Chapter 64 Chapter XV Locke's Influence

From Locke's time to modern times, there have always been two major categories of philosophy in Europe. One category derives its theories and methods from Locke, and the other category comes first from Descartes and then from Kant.Kant himself thought that he had synthesized the philosophy from Descartes and that from Locke; but, at least from a historical point of view, this cannot be admitted, since Kant's successors belonged to the Cartesian tradition and not to the Locke school. Tradition.Those who inherited Locke's mantle were, first, Berkeley and Hume; second, those of the French philosophes who did not belong to Rousseau's school; third, Bentham and the philosophical radicals; fourth, Marx and his disciples, They took elements of mainland philosophy and made some important additions.However, Marx's system is an eclectic system of various schools, and any simple statement about this system is almost bound to be wrong; therefore, I want to put Marx aside for a while, and I will discuss him in detail later.

At Locke's time, his main philosophical opponents were the Cartesians and Leibniz.Quite paradoxically, the triumph of Locke's philosophy in England and France owes much to Newton's prestige.As a philosopher, Descartes' prestige was enhanced at the time by his achievements in mathematics and natural philosophy.But his vortex theory is absolutely inferior to Newton's law of gravitation as an explanation of the solar system.The triumph of Newtonian cosmology lowered everyone's respect for Descartes and increased their respect for England.Both of these reasons tended to favor Locke.

In eighteenth-century France, intellectuals were rebelling against an old, corrupt, impotent monarchy, and they saw England as the home of liberty, so Locke's politics made them feel good about his philosophy.In the days just before the Revolution, Locke's influence in France was enhanced by the influence of Hume, who had once lived in France and was acquainted with not a few of the first-rate savants (scholars). The chief figure in bringing English influence to France was Voltaire. In England, adherents of Locke's philosophy were never interested in his political doctrines until the time of the French Revolution.Berkeley was an apolitical bishop; Hume was a Tory who held up Bowlingbroke as an example.In their time, the political situation in Britain was calm, and philosophers could not worry about the world situation, and were happy to talk about theories and establish theories.The French Revolution changed that, forcing the best minds to rebel against the status quo.However, the tradition in pure philosophy continued unbroken.

Shelley was expelled from Oxford for his Necessity of Atheism, which is heavily influenced by Locke. Until 1781, when Kant's book was published, it may have seemed as if the older philosophical traditions of Descartes, Spinoza, and Leibniz were gradually to be definitively overwhelmed by the new empirical methods.But this new method never prevailed in the German universities, and from 1792 onwards it was ascribed to it the horrors of the French Revolution.Revolutionaries like Coleridge, who changed their minds midway, got Kant as their spiritual backing against French atheism.When the Germans resisted the French they had a German philosophy to support them.Even the French, after the fall of Napoleon, welcomed any weapon against Jacobinism.All these factors are in Kant's favor.

Kant, like Darwin, gave rise to a movement he would have hated at first. Kant was a liberal, a democrat, a pacifist, but those who claim to have developed his philosophy were anything but.Or, if they call themselves libertarians, they are just another libertarian.After Rousseau and Kant, there have always been two schools of liberalism, which may be divided into "cold-headed school" and "soft-hearted school". The "cool-headed school" developed in logical stages through Bentham, Ricardo and Marx to Stalin; the "soft-hearted school" developed in other logical stages through Fichte, Byron, Carlyle and Nietzsche to Hitler.Naturally, this statement is too brief and not quite correct, but it can also be regarded as a kind of palm map to help memory.The stages in the evolution of thought have always had an almost Hegelian dialectic quality: doctrines develop into their opposites through seemingly natural steps.But this development is never entirely due to the inner workings of thought; it is always governed by external conditions and their reflection in the emotions of man.This is the case by a most remarkable fact.Liberal thought has not gone through any stage of this development in the United States, and it still maintains what Locke said today.

Politics aside, let's examine the differences between the two schools of philosophy, which can roughly be divided into the Continental School and the British School. The first is the difference in method.Compared with Continental philosophy, British philosophy is more detailed and fragmented; whenever one admits a general principle, one proceeds to examine the various applications of this principle and prove it inductively.Hume, therefore, after declaring that there is no idea which does not have the impression of going forward, proceeds to the following objection: Suppose you now see two shades which are similar to each other but not identical, and suppose you have never seen a color which is exactly between the two. Can you still imagine a shade in between?He does not make a judgment on this issue, and thinks that even a judgment that violates his general principles will not be his fatal wound, because his principles are not logical but empirical.To give another contrastive counterexample, when Leibniz wanted to establish his monadism, he argued in the following way: all complex things must be composed of some simple parts; simple things will not have extension; Therefore all things are composed of parts without extension.But that which has no extension is immaterial.Therefore, the ultimate constituent elements of things are not material, but if not material, then spiritual.Therefore, the table is actually a collection of souls.

Here, the difference of method may be characterized as follows: in Locke or Hume, a more limited conclusion is drawn from extensive observation of a large number of facts; On the contrary, Leibniz erected a deductive edifice like a pyramid on the pinpoint logical principle.In Leibniz, if the principles are perfectly correct and the deduction is completely solid, everything will be fine; but the building is not stable, and the slightest crack will cause it to collapse.On the contrary, Locke and Hume are not. The base of their pyramid falls on the ground where the facts are observed.Kant intended to draw something empiricistic, and thereafter the above-mentioned difference in method persisted: from Descartes to Hegel on the one hand, and from Locke to John Stuart Mill on the other, it remained the same.

The difference in method is connected with other differences.Let me talk about metaphysics first. Descartes provided some metaphysical proofs of the existence of God, the most important of which was that of St. Anselham, Archbishop of Canterbury, in the eleventh century.Spinoza had a pantheistic god, which to the orthodox was no god at all; God or not, Spinoza's arguments were metaphysical in nature, and could be attributed to the fact that every proposition must have a The subject and a predicate (of course, he may not have grasped this point).Leibniz's metaphysics stems from the same roots.

In Locke, the philosophical direction he initiated was not fully developed; he admitted that Descartes' proof of the existence of God was well founded.Berkeley created a whole new proof; but Hume--by Hume the new philosophy was consummated-- He completely negated metaphysics, and he thought that if he reasoned hard on the topics dealt with by metaphysics, nothing would be discovered.This view persists in the empiricist school, and the opposite view, with some modifications, persists in the teaching of Kant and his disciples. In ethics, the two schools have the same distinction. As we know from the foregoing, Locke believed that happiness is the good, which was a popular opinion among empiricists throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.Opponents of the Empiricists, on the contrary, despise pleasure as abject, and have various systems of ethics which appear to be higher.Hobbes valued power, and Spinoza agreed with Hobbes to a certain extent.In Spinoza's thought there are two irreconcilable views on ethics, that of Hobbes, and the view that the good consists in mystical union with God.Leibniz made no significant contribution to ethics, but Kant put ethics in the first place, and derived his metaphysics from ethical premises.Kant's ethics is important because it is anti-utilitarian, transcendental, and so-called "noble."

Kant said that if you treat your brother well because you like him, you have no moral value: an action has moral value only if it is done because the moral law tells it to be done.Although happiness is not good, it is still unfair for good people to suffer— Kant argued so.Since such things happen so often in this world, there must be another world where good people are rewarded after death, and there must be a god who administers justice in the afterlife.He denies all the old-fashioned metaphysical proofs of God and immortality, but considers his new-style ethical proofs irrefutable. Kant's views on practical matters were benevolent and humane, as he was himself, but most of those who deny happiness the good cannot say the same.The so-called "noble" ethic has less to do with attempts to improve the world than the more worldly opinion that we should try to make people happier.This is not surprising.It is easier to despise happiness if it is someone else's than if it is your own.Generally speaking, the substitute for happiness is some kind of heroism.This provides an unconscious outlet for the desire for power and a fertile excuse for cruelty.Or else it may be that strong feelings are admired; among Romantics this is the case.This produces a tolerance of such passions as hatred and vengeance; Byron's heroes are typical, they are by no means characters of exemplary behavior.The people who contribute most to the promotion of human happiness are--perhaps conceivably--those who think happiness is important, not those who despise happiness by comparing it with something more "noble".Moreover, a person's ethics usually reflect the person's character, and a person who is charitable wishes everyone to be happy.Therefore, those who regard happiness as the end of life are often more benevolent, while those who propose other ends are often unknowingly dominated by cruelty and the desire for power.

These differences in ethics are often, though not always, associated with differences in politics.As mentioned earlier, Locke took a tentative attitude in personal opinions, not authoritarian at all, and he was willing to let every problem be resolved by free discussion.The result is that both he himself and his believers believe in reform, but it is a gradual reform.As their systems of thought are composed of fragments, the result of individual considerations of many different problems, their political views naturally tend to be of this character.They eschew a program carved out of a single block, preferring to discuss the facts and study various issues.They are as probing and experimenting in politics as they are in philosophy.Their opponents, on the other hand, thought they could "see the sad state of affairs in its entirety," and were therefore more willing to "shatter it violently and reshape it more to their liking."They may do it as revolutionaries, or they may do it as the kind of people who want to increase the power of those in power; Denounce peace-loving as despicable and shameful. From a modern point of view, the great political shortcoming of Locke and his followers is the cult of property.But those who criticize them on this ground often do so in the interest of classes more harmful than the capitalists, such as princes, nobles, and warlords.The aristocratic landowners, according to the custom handed down from ancient times, did not spend their income without labor. They did not think of themselves as money-seeking ghosts, nor did they think of them as such by those who did not look at the details from under the picturesque appearance.The industrialists, on the other hand, engaged in the conscious pursuit of wealth, and so, in an age when their activity was still somewhat novel, aroused a resentment not felt at the gentlemen's blackmail of the landowners.This means that this is true of middle-class writers and those who read them; it is not true of peasants, as it was in the French and Russian revolutions.But farmers can't talk. Most of the opponents of the Locke school admire war, thinking that war is heroic and heroic, which means contempt for comfort and ease.Conversely, people with a utilitarian ethic tend to see most wars as follies.This again united them, at least in the nineteenth century, with the capitalists, who also disliked war because it interfered with trade.The motives of the capitalists are, of course, purely self-interested, but from this a more consistent opinion and public interest emerge than that of the warlords and their literary henchmen.Yes, the attitude of capitalists towards war has always been vacillating.In the eighteenth century, apart from the American War of Independence, the wars fought by Britain were generally about making money, and they were supported by industrialists; but from the beginning of the nineteenth century until the end of the year, the industrialists were in favor of peace.In modern times, large corporations and nation-states have developed close relations everywhere, so that the situation has changed drastically.But even now, whether in Britain or America, big business is generally war-averse. Enlightened self-interest is certainly not the noblest of motives, but those who depreciate it often substitute, consciously or unconsciously, for much worse motives, such as hatred, envy, lust for power, and the like.On the whole, the school that advocated enlightened self-interest, rooted in Locke, has done more to increase human happiness and to increase human misery than those that have despised enlightened self-interest in the name of heroism and self-sacrifice. Play less.I have not forgotten the tragedies of the early industrial society, but they have slowed down within the system.And I will contrast those tragedies with the following: Russian serfdom, the scourges of the war and its aftermath—fear and hatred, and the necessity of those who try to maintain the old order when it has lost its vigor. obscurantism.