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

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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.

While Taine had indeed maintained the necessity of a metaphysic, he shared to a large degree the general confidence in science displayed by Comte, Bernard, Berthelot and Renan. But the second and third groups of thinkers into which we have divided our period took up first a critical attitude to science and, finally, a rather hostile one.

This distinction, according to Cournot, lies in the fact that science has for its object that which can be measured, and that which can be reduced to a rigorous chain or connection. In brief, science is characterised by quantity. Philosophy, on the other hand, concerns itself with quality, for it endeavours not so much to measure as to appreciate.

Cournot reminds the apostles of science that quantity, however intimately bound up with reality it may be, is not the essence of that reality itself. He is afraid, too, that the neglect of philosophy by science may cause the latter to develop along purely utilitarian lines. As an investigation of reality, science is not ultimate. It has limits by the fact that it is concerned with measurement, and thus is excluded from those things which are qualitative and incapable of quantitative expression. Science, moreover, has its roots in philosophy by virtue of the metaphysical postulates which it utilises as its basis. Physics and geometry, Cournot maintains, both rest upon definitions which owe their origin to speculative thought rather than to experience, yet these sciences claim an absolute value for themselves and for those postulates as being descriptions of reality in an ultimate sense.

He justifies to the scientist the formulation of hypothesis as a necessary working method of co-ordinating in a provisional manner varying phenomena. Many hypotheses and inductions of science are, however, unjustifiable from a strictly logical standpoint, Renouvier reminds us. His chief objection, however, is that those hypotheses and inductions are put forward so frequently as certainties by a science which is dogmatic and surpasses its limits.

On turning to the spiritualist current of thought we find it, like the neo-criticism, no less keen in its criticism of science. The inadequacy of the purely scientific attitude is the recurring theme from Ravaisson to Boutroux, Bergson and Le Roy. The attitude assumed by Ravaisson coloured the whole of the subsequent development of the new spiritualist doctrines, and not least their bearing upon the problem of science and its relation to metaphysics.

Mechanism, Ravaisson pointed out, quoting the classical author upon whom he had himself written so brilliantly , does not explain itself, for it implies a "prime mover," not itself in motion, but which produces movement by spiritual activity. Ravaisson also refers to the testimony of Leibnitz, who, while agreeing that all is mechanical, carefully added to this statement one to the effect that mechanism itself has a principle which must be looked for outside matter and which is the object of metaphysical research. This spiritual reality is found only, according to Ravaisson, in the power of goodness and beauty--that is to say, in a reality which is not non-scientific but rather ultra-scientific. There are realities, he claims, to which science does not attain.

These criticisms were disturbing for those minds who found entire satisfaction in Science or rather in the sciences, but they were somewhat general. Ravaisson's work inculcated a spirit rather than sustained a dialectic. Its chief value lay in the inspiration which it imparted to subsequent thinkers who endeavoured to work out his general ideas with greater precision.

Lachelier saw that the important point of Ravaisson's doctrine lay in the problem of these two types of causality. His thesis is therefore devoted to the examination of efficient and final causes. This little work of Lachelier marks a highly important advance in the development of the spiritualist philosophy. He clarifies and re-affirms more precisely the position indicated by Ravaisson. Lacheher tears up the treaty of compromise which was drafted by Leibnitz to meet the rival demands of science with its efficient causes and philosophy with its final causes. The world of free creative spontaneity of the spirit cannot be regarded, Lachelier claims , as merely the complement of, or the reflex from, the world of mechanism and determinism.

He works out in his thesis the doctrine that efficient causes can be deduced from the formal laws of thought. This was Taine's position, and it was the limit of Taine's doctrine. Lachelier goes further and undermines Taine's theories by upholding final causes, which he shows depend upon the conception of a totality, a whole which is capable of creating its parts. This view of the whole is a philosophical conception to which the natural sciences never rise, and which they cannot, by the very nature of their data and their methods, comprehend. Yet it is only such a conception which can supply any rational basis for the unity of phenomena and of experience. Only by seeing the variety of all phenomena in the light of such an organic unity can we find any meaning in the term universe, and only thus, continues Lachelier, only on the principle of a rational and universal order and on the reality of final causes, can we base our inductions. The "uniformity of nature," that fetish of the scientists which, as Lachelier well points out, is merely the empirical regularity of phenomena, offers no adequate basis for a single induction.

In this article Lachelier endeavours to pass beyond the standpoint of Cousin, and in so doing we see not only the influence of Ravaisson's ideas of the creative activity of the spirit, but also of the discipline of the Kantian criticism, with which Lachelier, unlike many of his contemporaries in France at that time, was well acquainted.

"In the actual condition of our knowledge," he remarks, "science is not one, but multiple; science, conceived as embracing all the sciences, is a mere abstraction." This is a remark which recalls Renouvier's witty saying, "I should very much like to meet this person I hear so much about, called 'science.'" We have only sciences, each working after its own manner upon a small portion of reality. Man has a thirst for knowledge, and he sees, says Boutroux, in the world an "ensemble" of facts of infinite variety. These facts man endeavours to observe, analyse, and describe with increasing exactness. Science, he points out, is just this description.

The laws of nature are not restrictions which have been, as it were, imposed upon her They are themselves products of freedom; they are, in her, what habits are to the individual. Their constancy is like the stability of a river-bed which the freely running stream at some early time hollowed out.

The world is an assembly of beings, and its vitality and nature cannot be expressed in a formula. It comprises a hierarchy of creatures, rising from inorganic to organic forms, from matter to spirit, and in man it displays an observing intelligence, rising above mere sensibility and expressly modifying things by free will. In this conception Boutroux follows Ravaisson, and he is also influenced by that thinker's belief in a spiritual Power of goodness and beauty. He thus leads us to the sphere of religion and philosophy, both of which endeavour, in their own manner, to complete the inadequacy of the purely scientific standpoint. He thus stands linked up in the total development with Cournot and Renouvier, and in his own group with Lachelier, in regard to this question of the relation of philosophy and the sciences.

The critique of science, which is so prominent in Boutroux, was characteristic of a number of thinkers whom we cannot do more than mention here in passing, for in general their work is not in line with the spiritualist development, but is a sub-current running out and separated from the main stream. This is shown prominently in the fact that, while Boutroux's critique is in the interests of idealism and the maintenance of some spiritual values, much subsequent criticism of science is a mere empiricism and, being divorced from the general principles of the spiritualist philosophy, tends merely to accentuate a vein of uncertainty--indeed, scepticism of knowledge. Such is the general standpoint taken by Milhaud, Payot, and Duhem. Rather apart from these stands the works of acute minds like Poincar?, Durand de Gros, and Hannequin, whose discussion of the atomic doctrines is a work of considerable merit. To these may be added Lalande's criticism of the doctrine of evolution and integration by his opposing to it that of dissolution and disintegration. Passing references to these books must not, however, detain us from following the main development which, from Boutroux, is carried on by Bergson.

The inadequacy of the scientific standpoint is a theme upon which Bergson never tires of insisting. Not only does he regard a metaphysic as necessary to complete this inadequacy, but he claims that our intellect is incapable of grasping reality in its flux and change. The true instrument of metaphysics is, according to him, intuition. Bergson's doctrine of intuition does not, however, amount to a pure hostility to intellectual constructions. These are valuable, but they are not adequate to reality. Metaphysics cannot dispense with the natural sciences. These sciences work with concepts, abstractions, and so suffer by being intellectual moulds. We must not mistake them for the living, pulsing, throbbing reality of life itself which is far wider than any intellectual construction.

NOTE.--The reader may be interested to find that Einstein has brought out some of Boutroux's points very emphatically, and has confirmed the view of geometry held by Poincar?. Compare the following statements:

Boutroux: "Mathematics cannot be applied with exactness to reality." "Mathematics and experience can never be exactly fitted into each other."

Poincar?: "Formulae are not true, they are convenient."

FREEDOM

The discussions regarding the relation between science and philosophy led the thinkers of our period naturally to the crucial problem of freedom. Science has almost invariably stood for determinism, and men were becoming impatient of a dogmatism which, by its denial of freedom, left little or no place for man, his actions, his beliefs, his moral feelings.

It was precisely this problem which was acutely felt in the philosophy of our period as it developed and approached the close of the century.

The artificiality of such a solution was apparent to the thinkers who followed Kant, and particularly was this felt in France. "Poor consolation is it," remarked Fouill?e, in reply to Kant's view, "for a prisoner bound with chains to know that in some unknown realm afar he can walk freely devoid of his fetters."

The problem of freedom, both in its narrow sphere of personal free-will and in its larger social significance, is one which has merited the attention of all peoples in history. France, however, has been pre-eminently a cradle for much acute thought on this matter. It loomed increasingly large on the horizon as the Revolution approached, it shone brilliantly in Rousseau. Since the Revolution it has been equally discussed, and is the first of the three watchwords of the republic, whose philosophers, no less than its politicians, have found it one of their main themes.

We find in the thought of our period a very striking development or change in regard to the problem of freedom. Beginning with a strictly positivist and naturalist belief in determinism, it concludes with a spiritualism or idealism which not only upholds freedom but goes further in its reaction against the determinist doctrines by maintaining contingency.

Taine and Renan both express the initial attitude, a firm belief in determinism, but it is most clear and rigid in the work of Taine. His whole philosophy is hostile to any belief in freedom. The strictly positivist, empiricist and naturalist tone of his thought combined with the powerful influence of Spinoza's system to produce in him a firm belief in necessity--a necessity which, as we have seen, was severely rational and of the type seen in mathematics and in logic. Although it must also be admitted that in this view of change and development Taine was partly influenced by the Hegelian philosophy, yet his formulations were far more precise and mathematical than those of the German thinker.

Even this explanation of his position, however, did not prevent the assertion being made that such a view entirely does away with all question of moral responsibility. To this criticism Taine objected. "It does not involve moral indifference. We do not excuse a wicked man because we have explained to ourselves the causes of his wickedness. One can be determinist with Leibnitz and nevertheless admit with Leibnitz that man is responsible --that is to say, that the dishonest man is worthy of blame, of censure and punishment, while the honest man is worthy of praise, respect and reward."

Like Taine, Renan set out from the belief in universal causation, but he employed the conception not so much in a warfare against man's freedom of action as against the theologians' belief in miracle and the supernatural. There is none of Taine's rigour and preciseness in Renan, and it is difficult to grasp his real attitude to the problem of freedom. If he ever had one, may be doubted. The blending of viewpoints, the paradox so characteristic of him, seems apparent even in this question.

We see in Renan a rejection of the severely deterministic doctrine of Taine, but it is by no means a complete rejection or refutation of it. Renan adheres largely to the scientific and positivist attitude which is such a feature of Taine's work. His humanism, however, recognises the inadequacy of such doctrines and compels him to speak of freedom as a human factor, and he thus brings us a step nearer to the development of the case for freedom put forward so strongly by Cournot and Renouvier and by the neo-spiritualists.

A very powerful opposition to all doctrines based upon or upholding determinism shows itself in the work of Cournot and the neo-critical philosophy. The idea of freedom is a central one in the thought of both Cournot and Renouvier.

The neo-critical philosopher, Renouvier, is a notable champion of freedom. We have already seen the importance he attaches to the category of personality. For him, personality represents a consciousness in possession of itself, a free and rational harmony--in short, freedom personified.

From a strictly demonstrative point of view Renouvier thinks it is impossible to prove freedom as a fact. However, he lays before us with intense seriousness various. considerations of a psychological and a moral character which have an important bearing upon the problem. This problem, he asserts, not only concerns our actions but also our knowledge. To bring out this point clearly, Renouvier develops some of the ideas of his friend, Jules Lequier, on the notion of the autonomy of the reason, or rather of the reasonable will. In this way he shows doubt and criticism to be themselves signs of freedom, and asserts that we form our notions of truth freely, or that at least they are creations of our free thought, not laid upon us by an external authority.

Passing from these psychological considerations, Renouvier calls our attention to some of a moral nature, no less important, in his opinion, for shedding light upon the nature of freedom. If, he argues, all is necessary, if all human actions are predetermined, then popular language is guilty of a grave extravagance and appears ridiculous, insinuating, as it does, that many acts might have been left undone and many events might have occurred differently, and that a man might have done other than he did. In the light of the hypothesis of rigorous necessity, the mention of ambiguous futures and the notion of "being otherwise" seem foolish. Science may assert the docrine of necessity and preach it valiantly, but the human conscience feels it to be untrue and will not be gainsaid. The scientist himself is forced to admit that man does not accept his gospel of universal predestination or fatalism. This Renouvier recognises as an important point in the debate. Strange, is it not, he remarks, that the mind of the philosopher himself, a sanctuary or shrine for truth, should appear as a rebellious citadel refusing to surrender to the truth of this universal necessity. We believe ourselves to be free agents or, at least beings who are capable of some free action. However slight such action, it would invalidate the hypothesis of universal necessity.

If all things are necessitated, then moral judgments, the notions of right and of duty, have no foundation in the nature of things. Virtue and crime lose their character; the sentiments and feelings, such as regret, hope, fear, desire, change their meaning or become meaningless. Renouvier lays great stress upon these moral considerations.

Again, if everything be necessitated, error is as necessary as truth. The false is indeed true, being necessary, and the true may become false. Disputes rage over what is false or true, but these disputes cannot be condemned, for they themselves are, by virtue of the hypothesis, necessary, and the disputes are necessarily absurd and ridiculous from this point of view. Where then is truth? Where is morality? We have here no basis for either. Looking thus at history, all its crimes and infamies are equally lawful, for they are inevitable; such is the result, Renouvier shows, of viewing all human action as universally predetermined.

The objections thus put forward by Renouvier against the doctrine of universal necessity are powerful ones. They possess great weight and result in the admission, even by its upholders, that "the judgment of freedom is a natural datum of consciousness and is bound up with our reflective judgments upon which we act, being itself the foundation of these."

One of the most current forms of the doctrine of freedom has been that known as the "liberty of indifference." The upholders of this theory regard the will as separated from motives and ends. The operation of the will is regarded by them as indifferent to the claims or influence of reason or feeling. Will is superadded externally to motives, where such exist, or may be superimposed on intellectual views even to the extent of annulling these. Judgment and will are separated in this view, and the will is a purely arbitrary or indifferent factor. It can operate without reason against reason. The opponents of freedom find little difficulty in assailing this view, in which the will appears to operate like a dice or a roulette game, absolutely at hazard, reducing man to a non-rational creature. Such a type of will, however, Renouvier declares to be non-existent, for every man who has full consciousness of an act of his has at the same time a consciousness of an end or purpose for this act, and he proposes to realise by this means a good which he regards as preferable to any other. In so far as he has doubts of this preference the act and the judgment will be suspended. He must, however, if he be an intelligent being, pursue what he deems to be his good--that is to say, what he deems to be good at the time of acting. Renouvier here agrees with Socrates and Plato in the view that no man deliberately and knowingly wills what he considers to be evil or to be bad for him. Virtue involves knowledge, and although there is the almost proverbial phrase of Ovid and of Paul, about seeing and approving the better, yet nevertheless doing the worse, it is a general statement which does not express an antithesis as present to consciousness at the time of action. The agent may afterwards say

but at the time of action "the worse" must appear to him as a good, at any rate then and in his own judgment. Further, beyond these psychological considerations there are grave moral objections, Renouvier points out, to admitting "an indifferent will," for the acts of such a will being purely arbitrary and haphazard, the man will be no moral agent, no responsible person. A man who wills apart from the consideration of any motive whatever can never perform any meritorious action. Under the conception of an indifferent will the term "merit" ceases to have a meaning. The theologians who have asserted the doctrine have readily admitted this point, for it opens up the way for their theory of divine grace or the good will of God acting directly upon or within the agent. Will and merit are for them quite separate, the latter being due to the mystical operations of divine favour or grace, in honour of which the indifference of the will has been postulated. Philosophers not given to appeals to divine grace, who have upheld the doctrine of the indifferent will, have really been less consistent than the theoloians and have fallen into grave error.

The doctrine of freedom as represented by that of an indifferent will is no less vicious, Renouvier affirms, than the opposing doctrine of universal necessity. The truth is that they both rest on fictions. "Indifferentism" imagines a will divorced from judgment, separated from the rational man himself, an unseizable power, a mysterious absolute cause unconnected with reflection or deliberation, a mere chimera. For determinism the will is equally a fiction.

A way out of this difficulty is to be found, according to Renouvier, in viewing the will in a manner different from that of the "indifferentists." Let us suppose the will bound up with motive, a motive drawn from the intellectual and moral equipment of the man. This, however, gives rise to psychological determinism. The will, it is argued, follows always the last determination of the understanding. Greater subtilty attends on this argument against freedom than those put forward on behalf of physical determinism. Renouvier sees that there is no escape from such a doctrine as psychological determinism unless we take a view of the will as bound up with the nature of man as a whole, with his powers of intellect and feeling. Such a will cannot be characterised as indifferent or as the mere resultant of motives.

The Kantian element in Renouvier's thought is noticeable in the strong moral standpoint from which he discusses all problems, and this is particularly true of his discussion of this very vital one of freedom. He is by no means, however, a disciple of Kant, and he joins battle strongly with the Kantian doctrine of freedom. This is natural in view of his entire rejection of Kant's "thing-in-itself," or noumena, and it follows therefrom, for Kant attached freedom only to the noumenal world, denying its operation in the world of phenomena. The rejection of noumena leaves Renouvier free to discuss freedom in a less remote or less artificial manner than that of Kant.

If it be true, argues Renouvier, that necessity rules supreme, then the human spirit can find peace in absolute resignation; and in looking back over the past history of humanity one need not have different feelings from those entertained by the geologist or paleontologist. Ethics, politics and history thus become purely "natural" sciences . Any inconvenience, pain or injustice would have to be accepted and not even named "evil," much less could any effort be truly made to expel it from the scheme of things. To these accusations the defenders of necessity object. The practical man, they say, need not feel this, in so far as he is under the illusion of freedom and unaware of the rigorous necessity of all things. He need not refrain from action.

In view of the many difficulties connected with the problem of freedom many thinkers would urge us to a compromise. Renouvier is aware of the dangers of this attitude, and he brings into play against it his logical method of dealing with problems. This does not contradict his statement about the indemonstrability of freedom, nor does it minimise the weight and significance of the moral case for freedom: it complements it. Between contradictories or incompatible propositions no middle course can be followed. Freedom and necessity cannot be both at the same time true, or both at the same time false, for of the two things one must be true--namely, either human actions are all of them totally predetermined by their conditions or antecedents, or they are not all of them totally predetermined. It is to this pass that we are brought in the logical statement of the case. Now sceptics would here assert that doubt was the only solution. This would not realh be a solution, and however legitimate doubt is in front of conflicting theories, it involves the death of the soul if it operates in practical affairs and in any circumstances where some belief is absolutely necessary to the conduct of life and to action.

The freedom in question, as Renouvier is careful to remind us, does not involve our maintaining the total indetermination of things or denial of the operations of necessity within limits. Room is left for freedom when it is shown that this necessity is not universal. Many consequences of free acts may be necessitated. For example, says Renouvier, I have a stone in my hand. I can freely will to hurl it north or south, high or low, but once thrown from my hand its path is strictly determined by the law of gravity. The voluntary movement of a man on the earth may, however slightly, alter the course of a distant planet. Freedom, we might say, operates in a sphere to which necessity supplies the matter. Ultimately any free act is a choice between two alternatives, equally possible, but both necessitated as possibilities. The points of free action may seem to take up a small amount of room in the world, so to speak, but we must realise how vital they are to any judgment regarding its character, and how tremendously important they are from a moral point of view. So far, claims Renouvier, from the admittance of freedom being a destruction of the laws of the universe, it really shows us a special law of that universe, not otherwise to be explained--namely, the moral law. Freedom is thus regarded by Renouvier as a positive fact, a moral certainty.

Such is the conclusion to which Renouvier brings us after his wealth of logical and moral considerations. He combines both types of discussion and argument in order to undermine the belief in determinism and to uphold freedom, which is, in his view, the essential attribute of personality and of the universe itself. He thus succeeded in altering substantially the balance of thought in favour of freedom, and further weight was added to the same side of the scales by the new spiritualist group who placed freedom in the forefront of their thought.

The development of the treatment of this problem within the thought of the new spiritualists or idealists is extremely interesting, and it proceeded finally to a definite doctrine of contingency as the century drew to its close. The considerations set forth are usually psychological in tone, and not so largely ethical as in the neo-critical philosophy.

Ravaisson's fundamental spiritualism is clear in all this, and it serves as the starting-point for the thinkers who follow him. Spiritualism is bound up with spontaneity, creation, freedom, and this is his central point, this insistence on freedom. While resisting mechanical determination he endeavours to retain a determination of another kind--namely, by ends, a teleology or finalism. This is extremely interesting when observed in relation to the subsequent development in Lachelier, Boutroux, Blondel and Bergson.

He goes on to point out that the consciousness of independence, which is an essential of freedom, may be nothing more than a lack of consciousness of our dependence. Motives he is inclined to speak of as determining the will itself, while he looks upon the "liberty of indifference" or of hazard as merely a concession to the operations of mechanical necessity. The "liberty of indifference" is often the mere play of instinct and of fatality, while hazard, so far from being an argument in the hands of the upholders of freedom, is really a determination made previously by something other than one's own will.

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