A few weeks ago, I profiled David Hume in this series on the survival of the fittest philosophers and I found that he was far and away the #1 favourite philosopher among academic professionals. People cited his empirically justified naturalistic beliefs, clarity of thought, and just the fact that he seemed like he'd be a good dinner guest as the reasons for their selection. Keeping all of that in mind about Hume, and after reading the quotes above about Hegel, who do you think would be more popular in terms of driving PhD research? Think again.

I pulled the data for this chart from searches through the British Library's Electronic Theses Online Service (EThOS), which has over 350,000 PhD dissertations catalogued in it. I first searched for "Hegel" hoping to see that interest in his works was waning, but it has in fact been growing consistently through the decades. I then searched for "Hume" hoping to see that maybe Hegel's relative growth was small potatoes in the larger scheme of things, but in fact, I found just the opposite. Study of Hegel dwarfs Hume and produces terrible mouthfuls for titles that only an aspiring pseudo-intellectual could possibly conceive of. (The clear winner in that competition had to be this one: "Dialectic as the truth of reality and thought: a prolegomenon to the reconceptualisation of dialectic.") What does this say about society and academia? Is it any wonder scientists such as Stephen Hawking, Lawrence Krauss, and Neil deGrasse Tyson have taken to bashing philosophy as a useless pursuit? Just look at Hegel's own words and my evaluation of his major thoughts to see where they are coming from.

Philosophy is by its nature something esoteric, neither made for the mob nor capable of being prepared for the mob.

The great thing however is, in the show of the temporal and the transient to recognize the substance which is immanent and the eternal which is present.

History, is a conscious, self-meditating process—Spirit emptied out into Time; but this externalization, this kenosis, is equally an externalization of itself; the negative is the negative of itself.

Matter possesses gravity in virtue of its tendency towards a central point. It is essentially composite; consisting of parts that exclude each other. It seeks its Unity; and therefore exhibits itself as self-destructive, as verging towards its opposite ... Spirit, on the contrary, may be defined as that which has its centre in itself. It has not a unity outside itself, but has already found it; it exists in and with itself. Matter has its essence out of itself; Spirit is self-contained existence.

Spirit is knowledge; but in order that knowledge should exist; it is necessary that the content of that which it knows should have attained to this ideal form, and should in this way have been negated. What Spirit is must in that way have become its own, it must have described this circle; then these forms, differences, determinations finite qualities, must have existed in order that it should make them its own. This represents both the way and the goal—that Spirit should have attained to its own notion or conception, to that which it implicitly is, and in this way only, the way which has been indicated in its abstract moments, does it attain it. Revealed religion is manifested religion, because in it God has become wholly manifest. Here all is proportionate to the notion; there is no longer anything secret in God.

This is pure nonsense!! And there's so much of it!!!

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Georg Hegel (1770-1831 CE) was a German philosopher and one of the creators of German Idealism. His historicist and idealist account of the total reality as a whole was an important precursor to continental philosophy and Marxism.

Survives

Needs to Adapt
Hegel's dialectic was most often characterized as a three-step process, "thesis, antithesis, synthesis" - namely, that a "thesis" (e.g. the French revolution) would cause the creation of its "antithesis" (e.g. the reign of terror that followed), and would eventually result in a "synthesis" (e.g. the constitutional state of free citizens). The three-step process is a nice way to characterize a methodical search for knowledge. Propose a thesis, find the antithesis, let them compete and form a synthesis. Repeated ad-infinitum, this leads to powerful understanding. Hegel misunderstands the causation though as coming from the thesis itself rather than from the search for knowledge, which found the thesis lacking and simply proposed a new idea. Hegel goes further off the rails after this.

Gone Extinct
The fundamental notion of Hegel's dialectic is that things or ideas have internal contradictions. From Hegel's point of view, analysis or comprehension of a thing or idea reveals that underneath its apparently simple identity or unity is an underlying inner contradiction. This contradiction leads to the dissolution of the thing or idea in the simple form in which it presented itself and to a higher-level, more complex thing or idea that more adequately incorporates the contradiction. Hegel's main philosophical project was to take these contradictions and tensions and interpret them as part of a comprehensive, evolving, rational unity that, in different contexts, he called "the absolute idea" or "absolute knowledge.” These contradictions and tensions are a process. They are not some rational unity. They are the hallmark of knowledge evolving towards the absolute knowledge. They are the hallmark of an evolution of philosophy.

Hegel's philosophy has been labeled by some critics as obscurantist, with some going so far as to refer to it as pseudo-philosophy. His contemporary Schopenhauer was particularly critical, and wrote of Hegel's philosophy as, “a colossal piece of mystification which will yet provide posterity with an inexhaustible theme for laughter at our times, that it is a pseudo-philosophy paralyzing all mental powers, stifling all real thinking, and, by the most outrageous misuse of language, putting in its place the hollowest, most senseless, thoughtless, and, as is confirmed by its success, most stupefying verbiage.” Excellent summation from Schopenhauer. To look at the scientific method winnowing down hypotheses through an evolutionary battle of survival of the fittest ideas, and calling all the surviving and expiring ideas part of some unitary whole is just to re-label reality as “everything we have seen.” Hegel does nothing to further our understanding and fails to recognize the wisdom of the truths that survive.
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It saddens me greatly to see the research facts above about Hegel after reading the man's own words and agreeing with the highly critical evaluations of him from others who have come before me and who also had to bother with his writings. I sometimes think philosophers purposefully keep arguments alive—refusing to render judgment about what is right or wrong—just to ensure their job security. But I suppose this is the penalty we pay in a field that a) recognises that all knowledge is probabilistic, and b) is confined to nebulous questions that once clarified give birth to new scientific disciplines. Well, let's not pay that penalty any more than we have to. Next!

A few weeks ago, I examined John Locke in this series of essays on the survival of the fittest philosophers.  Now it's time to turn to Jeremy Bentham, which was the new name given to the character of John Locke on the television series Lost after he left the island. What was the connection? It's hard to say for sure, but we do know that John Locke and Jeremy Bentham were on the opposite sides of history in terms of their views on natural rights. Locke, a great inspiration to the founding fathers of America, believed we had inalienable rights to life, liberty and property. Bentham, on the other hand, wrote an essay that was included in a pamphlet that was secretly commissioned by the English government in response to the Declaration of Independence. He mocked the political philosophy of America and argued against the idea of natural rights, calling it "nonsense on stilts." These polar opposite views may have reflected a reversal of beliefs in the character of John Locke after he left the island, but really, given the way that Lost ended, when it became obvious that the show's producers really didn't have a strong idea of where the show was headed all along, the switch in names could just as easily have reflected an admission by the writers that they were talking nonsense on stilts as well. What a waste of time that turned out to be.

Fortunately, Bentham the philosopher was much less of a waste of time, given the direction he sent our thoughts by being one of the founders of utilitarianism. In A Fragment on Government, Bentham laid down what was to become the fundamental axiom of this school of morality by saying, "it is the greatest happiness of the greatest number that is the measure of right and wrong." Bentham's definitions for happiness came down simply to feelings of pleasure and pain, but as modern cognitive psychology now teaches us, these sensations can be driven by our beliefs, which can be entirely subjective, relative only to the conventions of a group, and grounded in nothing objective from reality. Still, by paying attention to the best conventions that society had agreed upon in his day, Bentham ended up building logical arguments for right and wrong action that were independent of religious dogma and were extremely influential—if not entirely persuasive to more rigorous philosophers to follow. Here's more from my examination of Bentham:

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Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832) was an English jurist, philosopher, and legal and social reformer. He is best known for his advocacy of utilitarianism.

Survives
Bentham's position included arguments in favor of individual and economic freedom, the separation of church and state, freedom of expression, equal rights for women, the end of slavery, the abolition of physical punishment (including that of children), the right to divorce, free trade, usury, and the decriminalization of homosexual acts. He also made two distinct attempts during his life to critique the death penalty. Bentham is widely recognized as one of the earliest proponents of animal rights - he argued that the ability to suffer, not the ability to reason, should be the benchmark in determining their proper treatment. The survival of all of these ideas into the modern age shows how Bentham’s philosophy was facing the right direction.

Needs to Adapt
Bentham was one of the main proponents of Utilitarianism - an ethical theory holding that the proper course of action is the one that maximizes the overall happiness. By happiness, he understood it as a predominance of pleasure over pain. Utilitarianism is a form of consequentialism, meaning that the moral worth of an action is determined only by its resulting outcome, and that one can only weigh the morality of an action after knowing all its consequences. Maximum happiness comes from the joy of long-term survival for life. This requires much wisdom of society and individuals. Once happiness is defined in this way, utilitarianism works well for an ethical theory. Long-term consequences of actions are often hard to determine though so we must be prudent in our experimentation and decisions.

Bentham’s hedonic calculus shows "expectation utilities" to be much higher than natural ones, so it follows that Bentham does not favor the sacrifice of a few to the benefit of the many. It should not be overlooked though that Bentham's hedonistic theory, unlike Mill's, is often criticized for lacking a principle of fairness embodied in a conception of justice. Bentham instead laid down a set of criteria for measuring the extent of pain or pleasure that a certain decision will create. The criteria are divided into the categories of intensity, duration, certainty, proximity, productiveness, purity, and extent. Using these measurements, he reviews the concept of punishment and when it should be used as far as whether a punishment will create more pleasure or more pain for a society. He calls for legislators to determine whether punishment creates an even more evil offense. Instead of suppressing the evil acts, Bentham is arguing that certain unnecessary laws and punishments could ultimately lead to new and more dangerous vices than those being punished to begin with. Bentham follows these statements with explanations on how antiquity, religion, reproach of innovation, metaphor, fiction, fancy, antipathy and sympathy, begging the question, and imaginary law are not justification for the creation of legislature. In addition to the multiplier affect of utilities, no minorities should ever be sacrificed for the good of a majority, no matter how maximum their number, because such sacrifice undermines the social cohesion required of our cooperative species. Bentham is on the right track with his calculations for pain and pleasure in determining the correct course of punishment to take. He misses the weight of the required tit for tat strategy though that stops cheaters from winning and undermining the stability of the evolutionary system.

Bentham, when arguing against the rights of man that were asserted in the Declaration of Independence, stated: "That which has no existence cannot be destroyed — that which cannot be destroyed cannot require anything to preserve it from destruction. Natural rights is simple nonsense: natural and imprescriptible rights, rhetorical nonsense — nonsense upon stilts." Bentham is correct that rights do not exist in nature. They therefore cannot be destroyed, but they can be defined by societies of men and women, and require governments to preserve those agreements from destruction. To claim that rights are god-given or inalienable is nonsense on stilts, but we can walk on higher moral ground if we know where we are going.*

Gone Extinct

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Not bad at all. There is nothing major that has gone extinct, which can almost be said about Bentham himself too. In one of the stranger finales to a philosopher's life in history (MUCH more interesting than Lost's finale), Bentham requested his body be dissected and prepared as an "auto-icon" upon his death, which you can see in the picture on the right. Originally, Bentham's prepared body was kept by his disciple Thomas Southwood Smith, but it was acquired by University College London in 1850 (Bentham was a "spiritual founder" of the school), where it has normally been kept on public display. For the 100th and 150th anniversaries of the college, however, "it was brought to the meeting of the College Council, where it was listed as "present but not voting." Seeing as how our species is so governed by co-evolutionary changes in our genes AND our culture, there is something accurate about this description of Bentham. His thoughts are still present here, and we would do well to remember them. Bodily reminder or not... 

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* In my original review of Bentham, I misunderstood his "nonsense on stilts" to be referring to natural laws in general, not natural rights in particular. As stated elsewhere, morality does arise from analysing the history of our natural universe, so I said his thoughts on natural laws had gone extinct now that more science was in. However, when, researching his comments in more depth, I came to recognise that he was right about natural rights, but wrong in denying the benefit of a government creating them and then protecting them.

Immanuel Kant is the 13th of the 26 modern philosophers I profile in my series on the survival of the fittest philosophers, so mathematically he only shares the central spot with last week's figure, but I take Stanford's point. (And I jest.) Kant was hugely prolific, influential, and revolutionary. His masterpiece, the Critique of Pure Reason, just one of 33 major works, was "over 800 pages in the original German edition, and written in a convoluted style." This is not my favourite kind of philosopher, but there is no denying Kant's importance and moments of brilliance. I believe my coverage of him is the densest one that I did, so I'll try to keep this intro short, but I have to mention something about Kant's most famous maxim—his categorical imperative. As noted below, "categorical imperatives are principles that are intrinsically valid; they are good in and of themselves; they must be obeyed by all in all situations and circumstances if our behavior is to observe the moral law." This is fine, as I also believe strongly in a universal basis for morality, but Kant's formulation of such a principle is as follows:

"Act only according to that maxim whereby you can, at the same time, will that it should become a universal law."

This could only have been written by a man who did not travel the world and deeply absorb the vast and diverse history of actions that are out there in the history of mankind. While long-term and far-reaching principles may be agreed to, the actions to get there will never be universally agreed upon. Especially as our knowledge is so limited about all the future consequences of our actions within the complex systems we interact with. Anyway, sure enough, in his entire life Kant "never traveled more than 10 miles from Königsberg. It is often held that Kant lived a very strict and predictable life, leading to the oft-repeated story that neighbors would set their clocks by his daily walks. He never married, but did not seem to lack a rewarding social life—he was a popular teacher and a modestly successful author even before starting on his major philosophical works. Although fond of company and conversation with others, Kant isolated himself. He resisted friends' attempts to bring him out of his isolation. In 1778, in response to one of these offers by a former pupil, Kant wrote: 'Any change makes me apprehensive, even if it offers the greatest promise of improving my condition, and I am persuaded by this natural instinct of mine that I must take heed if I wish that the threads which the Fates spin so thin and weak in my case to be spun to any length. My great thanks, to my well-wishers and friends, who think so kindly of me as to undertake my welfare, but at the same time a most humble request to protect me in my current condition from any disturbance.''"

For all that limitation in his physical constitution, Kant still thought hard and deserves a deep consideration of his words. Let's look at a few admirable quotes before delving into the philosophy.

The understanding can intuit nothing, the senses can think nothing. Only through their unison can knowledge arise.

A public can only arrive at enlightenment slowly. Through revolution, the abandonment of personal despotism may be engendered and the end of profit-seeking and domineering oppression may occur, but never a true reform of the state of mind. Instead, new prejudices, just like the old ones, will serve as the guiding reins of the great, unthinking mass.

Reason in a creature is a faculty of widening the rules and purposes of the use of all its powers far beyond natural instinct; it acknowledges no limits to its projects.

Reason itself does not work instinctively, but requires trial, practice, and instruction in order gradually to progress from one level of insight to another. Therefore a single man would have to live excessively long in order to learn to make full use of all his natural capacities.

Religion is too important a matter to its devotees to be a subject of ridicule. If they indulge in absurdities, they are to be pitied rather than ridiculed.

It is because of laziness and cowardice that it is so easy for others to usurp the role of guardians. It is so comfortable to be a minor!

Science is organized knowledge. Wisdom is organized life.

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Immanuel Kant (1724-1804 CE) was a German philosopher during the Enlightenment. Kant created a new widespread perspective in philosophy that has continued to influence philosophy through to the 21st century. One of his most prominent works is the Critique of Pure Reason, an investigation into the limitations and structure of reason itself. It encompasses an attack on traditional metaphysics and epistemology, and highlights Kant's own contribution to these areas. The other main works of his maturity are the Critique of Practical Reason, which concentrates on ethics, and the Critique of Judgment, which investigates aesthetics and teleology.

Survives
Kant defined the Enlightenment as an age shaped by the Latin motto Sapere aude - Dare to Know. Kant maintained that one ought to think autonomously, free of the dictates of external authority. Sapere aude, indeed!

Kant's "Copernican revolution," placed the role of the human subject or knower at the center of inquiry into our knowledge, such that it is impossible to philosophize about things as they are independently of us or of how they are for us. Yes, but our senses and our tools and our reasoning can tell us very much about reality.

Kant invented critical philosophy, the notion of being able to discover and systematically explore possible inherent limits to our ability to know through philosophical reasoning. Yes. The limitations of our senses within the size and scope of a changing universe do entail limits to our ability to know.

Kant created the concept of "conditions of possibility," that is that things, knowledge, and forms of consciousness rest on prior conditions that make them possible, so that to understand or know them we have to first understand these conditions. From Plato to Descartes, what was presented by the senses was deemed illusory and denigrated. It was believed that the perceptions ought to be overcome to grasp the thing-in-itself, the essential essence, a la Plato’s allegory of the cave. With Kant comes a transition in philosophy from this dichotomy to the dichotomy of the apparition/conditions-of-appearance. There is no longer any higher essence behind the apparition. It is what it is, a brute fact, and what one must now examine is the conditions that are necessary for its appearance. Yes. And an understanding of these conditions necessary for appearance comes from the natural sciences. We must know them all in order to understand reality.

Kant suggested that metaphysics can be reformed through epistemology. He suggested that by understanding the sources and limits of human knowledge, we can ask fruitful metaphysical questions. He concluded that all objects about which the mind can think must conform to its manner of thought. Therefore if the mind can think only in terms of causality – which he concluded that it does – then we can know prior to experiencing them that all objects we experience must either be a cause or an effect. However, it follows from this that it is possible that there are objects of such nature which the mind cannot think, and so the principle of causality, for instance, cannot be applied outside of experience: hence we cannot know, for example, whether the world always existed or if it had a cause. And so the grand questions of speculative metaphysics cannot be answered by the human mind, but the sciences are firmly grounded in laws of the mind. Kant believed himself to be creating a compromise between the empiricists and the rationalists. The empiricists believed that knowledge is acquired through experience alone, but the rationalists maintained that such knowledge is open to Cartesian doubt and that reason alone provides us with knowledge. Kant argues, however, that using reason without applying it to experience will only lead to illusions, while experience will be purely subjective without first being subsumed under pure reason. Kant’s thought was very influential in Germany during his lifetime, moving philosophy beyond the debate between the rationalists and empiricists. Yes. Senses are understood through reason. And the limits on our senses place limits on what we can know. We have developed tools to aid our understanding of the universe all the way back to the Big Bang, but we may not be able to conduct research into the metaphysical origins of the universe beyond that. We will try of course, but in the meantime, we should not allow speculations about gods that hide behind our knowledge to rule our lives in any way when there is no evidence for their existence, benevolence, or usefulness.

Kant divides the feeling of the sublime into two distinct modes - the mathematical sublime and the dynamical sublime. The mathematical sublime is situated in the failure of the imagination to comprehend natural objects that appear boundless and formless, or that appear absolutely great. This imaginative failure is then recuperated through the pleasure taken in reason's assertion of the concept of infinity. In the dynamical sublime, there is the sense of annihilation of the sensible self as the imagination tries to comprehend a vast might. This power of nature threatens us but through the resistance of reason to such sensible annihilation, the subject feels a pleasure and a sense of the human moral vocation. This appreciation of moral feeling through exposure to the sublime helps to develop moral character. Given that the meaning of life is to perpetuate the long-term survival of life, it follows that we should feel awe when contemplating infinity and extinction. Exposure to both of these concepts does aid our judgment and moral character in choosing actions that comport with the meaning of life.

Needs to Adapt
Kant is known for his theory that there is a single moral obligation, which he called the "Categorical Imperative," and is derived from the concept of duty. Categorical imperatives are principles that are intrinsically valid; they are good in and of themselves; they must be obeyed by all in all situations and circumstances if our behavior is to observe the moral law. Regardless of recent relativist trends in philosophy, universality is essential to any viable moral philosophy. Yes, but Kant did not discover it. The single Categorical Imperative is that life must act to perpetuate the long-term survival of life.

Kant asserted that because of the limitations of argumentation in the absence of irrefutable evidence, no one could really know whether there is a God and an afterlife or not. For the sake of society and morality, Kant asserted that people are reasonably justified in believing in them, even though they could never know for sure whether they are real or not. An enlightened approach and use of the critical method required that, "If one cannot prove that a thing is, he may try to prove that it is not. And if he succeeds in doing neither (as often occurs), he may still ask whether it is in his interest to accept one or the other of the alternatives hypothetically, from the theoretical or the practical point of view. Since we cannot know the entirety of the universe at one time, it is impossible to prove that something does not exist. This does not mean we should run our lives based on anything that might exist. The natural basis for morality (that which is good promotes the long-term survival of life) has been discovered. Society should be organized around this principle. It should not be based on any purported divine revelations that arose prior to scientific methods. As Kant said, we may ask which of the alternatives is in our best interest. Clearly, a rational society based on the natural laws of the universe is better than an irrational one split into irreconcilable camps by faith in unknowns.

Kant states that beauty is not a property of an artwork or natural phenomenon, but is instead a consciousness of the pleasure that attends the free play of the imagination and the understanding. A pure judgment of taste is in fact subjective insofar as it refers to the emotional response of the subject and is based upon nothing but esteem for an object itself: it is a disinterested pleasure, and we feel that pure judgments of taste, i.e. judgments of beauty, lay claim to universal validity. It is important to note that this universal validity is not derived from a determinate concept of beauty but from common sense. Emotional responses were evolved to aid in the decision making of an animal so that it can better perpetuate the long-term survival of life. Given this objective fact, the apprehension of beauty is not entirely subjective. The relative strength of the emotional responses to beauty are relative to the emotional makeup of the individual and the cognitive appraisals the individual is focusing on, but it is true that that which promotes survival can be said to be beautiful. Objects and ideas can be said to contain greater or lesser beauty in relation to their power to promote survival to a greater or lesser extent. Physical beauty is fleeting. Beautiful knowledge lasts.

Gone Extinct
Kant is known for his transcendental idealist philosophy that time and space are not materially real but merely the ideal a priori condition of our internal intuition. Kant never concluded that one could form a coherent account of the universe and of human experience without grounding such an account in the "thing in itself.” Exactly how to interpret this concept was a subject of some debate among 20th century philosophers. Schopenhauer described transcendental idealism as a "distinction between the phenomenon and the thing in itself, and a recognition that only the phenomenon is accessible to us because "we do not know either ourselves or things as they are in themselves, but merely as they appear. Opposing Kantian transcendental idealism is the doctrine of philosophical realism, that is, the proposition that the world is knowable as it really is, without any consideration of the knower's manner of knowing. Modern physics investigates the nature of time and space. Modern neurosciences are helping to tease out the manner in which we gain knowledge of reality. Transcendental idealism fades away. See more below.

Before discussing his theory of transcendental idealism, it is necessary to explain Kant's distinction between analytic and synthetic propositions. Analytic propositions are those that are true by definition; e.g., all bachelors are unmarried. Synthetic propositions are those whose predicate concept is not contained in its subject concept; e.g., all bachelors are happy. Analytic propositions require no further knowledge than a grasp of the language to understand them. On the other hand, synthetic statements are those that tell us something about the world. The truth or falsehood of synthetic statements derives from something outside of their linguistic content. Before Kant's first Critique, empiricists (e.g. Hume) and rationalists (e.g. Leibniz) assumed that all synthetic statements required experience in order to be known. Kant, however, contests this: he claims that elementary mathematics, like arithmetic, is synthetic a priori, in that its statements provide new knowledge, but knowledge that is not derived from experience. This becomes part of his over-all argument for transcendental idealism. Kant argues that once we have grasped the concepts of addition, subtraction, or the functions of basic arithmetic, we do not need any empirical experience to know that 100 + 100 = 200, and in this way it would appear that arithmetic is in fact analytic. However, that it is analytic can be disproved thus: if the numbers five and seven in the calculation 5 + 7 = 12 are examined, there is nothing to be found in them by which the number 12 can be inferred. Such it is that "5 + 7" and "the cube root of 1,728" or "12" are not analytic because their reference is the same but their sense is not - the mathematic judgment "5 + 7 = 12" tells us something new about the world. It is self-evident, and undeniably a priori, but at the same time it is synthetic. And so Kant proves a proposition can be synthetic and known a priori. No!! All 5’s plus 7’s are 12’s. Kant is being too reductionist here. He misses the point that the entire mathematical system of numbers and operations is analytic or understood by definition alone. Speaking in definitions alone does not get you to a reality beyond those definitions. Kant proves nothing about synthetic and a priori knowledge. Transcendental idealism rests on a falsehood. Sometimes one must dig deeper to uncover the inconsistencies behind an abstruse belief.

Kant posited that objective experience is actively constituted or constructed by the functioning of the human mind. Objective experience is grasped by the human mind. Reality occurred long before the human mind came into existence and it would blindly continue on without us.

Kant believed moral autonomy - which is generally understood to refer to the capacity to be one's own person, to live one's life according to reasons and motives that are taken as one's own and not the product of manipulative or distorting external forces - was central to humanity. Morality arises from nature. They are the rules that allow life to survive. That is not a manipulative or distorting force. We must use our reason to discover which actions allow life to survive in the long term, and our judgment to balance the needs of the short-term with the needs of the long-term. Moral conformity is central to life and therefore happiness.

Kant asserted the principle that human beings should be treated as ends rather than as means. This is a dangerous belief that leads to selfish and relativistic individualism. Life is the end. Humans are a means for the existence of life. If, for example, it were known that human actions would destroy all other life, which would of course then end humanity, it would be necessary to stop humans. Life can go on without humans. Humans cannot go on without life. We serve life. And we would be happier if we understood that, instead of perpetuating the selfish viewpoint of the individual as if it were disconnected from life. Interior consciousness allows this myth to survive, but the bodily origins of consciousness and the worldly origins of the body show that it is a fallacy. Reason and understanding show us that this is a fallacy. Given this, it is important to stress that within a society, individuals are still ends. All members must be treated equally and with respect in order for all of society to cooperate, thrive, and survive.
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Good for you if you managed to get through all that. I wouldn't wish that my struggles through this field became a universal law, but sometimes to survive...we have to persist. That's a pretty universal principle, so good luck sticking to it wherever you need to go.

A few weeks ago, when I wrote my profile of David Hume as part of this continuing series of analyses of the survival of the fittest philosophers, I noted that Hume was the runaway winner among professional philosophers as their favourite philosopher of all time. Hume is great, but my own personal favourite was his contemporary, friend, and executor of Hume's will, Adam Smith. In its entry on him, the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy concludes that:

"Smith has an account of the nature of moral judgment, and its development, that is richer and subtler than Hume's; he offers a prototype for modern Aristotelianism in morality; he brings out the importance of the imagination to moral development as few other philosophers have done; he is an early and forceful promoter of the notion that history is guided largely by unintended consequences; and he derives from these views an unusual variant of liberal politics. Few of these contributions are spelled out with the clarity and tight argumentation that contemporary philosophers demand of their canonical figures, but Smith compensates for this weakness by the humanity and thoughtfulness of his views, by their detachment from metaphysical commitments, and by an abundance of historical and imaginative detail. The richness of his ideas, and their quiet plausibility, earn him a place among the most important of modern moral and political philosophers."

His first major work, the Theory of Moral Sentiments, "consists largely of what Smith himself calls 'illustrations' of the workings of the moral sentiments—short vignettes, elegantly described, that attempt to show what frightens us about death, what we find interesting and what dull or distasteful about other people's love affairs, how moral luck factors into our assessment of various actions, or how and why we deceive ourselves. To some, this provides the detail and psychological acuity that they find lacking in most moral philosophy; to others, it seems something more properly taken up by novelists or empirical psychologists, not the business of a philosopher."

Is there any wonder why he's a favourite of mine?? Besides being a brilliant portrayer of human personalities, he had by far the best grasp among famous philosophers on the significant roles that competition and cooperation play in our lives. He didn't have modern findings from behavioural economics and game theory to flesh out and support his ideas, but that's only because he had to invent their forerunners first as the father of economics. Rather than continue on about him myself though, I found so many great quotes from the man that I should leave time for them to speak for themselves before I get to my own analysis of his main philosophical ideas.

In every part of the universe we observe means adjusted with the nicest artifice to the ends which they are intended to produce; and in the mechanism of a plant, or animal body, admire how every thing is contrived for advancing the two great purposes of nature, the support of the individual, and the propagation of the species.

This disposition to admire, and almost to worship, the rich and powerful, and to despise or, at least, neglect persons of poor and mean conditions, though necessary both to establish and to maintain the distinction of ranks and the order of society, is, at the same time, the great and most universal cause of the corruption of our moral sentiments.

Our merchants and master-manufacturers complain much of the bad effects of high wages in raising the price, and thereby lessening the sale of their goods both at home and abroad. They say nothing concerning the bad effects of high profits. They are silent with regard to the pernicious effects of their own gains. They complain only of those of other people.

The proposal of any new law or regulation of commerce which comes from this order, ought always to be listened to with great precaution, and ought never to be adopted till after having been long and carefully examined, not only with the most scrupulous, but with the most suspicious attention. It comes from an order of men, whose interest is never exactly the same with that of the public, who have generally an interest to deceive and even to oppress the public, and who accordingly have, upon many occasions, both deceived and oppressed it.

Though the principles of the banking trade may appear somewhat abstruse, the practice is capable of being reduced to strict rules. To depart upon any occasion from these rules, in consequence of some flattering speculation of extraordinary gain, is almost always extremely dangerous, and frequently fatal to the banking company which attempts it.

The government of an exclusive company of merchants is, perhaps, the worst of all governments for any country whatever.

All for ourselves, and nothing for other people, seems, in every age of the world, to have been the vile maxim of the masters of mankind.

It is not very unreasonable that the rich should contribute to the public expense, not only in proportion to their revenue, but something more than in that proportion.

Every tax, however, is to the person who pays it a badge, not of slavery but of liberty. It denotes that he is a subject to government, indeed, but that, as he has some property, he cannot himself be the property of a master.

No society can surely be flourishing and happy, of which the greater part of the members are poor and miserable. It is but equity, besides, that they who feed, cloath and lodge the whole body of the people, should have such a share of the produce of their own labour as to be themselves tolerably well fed, clothed, and lodged.

With the greater part of rich people, the chief enjoyment of riches consists in the parade of riches, which in their eye is never so complete as when they appear to possess those decisive marks of opulence which nobody can possess but themselves.

How many people ruin themselves by laying out money on trinkets of frivolous utility? What pleases these lovers of toys is not so much the utility, as the aptness of the machines which are fitted to promote it.

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.

The difference between the most dissimilar characters, between a philosopher and a common street porter, for example, seems to arise not so much from nature, as from habit, custom, and education.

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Adam Smith (1723-1790 CE) was a Scottish moral philosopher, a pioneer of political economics, and one of the key figures of the Scottish Enlightenment. The Wealth of Nations is considered his magnum opus and is the reason Adam Smith is widely cited as the father of modern economics.

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The Wealth of Nations expounds that the free market, while appearing chaotic and unrestrained, is actually guided to produce the right amount and variety of goods by a so-called "invisible hand.” Smith opposed any form of economic concentration because it distorts the market's natural ability to establish a price that provides a fair return on land, labor, and capital. He advanced the idea that a market economy would produce a satisfactory outcome for both buyers and sellers, and would optimally allocate society's resources. Smith believed that when an individual pursues his self-interest, he indirectly promotes the good of society. Nevertheless, he was wary of businessmen and warned of their "conspiracy against the public or in some other contrivance to raise prices.” Again and again, Smith warned of the collusive nature of business interests, which may form cabals or monopolies, fixing the highest price that can be squeezed out of the buyers. Smith also warned that a true laissez-faire economy would quickly become a conspiracy of businesses and industry against consumers, with the former scheming to influence politics and legislation. Smith was similarly wary of the Division of Labor, about which he said, “In the progress of the division of labor, the employment of the far greater part of those who live by labor, that is, of the great body of the people, comes to be confined to a few very simple operations, frequently only one or two. ...The man whose whole life is spent in performing a few simple operations, of which the effects too are, perhaps, always the same, or very nearly the same, has no occasion to exert his understanding, or to exercise his invention in finding out expedients for removing difficulties which never occur. He naturally loses, therefore, the habit of such exertion, and generally becomes as stupid and ignorant as it is possible for a human creature to become.” A huge debt is owed to Smith for our understanding of the modern economy and how it can provide wealth for all in staggering abundance as compared to the past. Smith also seemed to have an excellent grasp of the need to balance competition with cooperation, and of the need for regulation of the economy for its maximum benefit. If only free market advocates really understood the father of their ideas. Or perhaps they do and still seek to exploit it.

In The Theory of Moral Sentiments, Smith critically examined the moral thinking of the time and suggested that conscience arises from social relationships. His aim in the work is to explain the source of mankind's ability to form moral judgments, in spite of man's natural inclinations toward self-interest. Scholars have previously perceived a conflict between The Theory of Moral Sentiments and The Wealth of Nations; the former emphasizing sympathy for others, while the latter focuses on the role of self-interest. In recent years, however, most scholars regard the works as emphasizing different aspects of human nature that vary depending on the situation. Smith was no extremist. He understood the need to balance the short-term and long-term, self and society, and competition and cooperation. A true giant in the evolution of human knowledge.

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Not that much is known of his personal life, but Adam Smith was "described by several of his contemporaries and biographers as comically absent-minded, with peculiar habits of speech and gait, and a smile of 'inexpressible benignity'. He was known to talk to himself, a habit that began during his childhood when he would smile in rapt conversation with invisible companions. According to one story, Smith took Charles Townshend on a tour of a tanning factory, and while discussing free trade, Smith walked into a huge tanning pit from which he needed help to escape. He is also said to have put bread and butter into a teapot, drunk the concoction, and declared it to be the worst cup of tea he ever had. According to another account, Smith distractedly went out walking in his nightgown and ended up 15 miles (24 km) outside of town, before nearby church bells brought him back to reality." Reading through some the ideas he came up with during these wanderings though, maybe we should all get so wrapped in our thoughts from time to time.

The first great frontal assault on the Enlightenment was launched by Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778). Rousseau has a well-deserved reputation as the bad boy of eighteenth century French philosophy. In the context of Enlightenment intellectual culture, Rousseau’s was a major dissenting voice. Civilization is thoroughly corrupting, Rousseau argued—not only the oppressive feudal system of eighteenth-century France with its decadent and parasitical aristocracy, but also its Enlightenment alternative with its exaltation of reason, property, the arts and sciences. Name a dominant feature of the Enlightenment, and Rousseau was against it.

                                                         —Philosopher Stephen Hicks, 'Explaining Postmodernism:
                                                            Skepticism and Socialism from Rousseau to Foucault'


The Maori of New Zealand committed massacres regularly. The dyaks of Borneo were headhunters. The Polynesians, living in an environment as close to paradise as one can imagine, fought constantly, and created a society so hideously restrictive that you could lose your life if you stepped in the footprint of a chief. It was the Polynesians who gave us the very concept of taboo, as well as the word itself. The noble savage is a fantasy, and it was never true. That anyone still believes it, 200 years after Rousseau, shows the tenacity of religious myths, their ability to hang on in the face of centuries of factual contradiction.

                                                         --Michael Crichton, 'Environmentalism as Religion'

















Okay, so that injunction not to piss on Rousseau wasn't really written above and below this sign in Paris along the Seine, but seeing as how the political philosopher was interred in the Panthéon as a national hero in 1794 after he inspired many of the French revolutionaries, I'm sure I'm treading on "glace mince" with what's in the rest of this post. Be that as it may, and despite the popularity of his works in his day, Rousseau was a buffoon. We can forgive some of this because his beliefs were born out of an overreaction to the religion of his childhood as well as the confusion that reigned in a personal life marked by the early death of his mother, abandonments by both his father and then his uncle, and a patronage from a much older woman who eventually took him as a lover in a ménage à trois when Jean-Jacques turned 20. Out of this background, Rousseau "repeatedly claimed that a single idea is at the centre of his world view, namely, that human beings are good by nature but are rendered corrupt by society." There is something almost sweet in this naive reaction to the Calvinist liturgy he would have been exposed to as a child, one that "still required believers to declare ‘that we are miserable sinners, born in corruption, inclined to evil, incapable by ourselves of doing good.'" Good for Rousseau for rejecting that bile, but it was too bad he went so far as to foist the blame for evil onto society, rather than recognising individuals—and societies composed of individuals—are capable of acting for either good or evil.

In his later more mature works, Rousseau "principally explored two routes to achieving and protecting freedom: the first was a political one aimed at constructing political institutions that allow for the co-existence of free and equal citizens in a community where they themselves are sovereign; the second was a project for child development and education that fosters autonomy and avoids the development of the most destructive forms of self-interest." Leaving aside for a moment the questionable idea of "personal sovereignty" in such a social species as ours, I do admire the intent to promote development and education of character in children. For as Rousseau said,

Virtue is a state of war, and to live in it means one always has some battle to wage against oneself.

Sadly, Rousseau lost that battle in his opportunity to educate his own children. In 1745, "Rousseau met Thérèse Levasseur, a barely literate laundry-maid who became his lover and, later, his wife. According to Rousseau's own account, Thérèse bore him five children, all of whom were deposited at the foundling hospital shortly after birth, an almost certain sentence of death in eighteenth-century France." It is surely an ad hominem to dismiss Rousseau for these personal acts alone, but an extended analysis of his survival among the fittest philosophers reveals plenty of other reasons for his ideas to be dismissed.

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Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778 CE) was a Genevan philosopher, writer, and composer of the eighteenth-century Enlightenment, whose political philosophy influenced the French Revolution and the development of modern political and educational thought.

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Needs to Adapt
Rousseau’s novel, Emile, or On Education, which he considered his most important work, is a seminal treatise on the education of the whole person for citizenship. Rousseau’s philosophy of education is not concerned with particular techniques of imparting information and concepts, but rather with developing the pupil’s character and moral sense, so that he may learn to practice self-mastery and remain virtuous even in the unnatural and imperfect society in which he will have to live. In order to understand what character and moral sense are, many facts (listed above and below) are required. For society to act well and propagate the survival of life, all members of society need to receive this education. Otherwise, the evolutionary system becomes unstable as free riders and cheaters win, cooperation falters, and competition rises to levels that require a short-term focus.

Perhaps Jean Jacques Rousseau's most important work is The Social Contract, which outlines the basis for a legitimate political order within a framework of classical republicanism. According to Rousseau, by joining together into civil society through the social contract and abandoning their claims of natural right, individuals can both preserve themselves and remain free. The model man is the independent farmer, free of superiors and self-governing. Rousseau posits that the original, deeply flawed Social Contract (i.e., that of Hobbes), which led to the modern state, was made at the suggestion of the rich and powerful, who tricked the general population into surrendering their liberties to them and instituted inequality as a fundamental feature of human society. “The first man who, having fenced in a piece of land, said "This is mine," and found people naive enough to believe him, that man was the true founder of civil society. From how many crimes, wars, and murders, from how many horrors and misfortunes might not anyone have saved mankind, by pulling up the stakes, or filling up the ditch, and crying to his fellows: Beware of listening to this impostor; you are undone if you once forget that the fruits of the earth belong to us all, and the earth itself to nobody.” Rousseau's own conception of the Social Contract can be understood as an alternative to this fraudulent form of association. Rousseau explains how the desire to have value in the eyes of others comes to undermine personal integrity and authenticity in a society marked by interdependence and hierarchy. The inescapable conclusion was that a new and more equitable Social Contract was needed. The first men to put up a fence probably had to defend their property using force. Only over time as people realized the huge benefits that come from the division of labor, property accumulation, and trade, was the contract made to recognize that force was a drag on the system. Still, we have not evolved sufficient control over our short-term emotional pulls, so cheaters need to be guarded against with fences and more. Individuals could be free and happy within a republic. In fact, they must be or the republic will collapse. This is why no empires to date have remained in power. Wherever inequality and suppression of freedom have taken hold, the cooperation within society weakened and the society dissolved. Citizens must understand this. The government must understand its role. Our cooperative social contract must be improved and understood to be signed by all.

Gone Extinct
In common with other philosophers of the day, Rousseau looked to a hypothetical State of Nature as a normative guide. Rousseau deplores Hobbes for asserting that since man in the "state of nature...has no idea of goodness he must be naturally wicked; that he is vicious because he does not know virtue.” On the contrary, Rousseau denied that morality is a construct or creation of society. Rousseau held that uncorrupted morals prevail in the state of nature. He considered morality as natural, in the sense of innate, an outgrowth of man's instinctive disinclination to witness suffering, from which arise the emotions of compassion or empathy, and which are shared with animals. Rousseau's natural man is virtually identical to a solitary chimpanzee or other ape so the natural goodness of humanity is thus the goodness of an animal, which is neither good nor bad. But definitions for good and evil do arise from nature - good is that which promotes the long-term survival of life. Because man must be able to cope with extreme competition in order to survive, the emotions that cause him to inflict pain and dominance are also innate. That does not make them good. So a solitary chimpanzee can be said to do bad in the same way that man does. But we have evolved reason to help us understand that such competitive behaviors are disastrous in the long-term. It is not surprising that before the discovery of evolution, Rousseau’s understanding of the state of nature misses these points. The rest of his errors flow from this misconception.

Anglophone critics erroneously attribute to Rousseau the invention of the idea of the noble savage; an oxymoronic expression that was never used in France and which grossly misrepresents Rousseau's thought. Contrary to what his many detractors have claimed, Rousseau never suggests that humans in the state of nature act morally - just that terms such as justice or wickedness are inapplicable to pre-political society, as Rousseau understands it. To him, morality proper or self-restraint, can only develop through careful education in a civil state. Morality and justice do exist in pre-civilized as well as animal societies. It can be better developed once its origins and justifications are more fully understood.

For Rousseau, progress has curbed the well-being of humanity, that is, unless it can be counteracted by the cultivation of civic morality and duty. Only in Civil Society, can man be ennobled - through the use of reason. The passage from the state of nature to the civil state produces a very remarkable change in man, by substituting justice for instinct in his conduct, and giving his actions the morality they had formerly lacked. Then only, when the voice of duty takes the place of physical impulses and right of appetite, does man, who so far had considered only himself, find that he is forced to act on different principles, and to consult his reason before listening to his inclinations. Although, in this state, he deprives himself of some advantages which he got from nature, he gains in return others so great, his faculties are so stimulated and developed, his ideas so extended, his feelings so ennobled, and his whole soul so uplifted, that, did not the abuses of this new condition often degrade him below that which he left, he would be bound to bless continually the happy moment which took him from it forever, and, instead of a stupid and unimaginative animal, made him an intelligent being and a man. Progress is the wellspring of the well-being of humanity and it requires the evolution of sociobiological morals. Civil society reinforces our cooperate behavior, allowing us to compete better with death and ultimately survive longer. Civil society does pose challenges to humans evolved with short-term emotional fuses, but these can be overcome through reason and education. As this occurs, the downtrodden that may be worse off than they would be in the state of nature will gradually disappear.

In Rousseau's philosophy, society's negative influence on men centers on its transformation of amour de soi, a positive self-love, into amour-propre, or pride. Amour de soi represents the instinctive human desire for self-preservation, combined with the human power of reason. In contrast, amour-propre is artificial and encourages man to compare himself to others, thus creating unwarranted fear and allowing men to take pleasure in the pain or weakness of others. He proposed that the progress of knowledge had made governments more powerful and had crushed individual liberty; and he concluded that material progress had actually undermined the possibility of true friendship by replacing it with jealousy, fear, and suspicion. There is nothing artificial in amour-propre. It arises to help one survive in a competitive environment. Fortunately, reason helps us to understand that cooperation for the long-term benefit is better for everyone. Reason helps us to ignore and not act upon the pleasure we may feel in the pain or weakness of others. Reason, through cognitive behavioral training, can even help us to no longer feel such emotions. Progress does not need to cause jealousy, fear, and suspicion. Progress helps us stay adaptable and stave off extinction. That is to be celebrated with great joy.

Rousseau argues that the arts and sciences have not been beneficial to humankind, because they arose not from authentic human needs but rather as a result of pride and vanity. Moreover, the opportunities they create for idleness and luxury have contributed to the corruption of man. The mistaken premises of Rousseau ultimately lead him to a vile conclusion of disregard for arts and sciences. He would mistakenly bring about our extinction more quickly if he could.
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Rousseau did rail against government at a time when monarchies were about to be overthrown, and for this, he will always be remembered. The personal sovereignty that Rousseau advocated for instead—an idea that led to an emphasis by his intellectual descendants on freedom and libertarianism at the expense of civilised society—is clearly rooted in myth and misunderstanding though and needs to be brushed aside. As David Brooks pointed out in March 2011 in his op-ed piece titled 'The New Humanism':

"Across an array of diverse fields: neuroscience, psychology, sociology, behavioral economics and so on...[a] growing, dispersed body of research reminds us of a few key insights. First, the unconscious parts of the mind are most of the mind, where many of the most impressive feats of thinking take place. Second, emotion is not opposed to reason; our emotions assign value to things and are the basis of reason. Finally, we are not individuals who form relationships. We are social animals, deeply interpenetrated with one another, who emerge out of relationships. This body of research suggests the French enlightenment view of human nature, which emphasized individualism and reason, was wrong. The British enlightenment, which emphasized social sentiments, was more accurate about who we are. It suggests we are not divided creatures. We don’t only progress as reason dominates the passions. We also thrive as we educate our emotions."

Bravo. And now that we are educated about Rousseau, it's time to happily move on. If only France, America, and the rest of the world would as well.