-order plurality, and number as-such, containing 3; 4; 5; 6; etc., becomes a third-order plurality. For someone untutored in complex mathematical labyrinths, this distinction may not be such a big deal at all. But once we enter into the realm of formal logic, Predicate Calculus, and Quantification--- without which modern mathematics is practically helpless, the Frege Revolution becomes comprehensible, and it is fairly found comparable with the Cartesian Revolution of the seventeenth century.

Talking about the Frege revolution, I am fortunate enough to know what I am talking about, as Frege, and his revolutionary mathematical logic, was one of my subjects at Moscow University.  This is obviously not the proper place to perplex the reader any further on either the technicalities or even generalities of Frege’s mathematical logic, but one thing must be repeated from the things said before, that here in this sphere, associated with the broader sphere of logical analysis, mathematics and philosophy merge into one, confirming, at least for these particular intents and purposes, the wisdom of Frege’s observation, which has been condensed into the title of this entry.

MATHEMATICS AND PHILOSOPHY OF GEORG CANTOR

For starters, here is the very short (regrettably!) Cantor entry in my Webster’s Biographical Dictionary:

“Cantor, Georg. 1845-1919. German mathematician, born in St. Petersburg; professor, Halle (from 1872). Developed a theory of irrational numbers, an arithmetic of the infinite, and the theory of sets of points; he also introduced transfinite numbers.”

Georg Ferdinand Ludwig Philipp Cantor (1845-1919) was indeed a great German mathematician who developed all these things. He also introduced the above-mentioned transfinite numbers, that is, cardinal numbers or ordinal numbers which are larger than all finite numbers, yet do not necessarily qualify as absolutely infinite. The specific distinction of “absolute infinity,” also introduced by Cantor, identifies it with God, and thus his mathematics explicitly transcends into religious philosophy. In order to better understand what Dr. Cantor means by transfinite, as opposed to absolutely infinite, here is what he says about it in a very succinct and comprehensible fashion:

What I assert and believe to have demonstrated… is that following the finite there is a transfinite, that is an unbounded and ascending ladder of definite modes (compare this to Dèscartes’ distinctive pairs of definite-indefinite and finite-infinite!), which by their nature are not finite but infinite, but which, just like the finite, can be determined by well-defined and distinguishable numbers. (Today, many mathematicians do not care much for Cantor’s distinction, preferring the word infinite in all cases, but many still use the term transfinite which I believe is a very useful term, introducing an important nuance into the philosophical underpinnings of mathematics.)

Cantor was by no means the only mathematician who theologized and philosophized mathematics: the long history of the blending of mathematics with philosophy explicitly starts with Pythagoras, extending through Spinoza, Leibniz, and Kant into the twentieth century. Cantor himself identified his position as a mathematician-philosopher. It is therefore only natural for us to take him at his word, and rationalize his appearance in this section on philosophical grounds.

There are some very interesting facts about Cantor’s biography. He was born in Russia of a German father and Russian mother, and although the family moved to Germany when he was just eleven years old, Cantor retained a mystical spiritual affinity and nostalgia for Russia throughout all his life.

He is also known for erratic behavior that frequently cost him broken friendships. This fact is now ascribed to a mental illness, periodically driving him into a depression, and greatly complicating his professional and personal life. Bertrand Russell treats Cantor in his History of Western Philosophy in the chapter revealingly titled The Philosophy of Logical Analysis. But ascribing to Cantor his philosophical credentials, we do not even need Cantor’s or Russell’s word for it. Any mathematician and scientist whose work involves infinity, volens-nolens enters the domain of philosophy, and Cantor’s signature endeavor dwelled in infinity as in his permanent residence.

Cantor’s specific area of mathematics (incidentally, it is one of my favorite areas too!) is rather esoteric for a reader not well-versed in it, but, in describing it, Russell does a fairly good job of “Cantor-made-simple,” and for this reason his Cantor passage is well-worth quoting:

…(Georg Cantor) developed the theory of continuity and infinite number. Continuity until he defined it had been a vague word, convenient for philosophers like Hegel, who wished to introduce metaphysical muddles into mathematics. Cantor gave a precise significance to the word, and showed that continuity, as he defined it, was the concept needed by mathematicians and physicists. By this means a great deal of mysticism, such as that of Bergson, was rendered antiquated. Cantor also overcame the long-standing logical puzzles about the infinite number. Take the series of the whole numbers from 1 onwards: this number must be an infinite number. But now comes the curious fact: The number of even numbers must be the same as the number of all whole numbers. Consider the two rows:

1, 2, 3, 4, 05, 06, ….

2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12, ….

There is one entry in the lower row for every one in the top row; therefore the number of terms in these two rows must be the same, although the lower row consists of only half the terms in the top row. Leibniz, who noticed this, thought it a contradiction, and concluded that though there are infinite collections, there are no infinite numbers. Georg Cantor, on the contrary, boldly denied that it is a contradiction. He was right; this is only an oddity. Cantor defined an infinite collection as one which has parts containing as many terms as the whole collection contains. On this basis, he was able to build up a most interesting mathematical theory of infinite numbers, thereby taking into the realm of exact logic a whole region formerly given up to mysticism and confusion.

In the conclusion of this entry I would like to introduce several Cantor quotes which underscore his brand of bonding between mathematics and philosophy:

The actual infinite as distinguished from transfinite infinity arises in three contexts: first, when it is realized in the most complete form, in a fully independent otherworldly being, in Deo !!, where I call it the Absolute Infinite or simply the Absolute; second when it occurs in the contingent created world; third when the mind grasps it in abstracto as a mathematical magnitude, number or order type. Here is a clear rationalization of Cantor’s invention of the term transfinite, to set mathematics apart from theology, and in this philosophical aspect, alongside others (such as logical, to set it distinctly apart), his invention is both perfectly valid, and also highly commendable on all grounds.

The essence of mathematics lies in its freedom. Again, the borderline between mathematics and philosophy is crossed by the introduction of the philosophical term freedom. The way I understand this statement, from my subjective perspective, of course, is that once we realize that mathematics is grounded in hypotheses, its progress lies in the expansion of the number of such founding hypotheses, turning the mathematician into an inventor, a creator, a thinker, a philosopher!

A set is a Many that allows itself to be thought of as One. This is perhaps the most spectacular and splendid example of a philosophical dictum, bringing to mind nothing less than PreSocratica Sempervirens!

In mathematics, the art of asking a question must be held of higher value than solving it. Yes!!! But why so restrictive--- to mathematics only? We are surely entitled to expand this judgment to all philosophical thinking (and, “needless to say,” because the reader knows it already, I have always subscribed to the expanded version of this statement). But, anyway, Georg Cantor has already amply established his philosophical credentials to us by now, and the reason for his mandatory inclusion into this section has now been explained and justified beyond any doubt.

MARX'S LOYAL SIDEKICK

Friedrich Engels is one of those names virtually unknown to the Western public, but universally known to every Soviet citizen. In my early days, he was the second violin in the Marx-Engels-Lenin-Stalin quartet.

For curiosity, rather than for much information, here is the Engels entry in my Webster’s Biographical Dictionary:

“Engels, Friedrich. 1820-1895. German Socialist; collaborator with Karl Marx in the Communist Manifesto (1847); involved in revolutionary agitation in Baden (1848-49); fled to England, where he was a manufacturer at Manchester (1850-69); to London (1870-95). Associated with Marx in spreading Socialist propaganda; edited and published Marx’s works. Author of Die Lage der Arbeitenden Klassen in England (1845) and Entwickelung der Sozialismus von der Utopie zur Wissenschaft (c. 1880), etc. See also Moses Hess.”

Do I need to elaborate on the relative inadequacy of this Webster’s entry, which will be rectified below, in my own treatment of the historically important figure of Engels? Incidentally, regarding another forgotten, yet historically indispensable figure of Moses Hess, see my entry Before Karl Marx in the Judaica section, published on my blog on June 4^th, 2012.

But let us now proceed with our own account of Marx’s loyal sidekick…

Engels (1820-1895) was a German Socialist philosopher, best friend, chief financial supporter and closest collaborator of Karl Marx, who coauthored The Communist Manifesto (1848) with Marx, and later was the editor of the second and third volumes of Das Kapital, after Marx’s death.

Although himself not a Jew, Engels became attracted to the communist idea as preached by German Jews. Before Marx it was Moses Hess (1812-1875), a wealthy Jewish Socialist who introduced the young Engels to his brand of socialism, closely resembling what was later to become Marxist philosophy: Hess effectively argued that the logical consequence of Hegel’s philosophy and dialectic was communism. He also pointed to England as the land of the future socialist transformation, which resulted in Engels’ 1842-1844 trip there, followed by several more trips, and a final sojourn in England through his death in 1895 in London. As for Moses Hess, although initially on friendly terms with both Engels and Marx, he broke up with them after the 1848 revolution, joining Lassalle in Paris, and becoming an early (pre-Herzl) champion of Zionism.

In 1844, before he met Marx, young Engels wrote two articles for the Deutsche-Französische Jahrbücher, edited by Marx in Paris. In these early writings, Engels presented his vision of the coming of communism: the existing economic system based on private property was leading to the polarization of society into the world of “millionaires and paupers.” The inevitable social revolution was to eliminate all private property and bring about a “reconciliation of humanity with nature and itself.”

Having met Marx in Paris in 1844, Engels befriended him, and they formed a partnership, the outcome of which would be the celebrated 1848 Communist Manifesto and a lasting mutually beneficial collaborative effort. Engels wholeheartedly accepted Marx’s economic theory, and his unique interpretation of history. The collaboration was by no means one-sided. In the informal division of labor, Engels took over the area of nationalities-related subjects, military and international affairs, and questions of science. Marx needed Engels also as a popularizer of his economic ideas and philosophy. Engels wrote highly effective reviews of Marx’s Das Kapital, calling it the bible. It was Engels’s personal effort, in the brilliant pamphlet known as Anti-Düring, which contributed the most to the spread and understanding of Marxism among the European intellectuals and the public. And then, as we said before, after Marx’s death, it was Engels’s single-handed effort that the second and third volumes of Das Kapital became a reality, from his faithful reconstruction of Marx’s sketches, notes, and personal memos: a monumental achievement in recreating the bulk of the most famous Marxian signature work, where quite unfairly little or no credit has been given to Engels in the West (whereas in Russia this fact is well-known to everyone, and Engels has received ample credit for his creative collaboration with his senior partner).

And finally, in most situations where two or more persons are closely linked in various creative areas, it is a general rule to make a dedicated scholarly effort of distinguishing them, not only in the ways how they may have cut the common pie, but also with regard to the basic differences between them. In most cases, this is a useful and legitimate practice, but the collaboration of Engels with Marx is, perhaps, a rare exception. There was an organic affinity in their views, recognized by both of them without any pretense. It was only in how they divided their common labor, where the individuality of Engels does stand out, as otherwise, in the most general sense, Marx’s philosophical personality was overwhelming, reducing Engels to the role of a loyal and extremely valuable sidekick, but by no means on a par with his senior, in more senses than one, partner.

 

ORIGIN OF THE ORIGIN OF THE SPECIES

The great Charles Darwin (1809-1892) is the subject of this entry, and the title alludes to his most famous work On the Origin of the Species by Means of Natural Selection.

***

Charles Darwin is introduced by Webster’s Biographical Dictionary as “the great naturalist,” which is, of course, the standard way of describing him. His world-historical influence, however, transcends such tags. Whether he can be called a philosopher in the non-traditional sense may be somewhat debatable, but what cannot be disputed is his titanic role as a generator of philosophies, even if not a philosopher per se. What Galileo and Newton were to the seventeenth century, Bertrand Russell says, Darwin was to the nineteenth. It may be argued however that today Galileo and Newton are no longer that hot, while Charles Darwin and his Evolution are sizzling, with burning sparks flying all over America, while in Europe, with the exception of the Vatican, his authoritarian reign has long been indisputable.

Once again, I am content to provide narrative borrowed from Russell’s History of Western Philosophy.

Darwin’s theory has two parts. On the one hand, was the doctrine of evolution, which maintained that the different forms of life had developed gradually from a common ancestry. This doctrine, which is generally accepted now, was not new. It had been maintained by Lamarck, and by Darwin’s grandfather Erasmus, not to mention Anaximander. Darwin supplied a colossal mass of evidence for this doctrine, and in the second part of his theory believed himself to have discovered the cause of evolution. He, thus, gave to the doctrine a popularity and a scientific force which it had not previously possessed, but he by no means originated it.

The second part of Darwin’s theory is the struggle for existence, and the survival of the fittest. All animals and plants multiply a lot faster than nature can provide for them; therefore, in each generation many perish before the age for reproducing themselves. What determines which will survive? To some extent, no doubt, sheer luck, but there is another cause of more importance. Animals and plants are, as a rule, not exactly like their parents, but differ slightly by excess or defect in every measurable characteristic. In an environment of a given kind, members of the same species compete for survival, and those best adapted to it have the best chance. Therefore, among chance variations, those which are favorable will preponderate among adults in each generation. Thus from age to age deer run more swiftly, cats stalk more silently, and the giraffes’ necks become longer. Given enough time this mechanism, Darwin contended, could account for the whole long development from the protozoa to homo sapiens.

This part of Darwin’s theory has been much disputed in technicalities. That, however, is not what concerns the historian of nineteenth-century ideas. From the historical point of view, what is interesting is Darwin’s extension to the whole of life of the economics which characterized the philosophical radicals. The motive force of evolution according to him is a kind of biological economics in a world of free competition. It was Malthus’s doctrine of population extended to the world of animals and plants that suggested to Darwin the struggle for existence and the survival of the fittest as the source of evolution.

Darwin was a liberal, but his theories had consequences in some degree inimical to traditional liberalism. The doctrine that all men are born equal, and the differences between adults are due wholly to education, is incompatible with his emphasis on congenital differences between members of the same species. (This is a terribly important kernel of an idea to develop, suggesting that in the modern world, where education no longer has the same prestige as it use to, material success, which is the paramount criterion of life achievement, appears to have nothing to do with traditional liberalism of “all men are created equal.” On the contrary, an all-new type of the survival of the fittest has been underway where the propensity for money-making seems to be a congenital success characteristic, whereas a poor understanding of business struggle for success has come to be seen as a congenital defect… See also my entry Business And Darwinism in the Contradiction section.)

Continuing the narrative above, Russell has a most interesting, although by no means unexpected discussion of Darwinism and Nietzsche, in another chapter (The Utilitarians) of the book. With that superb paragraph I shall presently close my Darwin entry:

Darwinian competition was not of the limited (Benthamite) sort; there were no rules against hitting below the belt. The framework of law does not exist among animals, nor is war excluded as a competitive method. The use of the State to secure victory in competition was against the rules, as conceived by the Benthamites, but could not be excluded from the Darwinian struggle. In fact, though Darwin himself was a Liberal, and although Nietzsche never mentions him, except with contempt, Darwin’s “Survival of the Fittest” led, when thoroughly assimilated, to something much more like Nietzsche’s philosophy, than like Bentham’s. These developments however belong to a later period, since Darwin’s Origin of the Species was published in 1859 and its political implications were not at first perceived.

I wonder if Hitler’s Kampf is, in fact, an organic extension of Darwin’s Struggle for Existence, at least as it was seen by his publisher, the one who had come up with that flashy Mein Kampf title…

 

BOTH SIDES OF THE MOUTH

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy introduces John Stuart Mill (1808-1873) in the following manner, which probably holds the key to his world-historical legacy. Yes, he was extremely influential, but no, he was not very original:

“John Stuart Mill, British philosopher, economist, moral and political theorist and administrator, was the most influential English-speaking philosopher of the nineteenth century. His views are of continuing significance, generally recognized to be among the deepest and certainly the most effective defenses of empiricism and of liberal political views of society and culture. The overall aim of his philosophy is to develop a positive view of the universe and of the place of humans in it, one which contributes to the progress of human knowledge, individual freedom, and wellbeing. His views are not entirely original, having their roots in the empiricism of John Locke, George Berkeley and David Hume and in the utilitarianism of Jeremy Bentham. But he gave them a new depth, and his formulations were sufficiently articulate, to gain for them a continuing influence among a broad public.”

John Stuart Mill is an interesting philosopher, in many ways far more interesting than his father James Mill, although I naturally agree with Bertrand Russell that he cannot be placed among the greatest. (According to Russell, he and several others he names, were none of them quite in the front rank among philosophers, that is to say, they were not the equals of the men (in Mill’s case, it was Jeremy Bentham) whose systems they on the whole adopted.) Mill was indeed a derivative philosopher and, as Russell notes, no matter how hard he tried to be original, he could never liberate himself from the debilitating influences of Jeremy Bentham and of his father James Mill.

John Stuart Mill was literally born into utilitarianism. His father James Mill was a friend and supporter of Bentham, only far more dogmatic and intractable, in their common silliness. The son received a spectacular education at the hands of his dedicated father, who saw the sine qua non of good government in better education, and, as they say, walked the talk with his son. Mill the Younger grew up an accomplished elitist in his philosophical outlook. In the words of Encyclopaedia Britannica, he thought that civilization depended on a tiny minority of creative minds, and on the free play of speculative intelligence. He detested conventional public opinion, and he feared that complete democracy, far from emancipating that opinion, would make it more restrictive. Accepting democracy as inevitable, he nevertheless feared it, as a force capable of stifling civilization by its promotion of the tyranny of the majority. The worth of the state in the long run, only amounts to the worth of the individuals composing it, and without men of genius, society would become a stagnant pool.

Derivative or not,  there are certainly a number of things that I like about the person and philosophy of John Stuart Mill. Here is a quote from his Representative Government (1861), which I have already fondly used before. It goes to the heart of my argument about the practicality of all Utopian projects, Communism being their natural first choice:

“Whenever it ceases to be true that mankind, as a rule, prefers themselves to others, and those nearest to them to those more remote, from that moment Communism is not only practicable, but the only defensible form of society; and will, when that time arrives, be assuredly carried into effect.”

Fortunately for him, and even for the best that our friend Jeremy Bentham has to offer, their legacy cannot be cruelly reduced by some intellectual Procrustes to the one-size-fits-all utilitarian bed that Bentham built and John Stuart Mill was born in.

 

Leaving a few appealing aspects of his political philosophy aside, however, the rest of Mill’s philosophy is far less appealing, and often objectionable. Here is a pertinent excerpt from Bertrand Russell’s Chapter on The Utilitarians in his History of Western Philosophy:

John Stuart Mill, in his 1863 treatise Utilitarianism, offers an argument which is so fallacious that it is hard to understand how he can have thought it valid. Pleasure is the only thing desired; therefore pleasure is the only thing desirable.” He says that the only things visible are things seen, the only things audible are things heard, and similarly the only things desirable are things desired. He does not notice that a thing is visible if it can be seen, but is desirable if it ought to be desired. Thus, desirable is such a word that presupposes an ethical theory; we cannot infer what is desirable from what is desired.

Suspecting a very reputable philosopher (J. S. Mill), as Russell does, of having no understanding of ethics is an accusation of the highest order, yet, sadly, it is by no means unfounded. Indeed, there is a grave challenge to ethics in the nature of utilitarianism as such; and all its proponents, Mill included, cannot escape a severe judgment of this nature.

In his economic philosophy, Mill was initially a proponent of free markets. He accepted interventions in the economy, however, such as taxing alcohol, if there were sufficient utilitarian grounds for it. He also initially believed that equality of taxation meant equality of sacrifice, and that progressive taxation was a penalty on those who worked harder and saved more, and was, therefore, “a mild form of robbery.” Later on, Mill’s views acquired a more socialist bent, and he even added chapters to his Principles of Political Economy in defense of a socialist outlook and went so far as to defend some socialist causes. (What a striking contrast with his anti-Socialist father James!)

It was probably on account of such shifting of his positions, especially in the area of political economy, that Mill was lampooned as talking from "both sides of his mouth."

 

CHRISTMAS 2014

Merry Christmas to all readers of my blog who celebrate Christmas on this day. For my commentary on the meaning of Christmas, see my entry Reason For The Season, posted on December 25^th, 2012.

FEUERBACH OF THE MARX AND ENGELS FAME

Ludwig Andreas von Feuerbach (1804-1872) is not a household name in the Western world, but it was such to every Soviet college student, on account of his everlasting connection to Marxism, one of whose sources he was claimed to be. It is for this reason, if not for any other, that he deserves a special look in this section, and he naturally gets it.

Regrettably, our good friend Bertrand Russell virtually omits him from any kind of mention in his History of Western Philosophy, except for the following sentence in his chapter on Karl Marx:

“At the university he [Marx] was influenced by the still prevalent Hegelianism, as also by Feuerbach’s revolt against Hegel towards materialism…”

Feuerbach is frequently referred to as a bridge between Hegel and Marx, but this characterization is sorely inaccurate, as Marx did not require a bridge between himself and Hegel. More importantly than his young Hegelianism, it was Feuerbach’s dismissal of religion (shift from Hegel’s idealism to materialism), which can be represented as his principal influence on Marxism as an offshoot of Hegelianism. After all, religion (seen as the outward projection of man’s inner nature) was his main philosophical interest. I am of course at odds with such an understanding of religion, whose main significance, in my opinion, is cultural and social, and the phenomenon of personal faith is, as I believe, of a later, more anthropologically advanced origin.

Although Feuerbach is never counted among major philosophers in European history, there are implicitly made suggestions that he may be one. Along with Schopenhauer, Kierkegaard, Marx, and Nietzsche, he is seen as one of European philosophical outsiders who rebelled against the academic philosophy of the 19^th century and thought of themselves as reformers and prophets of a new culture. (New World Encyclopedia) By placing him in such an illustrious company, the source boosts his importance by association, and, even though I do not find him fit to stand among the greatest, suggestions of this sort are rather significant.

Other than that, my Webster’s Biographical Dictionary gives him a short mention among the sons of Paul Johann Anselm von Feuerbach (1775-1833), German jurist and philosopher, specialist in criminology. The father is far less prominent in the history of philosophy, but he gets nearly twice as much space as his son… Being interested in this entry in the son only, we shall thus skip the father and his other sons, and focus on our Feuerbach only:

“[Feuerbach] Ludwig Andreas (1804-1872), philosopher, pupil of Hegel in Berlin; abandoned Hegelian idealism for a naturalistic materialism, subsequently attacked orthodox religion and immortality, concluded is the outward projection of man’s inward nature; author: Das Wesen des Christentums (1840), Das Wesen der Religion (1845), etc.”

The following portion comes from the Internet Wikipedia sources:

Feuerbach’s most important work is Das Wesen des Christentums (1841). In part I of his book, Feuerbach developed what he calls the “true or anthropological essence of religion.” Treating of God in his various aspects “as a being of the understanding,” “as a moral being or law,” “as love,” and so on, Feuerbach talks of how man is equally a conscious being, more so than God, because man has placed upon God the ability of understanding. Man contemplates many things, and, in doing so, he becomes acquainted with himself. Feuerbach shows that in every aspect God corresponds to some feature or some need of human nature. “If man is to find contentment in God, he must find himself in God.” Thus God is nothing else than man: He is, so to speak, the outward projection of man’s inward nature. This projection is dubbed as a chimaera by Feuerbach, that God and the idea of a higher being is dependent upon the aspect of benevolence. “A God who is not benevolent, not just, not wise, is no God.” He goes on to contend that qualities are not suddenly denoted as divine because of their godly association. The qualities themselves are divine therefore making God divine, indicating that man is capable of understanding and applying meanings of divinity to religion and not that religion makes a man divine.

In part 2, Feuerbach discusses the “false or theological essence of religion,” i.e. the view that regards God as having a separate existence over against man. Hence arise various mistaken beliefs such as the belief in revelation which he believes not only injures the moral sense, but also “poisons, nay destroys, the divinest feeling in man, the sense of truth,” and the belief in the sacraments, such as the Eucharist, which is to him a piece of religious materialism of which “the necessary consequences are superstition and immorality.”

Part 2 comes to a crux by seemingly retracting previous statements. He claims that God’s only action is “the moral and eternal salvation of man: thus man has in fact no other aim than himself” because man’s actions are placed on God. He also contradicts himself by claiming that man gives up his personality and places it upon God, who in turn is a selfish being. This selfishness turns onto man and projects man to be wicked and corrupt, that they are “incapable of good,” and it is only God who is good, “the Good Being.” In such a way Feuerbach detracts from many of his earlier assertions while showing the alienation that takes place in man by worshipping God. Feuerbach affirms that goodness is, “personified as God,” turning God into an object, because if God were anything but an object nothing would need to be personified upon him. The aspect of objects having previously been discussed; in that man contemplates objects and that objects themselves give conception of what externalizes man. Ergo, if God is good so then should be man because God is merely an externalization of man, because God is an object. However, religion shows that man is inherently corrupt. Feuerbach tries to lessen his inconsistency by asking if it were possible if, “I could perceive the beauty of a superb picture if my mind were aesthetically an absolute piece of perversion?” Through such Feuerbach’s reasoning, it may not be possible, but it is possible, and he later states that man is capable of finding beauty.

Honestly, I am not a great fan of Feuerbach’s philosophy of religion. I guess that the only contribution that he may have made to Marxism was changing the tracks under the Hegelian train, from the idealistic track to the atheistic track. But to end this entry on a lighter note, here is a piece of some enlightening trivia. We are familiar of course with the expression “We are what we eat,” which, by the way, I used to find rather silly. But we are perhaps unfamiliar with the fact that this expression comes to us from the German rhyme: Mann ist was er isst, whose author happens to be none other than our Herr von Feuerbach! Having reexamined, on Feuerbach’s authority, the figurative significance of this dictum, I do not find it silly anymore.

 

DEPTH OR CONFUSION?

 

This is a rather sentimental entry devoted to the notable English classical scholar and editor George Long (1800-1879), whose commentary on Marcus Aurelius impressed me so much that I decided to give him an entry of his own, which now happens to find its home in this section. I know that there are many notables objectively more deserving than he is to receive such an entry, which they have not, but, I repeat, this is an entirely subjective choice of mine, which allows no objective argument on respective merits. So be it then!

***

George Long is not on anybody’s list of persons deserving to be remembered. I know of him only from his Commentaries to Marcus Aurelius’ Thoughts. But his insights are preciously charming, if not too original in their own right. I have used several of them throughout this collection, and I see nothing wrong in doing it. Anyone who makes your mind click, big or small, deserves such attention!

Here now is an exceptionally thoughtful, a great deal provocative, and hilariously entertaining, in the best philosophical sense, passage from Long, which may explain my special partiality for him: “There is much in Antoninus that is hard to understand, and it might be said that he did not fully comprehend all that he wrote, which is in no way remarkable, for it happens that a man may write what neither he nor anybody can understand. The confusion sometimes may be in the inevitable ambiguity of language, rather than in the mind of the writer, for I cannot think that some of the wisest of men did not know what they intended to say.” On the strength of this gem alone, Long merits inclusion in my list of the great and memorable!

This is all very funny, but when it happens to me, I would not attribute it to some ambiguity of language. It only means that the passage requires a lot of work or a complete revision, to take care of the problem. The reason why I am making this note at all, is to make a memo to myself that, on second reading, everything ought to be made comprehensible, or else thrown out.

However, the legitimate question does exist, whether, from the linguistic point of view, it is possible to get lost inside a great labyrinth of complicated thoughts, so that while you are writing, you may think that you are on the right track, but when you are later on reading back to yourself what you had written, as if retracing your steps through the meandering passages of the labyrinth, then only do you realize that you have lost your way, and so, you try to recover that almost invisible thread of wool that your friend Ariadne had prudently provided you with, so that you can now overcome your dilemma, and triumph over the very angry bull that threatens to destroy your fragile mental composure.

 

SARTOR RESARTUS

This entry is devoted to Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881), who certainly deserves one. And, yes, the title Sartor Resartus (Tailor Retailored) is the title of Carlyle’s autobiographical masterpiece, but being applicable to Carlyle himself, it is an apt introduction for him in this entry.

***

There is a lot to be said for counting only the original, newly-minted linguistic coins, as metaphors. But it may not be very practical, as the metaphoric prototype may not be easily distinguished from the early mint by anyone who is unfamiliar with the exact parameters and copyright characteristics of the prototype, and will undoubtedly treat much later specimens as prototypes. Even better, most people, consciously using an existing colorful expression, will undoubtedly refer to it as a metaphor, even if it has been in circulation as long as a century or more!

Incidentally, this splendidly insightful comparison of a metaphor to a coin belongs, again, to the genius of Nietzsche, in the following quotation from his unpublished Über Warheit Und Lüge Im Außermoralischen Sinn (1873):

“What, then, is truth? A mobile army of metaphors, metonyms, and anthropomorphisms,¾ in short, a sum of human relations, which have been enhanced, transposed, and embellished poetically and rhetorically, and which after long use seem firm, canonical, and obligatory to people: truths are illusions, about which one has forgotten that this is what they are, metaphors, which are worn out, and without sensuous power; coins, which have lost their pictures and now matter only as metal, no longer as coins…”

Ironically, thirty-seven years prior to Nietzsche, a very similar thought was expressed by the Scottish Sage of Chelsea Thomas Carlyle, in his autobiographical masterpiece Sartor Resartus (The Tailor Retailored):

“Examine language-- what, if you except some few primitive elements (of natural sounds), what is it all but metaphors, whether recognized as such or no longer recognized; still fluid and florid, or now solid-grown and colorless?” (Thomas Carlyle: Sartor Resartus, I, 1836.)

Could Nietzsche have been influenced by this? Doubly ironically, he well could have been, as he was very familiar with Carlyle, whom he most unkindly called the insipid muddlehead, semi-actor and rhetorician, and even a counterfeiter. (I suspect, however, that Nietzsche’s prejudice against Carlyle, shared by quite a few others, can be traced to the latter’s angry Reminiscences, written in a state of deep mental depression, and rather recklessly published posthumously in 1881 by his friend and literary executor James Froude.) It is well worth also quoting the following characterization of Carlyle by Nietzsche, in Götzen-Dämmerung:

[Skirmishes #12]: “I have been reading the life of Thomas Carlyle, this unconscious and involuntary farce, this heroic-moralistic interpretation of dyspeptic states. Carlyle: a man of strong words and attitudes, a rhetor from need, constantly lured by the craving for a strong faith and the feeling of his incapacity for it (in this respect, a typical romantic!). The craving for a strong faith is no proof of a strong faith, but quite the contrary. If one has such a faith, then one can afford the beautiful luxury of skepticism: one is sure enough, firm enough, has ties enough for that. Carlyle drugs something in himself with the fortissimo of his veneration of men of strong faith and with his rage against the less simple-minded: he requires noise. A constant passionate dishonesty against himself --- that is his proprium; in this respect, he is, and remains, interesting. Of course, in England he is admired precisely for his honesty... Well, that is English; and in view of the fact that the English are the people of consummate cant, it is even as it should be, and not just comprehensible. At bottom, Carlyle is an English atheist ,who makes it a point of honor not to be one.”

Nietzsche, however, ought not have been too critical of Carlyle, as he may have been himself influenced by him, and as his views and those of Carlyle have actually so much in common.

Bertrand Russell has no special chapter for Carlyle in his History of Western Philosophy, but references to Carlyle are fairly numerous there. Talking about the romantic-nationalist movement arising in opposition to philosophical liberalism in the nineteenth-century Europe, he observes that “the cult of hero, as developed by Carlyle and Nietzsche, is typical of this philosophy… Byron was the poet of this movement, and Fichte, Carlyle, and Nietzsche were its philosophers.” Elsewhere, Russell somewhat contradicts the last statement, by saying that Carlyle was not a philosopher in the technical sense. He also mentions Carlyle being under the influence of Kant, and notes that Engels’ praise for Carlyle was a result of Engels’s misunderstanding of him: Carlyle never wanted wage-earners to be emancipated, but only resubjected to the kind of musters they had in the Middle Ages.

My personal opinion of Carlyle is positive (perhaps, because I have not read his Reminiscences?). I believe that his analysis of metaphors as the starting point of language is a stroke of genius, and a writer who can boast of a single paragraph, or even a single sentence of such profundity, deserves an undying respect in all eternity. But there are many more strikingly sharp observations to his credit, which are so numerous that I am not going to quote even my favorite ones, forcefully limiting myself to just three at random:

A person who is gifted sees the essential point, and leaves the rest as surplus. This has been my principle in all reading and learning since childhood; this trait of mine has been lavishly praised by Grigori Permyakov, who loved it when I dismissed all his proud technicalities of structural paroemiology as inessential… Thus Carlyle strikes an exquisitely harmonious chord in my psyche with this aphorism of his.

A strong mind always hopes, and has always cause to hope. This is nice and therapeutic for me: no matter what happened in the course of my life, at least I have a strong mind, according to Carlyle. (Should I note, for the record, that my comment here was tongue-in cheek?)

Blessed is he who has found his work; let him ask for no other blessedness. A very comforting thought for me too, to stick to!

Postscript: Yes, I do love Thomas Carlyle, and not only for the fact that he was Scottish. Perhaps, when this material undergoes its long-promised grand revision, I ought to give him far more attention than what so far has been the case!

 

THE GREATEST GENIUS OF GOETHE'S CENTURY

 

This entry goes to Lord Byron (1788-1824). That he merits an entry of his own is without a question. The only question should be, why here, and, say, not in Sonnets? Hopefully, the answer will become clear from the entry below, but for now it may be enough to say that if Lord Byron has received a personal chapter in Bertrand Russell’s History of Western Philosophy, all further questions as to why I am doing the same are best to be redirected to the originator of such a precedent.

Lord Byron’s influence on the course of Western Civilization has been enormous. I might add, nowhere as strong as in Russia, where the name of Byron is known to all, and where every single writer and poet since Pushkin and Lermontov have paid him an exuberant tribute, and honored him with numerous references and allusions. But this may be too Russo-centric of me, as I am aware that in Europe, too, the adoration for Byron was hardly less from the beginning, and probably, the only place where he was not as much appreciated as everywhere else, was his own England.

Byron provided Europe not so much with a specific philosophical theory, as with a whole intellectual and cultural outlook, which affected all sides of the European culture. Goethe wrote of him: “I could not make any use of any man as the representative of the modern poetical era, except him, who undoubtedly is to be regarded as the greatest genius of our century. Byron is neither antique nor romantic, but like the present day itself. This was the sort of man I required. Then he suited me on account of his unsatisfied nature and his warlike tendency, which led to his death at Missolonghi.”

Nietzsche, in Menschliches #221, calls Byron “a great man, whose instinct we can trust and whose theory lacked nothing but thirty years more of practice.” In Menschliches #109, he speaks of him as a bona fide philosopher:

“Sorrow is knowledge. How gladly one would exchange the false claims of priests that there is a God who demands the Good from us, who is guardian and witness of each act, each moment and each thought, who loves us and wants the best for us in every misfortune,--- how gladly one would exchange these claims for truths just as salutary, calming, and soothing as those errors! But there are no such truths; philosophy can at the most oppose those errors with other metaphysical fictions (also untruths). But the tragic thing is that we can no longer believe those dogmas of religion and metaphysics, once we have the rigorous method of truth in our hearts and heads, yet on the other hand the development of mankind has made us so delicate, so sensitive, and ailing that we need the most potent kind of cures and comforts, hence arises the danger that man might bleed to death from the truth he has recognized. Byron, in Manfred, expressed this in immortal lines:

‘Sorrow is knowledge: they who know the most

Must mourn the deepest o’er the fatal truth,

The tree of knowledge is not that of life.’”

Bertrand Russell, who has a special chapter on Byron in his History of Western Philosophy, calls him an “aristocratic rebel,” and says this of him:

“When we consider men, not as artists or discoverers, not as sympathetic or antipathetic to our tastes, but as forces, as causes of change in the social structure, in judgments of value, or in intellectual outlook, we find that the course of events in recent times has necessitated much readjustment in our estimates, making some men less important than they had seemed, and others--- more so. Among those whose importance is greater than it seemed, Byron deserves a high place.”

He quickly explains that he is talking in terms of Byron’s appreciation in England, where he was chronically underappreciated, whereas on the Continent (which I already had a chance to emphasize) there never was a need for a readjustment, as Byron’s standing in Europe has always been of the highest order.

At the end of the chapter, Russell says: “Like many other prominent men, [Byron] was more important as a myth, than as he really was.” I guess that this is put all too modestly. In fact, every heroic personality, any man of great prominence, necessarily becomes a legend, and only as such does he enter monumental history. Byron was such a man, and having become a legend in his own time, he is no less a legend today.

 

SCHELLING THE YOUNG BLOOMER BUT A LATE-LATE COMER

Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling (1775-1854) was a German philosopher, best known for calling architecture “frozen music,” and for being one of the four names in the quadrivium Kant-Fichte-Schelling-Hegel. Other than that, Bertrand Russell calls him philosophically unimportant, Nietzsche casually gives him credit for despising Locke, and notes that it was Schelling who christened the human faculty for the “supersensible” “intellectual intuition,” thus gratifying the most heartfelt cravings of the Germans, whose cravings were at bottom pious. Schopenhauer comments on Schelling more frequently, but these comments are the most uncharitable: “…The mask of unintelligibility holds out the longest; this is only in Germany, however, where it was introduced by Fichte, perfected by Schelling, and attained its highest climax, finally, in Hegel, always with the happiest results… Those writers who construct difficult, obscure, involved, and ambiguous phrases most certainly do not rightly know what it is they wish to say--- they have only a dull consciousness of it, which is still struggling to put itself into thought; they also often wish to conceal from themselves, and other people, that, in reality, they have nothing to say. Like Fichte, Schelling, and Hegel, they wish to appear to know what they do not know, to think what they do not think, and to say what they do not say. (Parerga und Paralipomena). There are many more insults of this nature in Schopenhauer, but the ones above should suffice.

…Considering all this, the question arises, Why Schelling at all? The immediate answer is sentimental and utterly silly, but very often such little personal things outgrow the actual objects of our memory and loom large in our psyche, as we are reluctant to admit, especially to ourselves, such an inane weakness. But ever since my youth, I have remembered the Kant-Fichte-Schelling-Hegel quadrivium of names, and although I confess that I never read Schelling, his name sounded so pleasantly to me that I transferred my liking of his name to Schelling the person, by sheer association.

But there is another, this time objective reason, coming to the rescue of the subjective one, which becomes apparent from the following narrative in the Wikipedia:

American philosopher Ken Wilber out of the blue places Schelling as one of two philosophers who, “after Plato, had the broadest impact on the Western mind.” Today, every period of his thought concerning The Being is weighed by Western philosophers-- philosophy of nature, of art and of mythology and revelation. But he has not enjoyed such reputation in every time. His work impressed the English romantic poet and critic Coleridge, who introduced his ideas into English-speaking culture, sometimes, unfortunately, without full acknowledgment, as in the Biographia Literaria. Coleridge’s critical work was highly influential, and it was he who introduced into English Schelling’s concept of the unconscious. However by the 1950’s he was almost a forgotten philosopher even in his country Germany. In the 1910’s and 1920’s philosophers of neo-Kantianism and neo-Hegelianism, like Wilhelm Windelband or Richard Kroner, tended to describe him as an episode connecting Fichte and Hegel. His late period tended to be ignored, and his philosophy of nature, as well as philosophy of art in the 1790’s and 1800’s were mainly focused on. In this context, Kuno Fischer characterized Schelling’s early philosophy as aesthetic idealism, focusing his argument where he ranked art as “the sole document and the eternal organ of philosophy.” From socialist philosophers, such as György Lukács, he received criticism as an anachronistic antagonist.

One exception in that age was Heidegger who treated Schelling’s On Human Freedom in his 1936 lectures. He found there the central themes of Western ontology: the issues of being, existence and its freedom.

In the 1950’s, the situation began to change. In 1954, the centenary of his death, an international conference on Schelling was held. Several German-speaking philosophers including Karl Jaspers gave presentations on Schelling, on the uniqueness and actuality of his thought, with the interest of philosophers shifting toward his late period thought, where he focuses on being and existence, or precisely the origin of existence. Schelling was the subject of the 1954 dissertation of the eminent German philosopher Jürgen Habermas. In 1955, Jaspers published a book titled Schelling, which represents him as a forerunner of the existentialists. Walter Schultz, one of organizers of the 1954 conference, published a book too, claiming that Schelling had made the German Idealism complete with his late philosophy, and particularly with his Berlin lectures in 1840’s. Schultz presented Schelling as the person who resolved philosophical problems which Dr. Hegel had left incomplete (!), in contrast of contemporary thought that Schelling had been overcome by Hegel much earlier, and outdated. In 1970’s, nature was again one of philosophical interests in relation to environmental issues. Schelling’s philosophy of nature, particularly, his intention to construct a program, which covers both nature and the intellectual in the same system, and to attempt to pick up the nature as a central theme of philosophy, has been reevaluated in the contemporary context. His influence and relation to German art scene, particularly, to Romantic literature and visual art, has been a scientific interest since late 1960’s… Also, in relation to psychology, Schelling was considered the first philosopher who coined the term “unconsciousness.”

Having said, or rather quoted, all this, it should be interesting to see what my Webster’s Biographical Dictionary has to report about Schelling. Accordingly, here is Webster’s Schelling entry:

“Schelling, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von. 1775-1854. German philosopher; professor, U. of Jena (1798), Würzburg (1803), Munich (1827); lecturer, U. of Berlin (1841-1846). Among his works are Ideen zu einer Philosophie der Natur (1797), Der Erste Entwurf eines Systems der Naturphilosophie (1799), System des Transzendentalen Idealismus (1800), Bruno oder über das Natürliche und Göttliche Prinzip der Dinge (1802), Philosophie und Religion (1804), and Untersuchungen über das Wesenden Menschlichen Freiheit (1809).”

…Well, precious nothing is what my Webster’s says about Professor Schelling, which is of course saying a lot between the lines…

Most of this entry as it stands now is of course stock, but I have my work cut out for me, and I will work on the person and philosophy of Schelling in the next stage of my work, which is a promise I make to myself.

 

MILL, FATHER OF MILL

This is yet another entry stub for someone who requires a separate entry and did not have one before. James Mill (1773-1836) definitely needs one, and his appearance in a supporting role in his son’s entry, later on in this section is not a good excuse to deny him his own place under the sun of the Significant Others. After all, Bertrand Russell, in his History of Western Philosophy, mentions him numerous times, not all of them on account of John Stuart. And also, James’s personal entry in my Webster’s Biographical Dictionary is so respectably large, dwarfing many such entries of the original denizens of the present section, that one need argue no further about the absolute necessity of James Mill’s inclusion here.

Having called it a “stub” already, I am following the stub rules in the writing of this entry. First comes the entry from the above-mentioned Webster’s, then a few quotes from Russell, all amassed her for reference and as a base material for the future proper rewriting of this entry. Here is the Webster’s entry:

“Mill, James. 1773-1836. Scottish philosopher, historian, and economist in England; father of John Stuart Mill. Son of a shoemaker; to London (1802) with Sir John Stuart, M.P.; became editor of St. James Chronicle (1805), and wrote for Edinburgh Review (1808-1813) and other reviews to support his family; he spent twelve years on his History of India (1818); appointed official in East India Company (1819), rose to examiner and head of office (1830). Met Jeremy Bentham (1808), adopted his principles, became his companion and chief promulgator of Bentham’s utilitarian philosophy in England; contributed utilitarian articles to the Encyclopaedia Britannica (1816-23) and to Westminster Review, Benthamite organ (from 1824). As head of association for setting up ‘chrestomathic’ school for higher education, took leading part in the founding of London University (1825). Known as founder of philosophic radicalism, author of Elements of Political Economy, intended for the education of his eldest son and based on Ricardo (1821), Analysis of the Mind, his magnum opus, providing in associationism psychological basis for utilitarianism (1829), and Fragment on Mackintosh, supporting doctrine that morality is based on utility (1835).”

The following are some excerpts from Russell’s History of Western Philosophy, devoted to James Mill:

“…James Mill took Helvétius as his guide in the education of his son John Stuart…” (From Chapter XXI: Currents of Thought in the Nineteenth Century; page 722.)

“…Bentham was at first almost exclusively interested in law; gradually, as he grew older, his interests widened and his opinions became more subversive. After 1808, he was a republican, a believer in the equality of women, an enemy of imperialism, and an uncompromising democrat. Some of these opinions he owed to James Mill. Both believed in the omnipotence of education…” (Ibid. page 723.)

“…Tendencies to enthusiasm… existed in Bentham and John Stuart Mill, but not in Malthus or James Mill …” (Ibid. page 724.)

“…Somebody seems to have once mentioned Kant to James Mill, who after a cursory inspection remarked: ‘I see well enough what poor Kant would be at.’ But this degree of recognition is exceptional [among the British philosophers throughout the period from Kant to Nietzsche]; in general, there is a complete silence about the Germans…” (From Chapter XXVI: The Utilitarians; page 773.)

“…It was through the influence of James Mill that Bentham was induced to take sides in practical politics. James Mill was twenty-five years younger than Bentham and an ardent disciple of his doctrines, but he was also an active Radical. Bentham gave Mill a house (which had belonged to Milton), and assisted him financially while he wrote a history of India. When this history was finished the East India Company gave James Mill a post as they would do afterwards to his son until their abolition as a sequel to the Mutiny. James Mill greatly admired Condorcet and Helvétius. Like all Radicals of that period, he believed in the omnipotence of education. He practiced his theories on his son John Stuart Mill, with results partly good, partly bad. The most important bad result was that John Stuart could never quite shake off his influence, even when he perceived that his father’s outlook had been narrow.

James Mill, like Bentham, considered pleasure the only good, and pain the only evil. But, like Epicurus, he valued moderate pleasure the most. He thought intellectual enjoyments the best, and temperance the chief virtue. ‘The intense was with him a bye-word of scornful disapprobation,’ says his son, who then adds that he objected to the modern stress laid upon feeling. Like the whole utilitarian school, he was utterly opposed to every form of romanticism. He thought politics could be governed by reason, and he  expected men’s opinions to be determined by the weight of evidence. If opposing sides in a controversy are presented with an equal skill, there is a moral certainty-- so he held-- that the greater number will judge right. His outlook was limited by the poverty of his emotional nature, but within his limitations he had the merits of industry, disinterestedness, and rationality.” (Ibid. page 776-777.)

“Although Owen was a friend of Bentham, who had invested a considerable sum in Owen’s business, the Philosophical Radicals did not like his new doctrines, in fact, the advent of Socialism made them less Radical and less philosophical than they had been. Hodgskin secured a certain following in London, and James Mill was horrified. He wrote:

‘Their notions of property look ugly; … they seem to think that it should not exist, and that the existence of it is an evil to them. … The fools, not to see that what they madly desire would be such a calamity to them as no hands but their own could bring upon them.’

This letter, written in 1831, may be taken as the beginning of the long war between Capitalism and Socialism. In a later letter, James Mill attributes the doctrine to the ‘mad nonsense’ of Hodgskin, and adds: ‘These opinions, if they were to spread, would be the subversion of civilized society; worse than the overwhelming deluge of Huns and Tartars.’” (Ibid. page 781-782.)

…Well, ecce James Mill…