(To put the title of this entry
into proper perspective, rationality without its own admission of
irrationality as an essential complement to itself, suffers from shallowness
and superficiality, and, in fact, it is not worth much, philosophically
speaking. This isn’t something new that I have said just now, but it is one of
my recurring leitmotifs, playing through several of my philosophical sections.
Incidentally, the last appearance of this leitmotif occurred most recently as a
comment in the entry Pascal’s Pensées, earlier
in this section.)
***
Continuing with Bertrand
Russell’s general appraisal of John Locke, here is an important paragraph from
one of the three Lockean chapters (Locke’s Theory of Knowledge),
in his History of Western Philosophy. It is well worth noting that only
Plato and Aristotle have received more chapters in his book, whereas no other
philosopher has got more than a single chapter.
Locke’s
philosophy, as it appears in the Essay Concerning Human Understanding, has
throughout certain merits and certain demerits. Both alike were useful: the
demerits are such only from the theoretical point. He is always
sensible, and always willing to sacrifice logic, rather than become
paradoxical. He enunciates general principles, which, as the reader can hardly
fail to perceive, are capable of leading to some strange consequences; but
whenever the strange circumstances seem about to appear, Locke blandly refrains
from drawing them. To a logician this is irritating; to a practical man, it is
a proof of sound judgment. Since the world is what it is, it is clear that
valid reasoning from sound principles can’t lead to error; but a principle may
be so nearly true as to deserve theoretical respect, and yet may lead to
practical consequences which we feel to be absurd. There’s therefore a
justification for common sense in philosophy, but only as showing that our
theoretical principles cannot be quite correct, so long as their consequences
are condemned by an appeal to common sense. which we feel to be irresistible.
The theorist may retort that common sense is no more infallible than logic. But
this retort, although made by Berkeley and Hume, would have been wholly foreign
to Locke’s intellectual temper. A characteristic of Locke, which descended from
him to the whole Liberal movement, is a lack of dogmatism. Some few certainties
he takes over from his predecessors: our own existence, the existence of God,
and the truth of mathematics. (Let me remind the
reader that my own thinking would include the truth of mathematics only
in the generalized form, as the truth of all creation.) But wherever his doctrines differ from those of his
forerunners, they are to the effect that truth is hard to ascertain, and that a
rational man will hold his opinions with some measure of doubt. This temper of
mind is obviously connected with religious toleration, with the success of
parliamentary democracy, with laissez faire, and the whole system of
liberal maxims. Although he is a deeply religious man, a devout believer in
Christianity, who accepts revelation as a source of knowledge (but not to the extreme extent of subscribing to the
double-truth doctrine), he nevertheless hedges
round professed revelations with rational safeguards. On one occasion he says, The
bare testimony of revelation is the highest certainty, but on another he
says: Revelation must be judged by reason. (But isn’t this one of the two alternative tenets of
Scholasticism, the other, of course, being the absolute supremacy of
revelation!) Thus in the end reason remains
supreme.
Bertrand Russell’s bottom line in
the above is that Locke is a sensible man. This characterization can
well be compared with Nietzsche’s repeated charge that Locke is superficial.
Like here, for instance (the pertinent content of Jenseits 20 is quoted
elsewhere):
So much
by way of rejecting Locke’s superficiality regarding the origin of ideas. (Jenseits
20.)
The following comment of mine, as
well as Nietzsche’s own remark proper, ought to be considered in the context of
the whole Section (20) of Jenseits. Nietzsche does not actually attack
Locke here on account of his ideas: he is too busy promoting his own. But the
crucial negative assessment of what he calls “Locke’s superficiality”
and the use of the negatively-charged word “rejection” sum up his general
attitude to Locke pretty well.
So this is the interesting
question here whether it is Locke’s staunch sensibility (leaving aside his
enviable political fortune), which, in Nietzsche’s eyes, amounts to
superficiality? The answer is, perhaps, or maybe even probably. But
then, immediately, the next question arises whether these two ought to be
equated also in our eyes? And, again, the right answer seems to be: yes,
probably. After all, following the judgments of common sense, we are not
obligated to dig too deep below the surface, which does make us superficial!
But, on the other hand, being
sensible has its merit, even if sensibility be judged as superficiality.
Locke’s doctrine of truth, in this sense, is admirable. And to prove it, here
is Russell again:
His (Locke’s) chapter Of
Enthusiasm (in the monumental work Essay
Concerning Human Understanding) is
instructive in this connection. “Enthusiasm” had not then the same meaning
as it has now. It meant the belief in a personal revelation to a religious
leader or to his followers. It was characteristic of the sects that had been
defeated at the Restoration. When there is a multiplicity of such personal
revelations, inconsistent with each other, truth, or what passes as such,
becomes purely personal, and loses its social character. Love of truth, which
Locke considers essential, is a very different thing from love of some
particular doctrine proclaimed as the truth. One unerring mark of truth, he
says, is not to entertain any proposition with greater assurance than the
proofs it is built upon will warrant. Forwardness to dictate, he says,
shows failure of the love of truth. “Enthusiasm, laying by reason, would set
up revelation without it; whereby, in effect, it takes away both reason and
revelation, and substitutes in the room of it the underground fancies of a
man’s own brain.” Men who suffer from melancholy or conceit are likely to
have “persuasions of immediate intercourse with the Deity.” Hence odd
actions and opinions acquire Divine sanction, flattering “men’s laziness,
ignorance and vanity.” He concludes the chapter with the maxim already
quoted that “revelation must be judged by reason.”
In this aspect of his
sensibility, Locke sounds even more modern than in his famous political
doctrines, and in forming an opinion of his legacy we must be motivated not by
some preconceived notions, but by exactly such characteristics, which,
objectively (regardless of what anybody says), make him a philosopher worthy
of our admiration. I confess that this admiration may not pertain so much to
Locke the philosopher as to Locke the progenitor of the genuine American
experience, sorely missed in today’s America, which is all the more the reason to
feel nostalgic about that fading out experience, and about the” superficial”
Englishman, by association.
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