Read Ebook: Modern French Philosophy: a Study of the Development Since Comte by Gunn John Alexander

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ANTECEDENTS

THIS work deals with the great French thinkers since the time of Auguste Comte, and treats, under various aspects, the development of thought in relation to the main problems which confronted these men. In the commencement of such an undertaking we are obliged to acknowledge the continuity of human thought, to recognise that it tends to approximate to an organic whole, and that, consequently, methods resembling those of surgical amputation are to be avoided. We cannot absolutely isolate one period of thought. For this reason a brief survey of the earlier years is necessary in order to orient the approach to the period specially placed in the limelight, namely 1851-1921.

In the world of speculative thought and in the realm of practical politics we find reflected, at the opening of the century, the work of the French Revolutionaries on the one hand, and that of Immanuel Kant on the other. Coupled with these great factors was the pervading influence of the Encyclopaedists and of the thinkers of the Enlightenment. These two groups of influences, the one sudden and in the nature of a shock to political and metaphysical thought, the other quieter but no less effective, combined to produce a feeling of instability and of dissatisfaction at the close of the eighteenth century. A sense of change, indeed of resurrection, filled the minds and hearts of those who saw the opening of the nineteenth century. The old aristocracy and the monarchy in France had gone, and in philosophy the old metaphysic had received a blow at the hands of the author of the Three Critiques.

It is true that one group of thinkers endeavoured, by a perfectly natural reaction, to recall their fellow-countrymen, at this time of unrest, back to the doctrines and traditions of the past, and tried to find in the faith of the Christian Church and the practice of the Catholic religion a rallying-point. The monarchy and the Church were eulogised by Chateaubriand, while on the more philosophical side efforts on behalf of traditionalism were made very nobly by De Bonald and Joseph de Maistre. While they represented the old aristocracy and recalled the theocracy and ecclesiasticism of the past by advocating reaction and Ultramontanism, Lamennais attempted to adapt Catholicism to the new conditions, only to find, as did Renan later, that "one cannot argue with a bar of iron." Not the brilliant appeals of a Lacordaire, who thundered from Notre Dame, nor the modernism of a Lamennais, nor the efforts in religious philosophy made by De Maistre, were, however, sufficient to meet the needs of the time.

The old traditions and the old dogmas did not offer the salvation they professed to do. Consequently various groups of thinkers worked out solutions satisfactory to themselves and which they offered to others. We can distinguish clearly four main currents, the method of introspection and investigation of the inner life of the soul, the adoption of a spiritualist philosophy upon an eclectic basis, the search for a new society after the manner of the socialists and, lastly, a positive philosophy and religion of humanity. These four currents form the historical antecedents of our period and to a brief survey of them we now turn.

It is the special merit of De Biran that he endeavoured, and that successfully, to establish both the concreteness and the essential spirituality of the inner life. The attitude and method which he adopted became a force in freeing psychology, and indeed philosophy in general, from mere play with abstractions. His doctrines proved valuable, too, in establishing the reality and irreducibility of the mental or spiritual nature of man.

But it is only comparatively recently that Maine de Biran has come to his own and that his real power and influence have been recognised. There are two reasons for this, firstly the lack of publication of his writings, and secondly his being known for long only through the work of Cousin and the Eclectics, who were imperfectly acquainted with his work. Upon this school of thought he had some little influence which was immediate and personal, but Cousin, although he edited some of his unpublished work, failed to appreciate its originality and value.

So for a time De Biran's influence waned when that of Cousin himself faded. Maine de Biran stands quite in a different category from the Eclectics, as a unique figure at a transition period, the herald of the best that was to be in the thought of the century. Cousin and the Eclectic school, however, gained the official favour, and eclecticism was for many years the "official philosophy."

The Revolution and the War had shown men that many changes could be produced in society in a comparatively short time. This encouraged bold and imaginative spirits. Endeavours after better things, after new systems and a new order of society, showed themselves. The work of political philosophers attempted to give expression to the socialist idea of society. For long there had been maintained the ecclesiastical conception of a perfect social order in another world. It was now thought that humanity would be better employed, not in imagining the glories of a "hereafter," but in "tilling its garden," in striving to realise here on earth something of that blessed fellowship and happy social order treasured up in heaven. This is the dominant note of socialism, which is closely bound up at its origin, not only with political thought, but with humanitarianism and a feeling essentially religious. Its progress is a feature of the whole century.

Saint-Simon was not, however, the only thinker at this time with a social programme to offer. In contrast to his scheme we have that of Fourier who endeavoured to avoid the suppression of liberty involved in the organisation proposed by Saint-Simon.

The psychology of Fourier was peculiar and it coloured his ethical and social doctrine. He believed that the evils of the world were due to the repression of human passions. These in themselves, if given liberty of expression, would prove harmonious. As Newton had propounded the law of the universal attraction of matter, Fourier endeavoured to propound the law of attraction between human beings. Passion and desire lead to mutual attraction; the basis of society is free association.

The most interesting and powerful of the early socialist philosophers is undoubtedly Proudhon , a striking personality, much misunderstood.

All these early socialist thinkers had this in common: they agreed that purely economic solutions would not soothe the ills of society, but that moral, religious and philosophic teaching must accompany, or rather precede, all efforts towards social reform. The earliest of them, Saint-Simon, had asserted that no society, no system of civilisation, can endure if its spiritual principles and its economic organisation are in direct contradiction. When brotherly love on the one hand and merciless competition on the other are equally extolled, then hypocrisy, unrest and conflict are inevitable.

The precise part to be played by philosophy is determined by the existing state of scientific knowledge in the various departments and so depends upon the general stage of intelligence which humanity has reached. The intellectual development of humanity was formulated generally by Comte in what is known as "The Law of the Three Stages," probably that part of his doctrine which is best known and which is most obvious. "The Law of the Three Stages" merely sets down the fact that in the race and in the individual we find three successive stages, under which conceptions are formed differently. The first is the theological or fictitious stage, in which the explanation of things is referred to the operations of divine agency. The second is the metaphysical or abstract stage when, for divinities, abstract principles are substituted. In the third, the scientific or positive stage, the human mind has passed beyond a belief in divine agencies or metaphysical abstractions to a rational study of the effective laws of phenomena. The human spirit here encounters the real, but it abstains from pretensions to absolute knowledge; it does not theorise about the beginning or the end of the universe or, indeed, its absolute nature; it takes only into consideration facts within human knowledge. Comte laid great emphasis upon the necessity of recognising the relativity of all things. All is relative; this is the one absolute principle. Our knowledge, he insisted , is entirely relative to our organisation and our situation. Relativity, however, does not imply uncertainty. Our knowledge is indeed relative and never absolute, but it grows to a greater accord with reality. It is this passion for "accord with reality" which is characteristic of the scientific or positivist spirit.

The sciences are themselves relative and much attention is given by Comte to the proper classification of the sciences. He determines his hierarchy by arranging them in the order in which they have themselves completed the three stages and arrived at positivity. Mathematics, astronomy, physics, chemistry, biology and sociology are his arrangement. This last named has not yet arrived at the final stage; it is but a science in the making. Comte, indeed, himself gives it its name and founds it as the science of society, science applied to politics, as was first indicated in his scheme of work and early ideas of reform.

We have already noted Comte's intense valuation of Humanity as a whole as a Supreme Being. In his later years, notably after 1845, when he met his "Beatrice" in the person of Clotilde de Vaux, he gave to his doctrines a sentimental expression of which the Religion of Humanity with its ritualism was the outcome. This positivist religion endeavoured to substitute for the traditional God the Supreme Being of Humanity--a Being capable, according to Comte, of sustaining our courage, becoming the end of our actions and the object of our love. To this he attached a morality calculated to combat the egoism which tends to dominate and to destroy mankind and intended to strengthen the altruistic motives in man and to raise them to the service of Humanity.

We have now passed in review the four main currents of the first half of the century, in a manner intended to orient the approach to our period, 1851-1921. Without such an orientation much of the subsequent thought would lose its correct colouring and perspective. There is a continuity, even if it be partly a continuity marked by reactions, and this will be seen when we now examine the three general currents into which the thought of the subsequent period is divided.

MAIN CURRENTS

The disheartening end of the Empire in moral degeneracy and military defeat only added to the gloominess, against which the Red Flag and the red fires of the Commune cast a lurid and pathetic glow, upon which the Prussians could look down with a grim smile from the heights of Paris. Only with the establishment of the Third Republic in 1871, and its ratification a few years later, does a feeling of cheerfulness make itself felt in the thought of the time. The years from 1880 onwards have been remarkable for their fruitfulness in the philosophic field--to such an extent do political and social events react upon the most philosophical minds. This is a healthy sign; it shows that those minds have not detached themselves from contact with the world, that the spirit of philosophy is a living spirit and not merely an academic or professional product divorced from the fierce realities of history.

We have already indicated, in the treatment of the "Antecedents" of our period, the dominance of Eclecticism, supported by the powers of officialdom, and have remarked how Positivism arose as a reaction against Cousin's vague spiritualism. In approaching the second half of the century we may in general characterise its thought as a reaction against both eclecticism and positivism. A transitional current can be distinguished where positivism turns, as it were, against itself in the work of Vacherot, Taine and Renan. The works of Cournot and the indefatigable Renouvier with his neo-criticism mark another main current. Ultimately there came to triumph towards the close of the century a new spiritualism, owing much inspiration to De Biran, but which, unlike Cousin's doctrines, had suffered the discipline of the positivist spirit. The main contributors to this current are Ravaisson, Lachelier, Fouill?e and Guyau, Boutroux, Bergson, Blondel and Weber. Our study deals with the significance of these three currents, and having made this clear we shall then discuss the development of thought in connection with the various problems and ideas in which the philosophy of the period found its expression.

We shall do well, therefore, in our survey of the half century before us, to investigate the two problems which were stressed by Renan in the essay we have quoted, for his acute mind possessed a unique power of sensing the feeling and thought of his time. Our preliminary task will be the examination of the general attitude to knowledge adopted by the various thinkers and schools of thought, following this by an inquiry into the attitude adopted to science itself and its relation to philosophy.

With these considerations in mind, let us examine the three currents of thought in our period beginning with that which is at once a prolongation of positivism and a transformation of it, a current expressed in the work of Vacherot, Taine and Renan.

The influence of Vacherot was in some measure continued in that of his pupil, Hippolyte Taine , a thinker who had considerable influence upon the development of thought in our period. His ability as a critic of art and literature was perhaps more marked than his purely philosophical influence, but this is, nevertheless, important, and cannot be overlooked.

In the philosophy of Taine various influences are seen at work interacting. The spirit of the French thinkers of the previous century--sensualists and ideologists--reappears in him. While in a measure he fluctuates between naturalism and idealism, the predominating tone of his work is clearly positivist. He was a great student of Spinoza and of Hegel, and the influence of both these thinkers appears in his work. Like Spinoza, he believes in a universal determination; like Hegel, he asserts the real and the rational to be identical. In his general attitude to the problems of knowledge Taine criticises and passes beyond the standpoints of both Hume and Kant. He opposes the purely empiricist schools of both France and England. The purely empirical attitude which looks upon the world as fragmentary and phenomenal is deficient, according to Taine, and is, moreover, incompatible with the notion of necessity. This notion of necessity is characteristic of Taine's whole work, and his strict adherence to it was mainly due to his absolute belief in science and its methods, which is a mark of all the positivist type of thought.

While he rejected Hume's empiricism he also opposed the doctrines of Kant and the neo-critical school which found its inspiration in Kant and Hume. Taine asserted that it is possible to have a knowledge of things in their objective reality, and he appears to have based his epistemology upon the doctrine of analysis proposed by Condillac. Taine disagreed with the theory of the relativity of human knowledge and with the phenomenal basis of the neo-critical teaching, its rejection of "the thing in itself." He believed we had knowledge not merely relative but absolute, and he claimed that we can pass from phenomena and their laws to comprehend the essence of things in themselves. He endeavours to avoid the difficulties of Hume by dogmatism. While clinging to a semi-Hegelian view of rationality he avoids Kant's critical attitude to reason itself. We have in Taine not a critical rationalist but a dogmatic rationalist. While the rational aspect of his thought commands a certain respect and has had in many directions a very wholesome influence, notably, as we have remarked, upon psychology, yet it proves itself in the last analysis self-contradictory, for a true rationalism is critical in character rather than dogmatic.

In Taine'a great contemporary, Ernest Renan , a very different temper is seen. The two thinkers both possessed popularity as men of letters, and resembled one another in being devoted to literary and historical pursuits rather than to philosophy itself.

Knowledge, Renan maintained, lies somewhere between the two schools into which the majority of men are divided. "What you are looking for has long since been discovered and made clear," say the orthodox. "What you are looking for is impossible to find," say the practical positivists, the political "raillers" and the atheists. It is true that we shall never know the ultimate secret of all being, but we shall never prevent man from desiring more and more knowledge or from creating for himself working hypotheses or beliefs.

Both Renan and Taine exercised a considerable influence upon French thought. While inheriting the positivist outlook they, to a great degree, perhaps unconsciously, undermined the positive position, both by their interest in the humanities, in art, letters and religion and in their metaphysical attitude. Taine, beginning with a rigid naturalism, came gradually to approach an idealistic standpoint in many respects, while Renan, beginning with a dogmatic idealism, came to acute doubt, hypotheses, "dreams" and scepticism. Taine kept his thoughts in too rigid a mould, solidified, while those of Renan seem finally to have existed only in a gaseous state, intangible, vague and hazy. We have observed how the positivist current from Comte was carried over by Vacherot to Taine. In Renan we find that current present also, but it has begun to turn against itself. While we may say that his work reflects in a very remarkable manner the spirit of his time, especially the positivist faith in science, yet we are also able to find in it, in spite of his immense scepticism, the indications of a spiritualist or idealist movement, groping and shaping itself as the century grows older.

While the positivist current of thought was working itself out through Vacherot, Taine and Renan to a position which forms a connecting link between Comte and the new spiritualism in which the reaction against positivism and eclecticism finally culminated, another influence was making itself felt independently in the neo-critical philosophy of Renouvier.

Like Comte, Cournot opposed the spiritualism, the eclecticism and the psychology of Cousin, but he was possessed of a more philosophic mind than Comte; he certainly had greater philosophical knowledge, was better equipped in the history of philosophy and had much greater respect for metaphysical theory. He shared with Comte, however, an interest in social problems and biology; he also adopted his general attitude to knowledge, but the spirit of Cournot's work is much less dogmatic than that of the great positivist, and he made no pretensions to be a "pontiff" such as Comte aspired to be. Indeed his lack of pretensions may account partly for the lack of attention with which his work has been treated. He aimed at indicating the foundations of a sound philosophy rather than at offering a system of thought to the public. This temper was the product of his scientific attitude. It was by an examination of the sciences and particularly of the principles upon which they depend that he formulated his group of fundamental doctrines.

As Renouvier had treated the antinomies of Kant, so he makes short work of the Kantian conception of a world of noumena of which we know nothing, but which is the foundation of the phenomena we know. Like Hume, he rejects all notion of substance, of which Kant's noumenon is a survival from ancient times. The idea of substance he abhors as leading to pantheism and to fatalism, doctrines which Renouvier energetically opposes, to uphold man's freedom and the dignity of human personality.

In the philosophy of Kant personality was not included among the categories. Renouvier draws up for himself a new list of categories differing from those of Kant. Beginning with Relation they culminate in Personality. These two categories indicate two of the strongholds of Renouvier's philosophy. Beginning from his fundamental thesis "All is relative," Renouvier points out that as nothing can possibly be known save by or in a relation of some sort it is evident that the most general law of all is that of Relation itself. Relation is therefore the first and fundamental category embracing all the others. Then follow, Number, Position, Succession, Quality. To these are added the important ones, Becoming, Causality, Finality proceeding from the simple to the composite, from the abstract to the concrete, from the elements most easily selected from our experience to that which embraces the experience itself, Renouvier comes to the final category in which they all find their consummation-Personality. The importance which he attaches to this category colours his entire thought and particularly determines his attitude to the various problems which we shall discuss in our following chapters.

As we can think of nothing save in relation to consciousness and consequently we cannot conceive the universe apart from personality, our knowledge of the universe, our philosophies, our beliefs are "personal" constructions. But they need not be on that account merely subjective and individualistic in character, for they refer to personality in its wide sense, a sense shared by other persons. This has important consequences for the problem of certitude in knowledge and Renouvier has here certain affinities to the pragmatist standpoint.

Here again, as in the philosophy of Cournot, we find the main emphasis falling upon the double problem of the period. It is in reality one problem with two aspects--the relation of science to morality, or, in other words, the place and significance of freedom.

The reaction against positivism and against eclecticism took another form quite apart from that of the neocritical philosophy. This was the triumphant spiritualist philosophy, as we may call it, to give it a general name, represented by a series of great thinkers--Ravaisson, Lachelier, Fouill?e, Guyau, Boutroux, Bergson and, we may add, Blondel. These men have all of them had an influence much greater than that of Renouvier, and this is true of each of them separately. This is rather noteworthy for, if we exclude Fouillee, whose writings are rather too numerous, the works of all the other men together do not equal in quantity the work of Renouvier. There is another point which is worthy of notice. While Renouvier worked in comparative solitude and never taught philosophy in any college or university, being, in fact, neglected by the University of Paris, all the company--Ravaisson, Lachelier, Fouill?e, Guyau, Boutroux and Bergson--had a connection with the University of Paris in general, being associated with the Sorbonne, the Coll?ge de France or the important Ecole Normale Sup?rieure.

Bergson, born in 1859, Professor at the Coll?ge de France from 1901 to 1921, now retired, has had a popularity to which none of the other thinkers of this group, or indeed of our period, has attained. He is the only one of the new idealists or spiritualists who is well known outside his own country. For this reason foreigners are apt to regard him as a thinker unrelated to any special current of thought, an innovator. Although much is original and novel in his philosophy, his thought marks the stage in the development to which the spiritualist current has attained in contemporary thought. The movement of which he forms a part we can trace back as far as Maine de Biran, to whom Bergson owes much, as he does also to Ravaisson, Lachelier, Boutroux and Guyau.

Blondel, however, leads us beyond this subjectivity, for it is not the will which causes what is. Far from that, he maintains that in so far as it wills it implies something which it does not and cannot create of itself; it wills to be what it is not yet. We do not act for the mere sake of acting, but for some end, something beyond the particular act. Action is not self-contained or self- sufficing: it is a striving to further attainment or achievement. It therefore pre-supposes some reality beyond itself. Here appear the elements of "passion" and "suffering" due to resistance, for all action involves some opposition. In particular moral action implies this resistance and a consciousness of power to overcome the resistance, and it therefore involves a reality which transcends the sphere in which we act.

SCIENCE

HAVING thus surveyed the main currents of our period and indicated the general attitude adopted to knowledge by the various thinkers, we approach more closely to the problem of the relation of science and philosophy. The nineteenth century was a period in which this problem was keenly felt, and France was the country in which it was tensely discussed by the most acute minds among the philosophers and among the scientists. French thought and culture, true to the tradition of the great geometrician and metaphysician Descartes, have produced men whose training has been highly scientific as well as philosophical. Her philosophers have been keenly versed in mathematics and physical science, while her scientists have had considerable power as philosophical thinkers.

Although he succeeded in calling the attention of philosophy to the natural sciences, yet owing to the mere fact that he based himself on the sciences of his day much of his thought has become obsolete by the progress and extension of those very sciences themselves. He tended, with a curious dogmatism, to assign limits to the sciences by keeping them in separate compartments and in general by desiring knowledge to be limited to human needs. Although there is important truth in his doctrine of discontinuity or irreducible differences, the subsequent development of the natural sciences has cleared away many barriers which he imagined to be impassable. There still are, and may always be, gaps in our knowledge of the progress from inorganic to organic, from the living creature to self-conscious personality, but we have a greater conception of the unity of Nature than had Comte. Many new ideas and discoveries have transformed science since his day, particularly the doctrines dealing with heat as a form of motion, with light, electricity, and the radio-activity of matter, the structure of the atom, and the inter-relation of physics and chemistry.

Comte was slow to realise the importance of Ethics as an independent study. Psychology he never recognised as a separate discipline, deeming it part of physiology. He gave a curious appreciation to phrenology. Unfortunately he overlooked the important work done by the introspectionist psychologists in England and the important work of Maine de Biran in his own country. One is struck by Comte's inability to appreciate the immense place occupied by psychology in modern life and in particular its expression in the modern novel and in much modern poetry. An acquaintance with the works of men like De Regnier, Pierre Loti and Anatole France is sufficient to show how large a factor the psychological method is in French literature and life. It is to be put down to Comte's eternal discredit that he failed to appreciate psychology. Here lies the greatest defect in his work, and it is in this connection that his work is now being supplemented. Positivism in France to-day is not a synonym for "Comtism" at all; the term is now employed to denote the spirit and temper displayed in the methods of the exact sciences. For Comte, we must never forget, scientific investigation was a means and not an end in itself. His main purpose was social and political regeneration. Positivism since Comte differs from his philosophy by a keen attention bestowed upon psychology, and many of Comte's inadequate conceptions have been enriched by the introduction of a due recognition of psychological factors.

It was indeed a belief and hope of Taine that the sciences will be more and more perfected until they can each be expressed in a kind of generic formula, which in turn may be capable of expression in some single formula. This single law is being sought by science and metaphysic, although it must belong to the latter rather than to the former. From it, as from a spring, proceeds, according to Taine, the eternal roll of events and the infinite sea of things.

When we feel ourselves constrained to admit the necessity of certain truths, if we are inclined to regard this as due to the character of our minds themselves , as Kant maintained, Taine reminds us that we must admit that our mind adapts itself to its environment. He here adopts the view of Spencer, a thinker who seems to have had far more influence upon the Continent than in his own country. Although Taine thus reposes his epistemology upon this basis, he does not answer the question which the Kantian can still put to him--namely, "How do we know the structure of things?" He is unable to escape from the difficulty of admitting either that it is from experience, an admission which his anti-empirical attitude forbids him to make , or that our knowledge is obtained by analysing our own thoughts, in which case he leaves us in a vicious circle of pure subjectivity from which there is no means of escape.

The truth is that Taine vainly tried to establish a phenomenal doctrine, not purely empirical in character like that of Hume, but a phenomenalism wedded to a necessity which is supposed to be self-explanatory. Such a notion of necessity, however, is formal and abstract. Rather than accept Taine's view of a law, a formula, an "eternal axiom" at the basis of things, we are obliged to postulate an activity, creative in character, of whose action universal laws are but expressions. Law, formula, axiom without action are mere abstractions which can of themselves produce nothing.

Taine's positivism, however, was not so rigid as to exclude a belief in the value of metaphysics. It is this which distinguishes him from the Comtian School. We see in him the confidence in science complemented by an admission of metaphysics, equivalent to a turning of "positivism" in science and philosophy against itself. Much heavier onslaughts upon the sovereignty of science came, however, from the thinker who is the great logician and metaphysician of our period, Renouvier. To him and to Cournot we now turn.

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