Thomas Hobbes

The two branches of the Cavendish family nourished Hobbess enduring intellectual interests in

Thomas Hobbes, (born April 5, 1588, Westport,Wiltshire, Englanddied December 4,

1679, Hardwick Hall, Derbyshire), English philosopher, scientist, and historian, best known for
his political philosophy, especially as articulated in his masterpiece Leviathan(1651). Hobbes
viewed government primarily as a device for ensuring collective security. Political authority is
justified by a hypothetical social contract among the many that vests in a sovereign person or
entity the responsibility for the safety and well-being of all. Inmetaphysics, Hobbes
defended materialism, the view that only material things are real. His scientific writings present
all observed phenomena as the effects of matter in motion. Hobbes was not only a scientist in
his own right but a great systematizer of the scientific findings of his contemporaries,
including Galileo and Johannes Kepler. His enduring contribution is as a political philosopher
who justified wide-ranging government powers on the basis of the self-interested consent of
citizens.

politics and natural science, respectively. Hobbes served the earls of Devonshire intermittently
until 1628; Newcastle and his brother employed him in the following decade. He returned to the
Devonshires after the 1640s. Through both branches of the Cavendish family, and through
contacts he made in his own right on the Continent as traveling companion to various
successors to the Devonshire title, Hobbes became a member of several networks of
intellectuals in England. Farther afield, in Paris, he became acquainted with the circle of
scientists, theologians, and philosophers presided over by the theologian Marin Mersenne. This
circle included Ren Descartes.
Political philosophy
Hobbes presented his political philosophy in different forms for different audiences. De

Early life
Hobbess father was a quick-tempered vicar of a small Wiltshire parish church. Disgraced after
engaging in a brawl at his own church door, he disappeared and abandoned his three children to
the care of his brother, a well-to-do glover in Malmesbury. When he was four years old, Hobbes
was sent to school at Westport, then to a private school, and finally, at 15, to Magdalen Hall in
the University of Oxford, where he took a traditional arts degree and in his spare time developed
an interest in maps.
For nearly the whole of his adult life, Hobbes worked for different branches of the wealthy and
aristocratic Cavendish family. Upon taking his degree at Oxford in 1608, he was employed as
page and tutor to the young William Cavendish, afterward the second earl of Devonshire. Over
the course of many decades Hobbes served the family and their associates as translator,
traveling companion, keeper of accounts, business representative, political adviser, and scientific
collaborator. Through his employment by William Cavendish, the first earl of Devonshire, and his
heirs, Hobbes became connected with the royalist side in disputes between the king and
Parliament that continued until the 1640s and that culminated in theEnglish Civil Wars (1642
51). Hobbes also worked for the marquess of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, a cousin of William
Cavendish, and Newcastles brother, Sir Charles Cavendish. The latter was the centre of the
Wellbeck Academy, an informal network of scientists named for one of the family houses at
Wellbeck Abbey in Nottinghamshire.

Civestates his theory in what he regarded as its most scientific form. Unlike The Elements of
Law, which was composed in English for English parliamentariansand which was written with
local political challenges to Charles I in mindDe Cive was a Latin work for an audience of
Continental savants who were interested in the new sciencethat is, the sort of science that
did not appeal to the authority of the ancients but approached various problems with fresh
principles of explanation.
De Cives break from the ancient authority par excellenceAristotlecould not have been more
loudly advertised. After only a few paragraphs, Hobbes rejects one of the most famous theses of
Aristotles politics, namely that human beings are naturally suited to life in a polis and do not fully
realize their natures until they exercise the role of citizen. Hobbes turns Aristotles claim on its
head: human beings, he insists, are by nature unsuited to political life. They naturally denigrate
and compete with each other, are very easily swayed by the rhetoric of ambitious men, and think
much more highly of themselves than of other people. In short, their passions magnify the value
they place on their own interests, especially their near-term interests. At the same time, most
people, in pursuing their own interests, do not have the ability to prevail over competitors. Nor

Intellectual development

can they appeal to some natural common standard ofbehaviour that everyone will feel obliged to
abide by. There is no natural self-restraint, even when human beings are moderate in their
appetites, for a ruthless and bloodthirsty few can make even the moderate feel forced to take

violent preemptive action in order to avoid losing everything. The self-restraint even of the

It is better both prudentially and morally. Because no one can prudently welcome a greater risk

moderate, then, easily turns into aggression. In other words, no human being is above

of death, no one can prudently prefer total liberty to submission. Total liberty invites war, and

aggression and the anarchy that goes with it.

submission is the best insurance against war. Morality too supports this conclusion, for,

War comes more naturally to human beings than political order. Indeed, political order is possible

according to Hobbes, all the moral precepts enjoining virtuous behaviour can be understood as

only when human beings abandon their natural condition of judging and pursuing what seems

derivable from the fundamental moral precept that one should seek peacethat is to say,

best to each and delegate this judgment to someone else. This delegation is effected when the

freedom from warif it is safe to do so. Without peace, he observed, man lives in continual fear,

many contract together to submit to a sovereign in return for physical safety and a modicum of

and danger of violent death, and what life he has is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.

well-being. Each of the many in effect says to the other: I transfer my right of governing myself

What Hobbes calls the laws of nature, the system of moral rules by which everyone is bound,

to X (the sovereign) if you do too. And the transfer is collectively entered into only on the

cannot be safely complied with outside the state, for the total liberty that people have outside the

understanding that it makes one less of a target of attack or dispossession than one would be in

state includes the liberty to flout the moral requirements if ones survival seems to depend on it.

ones natural state. Although Hobbes did not assume that there was ever a real historical event

The sovereign is not a party to the social contract; he receives the obedience of the many as a

in which a mutual promise was made to delegate self-government to a sovereign, he claimed

free gift in their hope that he will see to their safety. The sovereign makes no promises to the

that the best way to understand the state was to conceive of it as having resulted from such an

many in order to win their submission. Indeed, because he does not transfer his right of self-

agreement.

government to anyone, he retains the total liberty that his subjects trade for safety. He is not

In Hobbess social contract, the many trade liberty for safety. Liberty, with its standing invitation

bound by law, including his own laws. Nor does he do anything unjustly if he makes decisions

to local conflict and finally all-out wara war of every man against every manis overvalued in

about his subjectss safety and well-being that they do not like.

traditional political philosophy and popular opinion, according to Hobbes; it is better for people to

Although the sovereign is in a position to judge the means of survival and well-being for the

transfer the right of governing themselves to the sovereign. Once transferred, however, this right

many more dispassionately than they are able to do themselves, he is not immune to self-

of government is absolute, unless the many feel that their lives are threatened by submission.

interested passions. Hobbes realizes that the sovereign may behave iniquitously. He insists that

The sovereign determines who owns what, who will hold which public offices, how the economy

it is very imprudent for a sovereign to act so iniquitously that he disappoints his subjectss

will be regulated, what acts will be crimes, and what punishments criminals should receive. The

expectation of safety and makes them feel insecure. Subjects who are in fear of their lives lose

sovereign is the supreme commander of the army, supreme interpreter of law, and supreme

their obligations to obey and, with that, deprive the sovereign of his power. Reduced to the status

interpreter of scripture, with authority over any national church. It is unjusta case of reneging

of one among many by the defection of his subjects, the unseated sovereign is likely to feel the

on what one has agreedfor any subject to take issue with these arrangements, for, in the act of

wrath of those who submitted to him in vain.

creating the state or by receiving its protection, one agrees to leave judgments about the means
of collective well-being and security to the sovereign. The sovereigns laws and decrees and

Hobbess masterpiece, Leviathan (1651), does not significantly depart from the view of De

appointments to public office may be unpopular; they may even be wrong. But unless the

Civeconcerning the relation between protection and obedience, but it devotes much more

sovereign fails so utterly that subjects feel that their condition would be no worse in the free-for-

attention to the civil obligations of Christian believers and the proper and improper roles of a

all outside the state, it is better for the subjects to endure the sovereigns rule.

church within a state. Hobbes argues that believers do not endanger their prospects of salvation

out of this contract emerges our political obligations and the institution ofprivate property. This is
how reasoning places limits on the proper use of power by government authorities.

by obeying a sovereigns decrees to the letter, and he maintains that churches do not have any
authority that is not granted by the civil sovereign.
Hobbess political views exerted a discernible influence on his work in other fields, including

Regarding epistemology, Locke disagreed with Descartes rationalist theory that knowledge is
any idea that seems clear and distinct to us. Instead, Locke claimed that knowledge is direct
awareness of facts concerning the agreement or disagreement among our ideas. By ideas, he
meant mental objects, and by assuming that some of these mental objects represent non-mental
objects he inferred that this is why we can have knowledge of a world external to our minds.
Although we can know little for certain and must rely on probabilities, he believed it is our Godgiven obligation to obtain knowledge and not always to acquire our beliefs by accepting the word
of authorities or common superstition. Ideally our beliefs should be held firmly or tentatively
depending on whether the evidence is strong or weak. He praised the scientific reasoning of
Boyle and Newton as exemplifying this careful formation of beliefs. He said that at birth our mind
has no innate ideas; it is blank, a tabula rasa. As our mind gains simple ideas from sensation, it
forms complex ideas from these simple ideas by processes of combination, division,
generalization and abstraction. Radical for his time, Locke asserted that in order to help children
not develop bad habits of thinking, they should be trained to base their beliefs on sound
evidence, to learn how to collect this evidence, and to believe less strongly when the evidence is
weaker.

historiography and legal theory. His political philosophy is chiefly concerned with the way in
which government must be organized in order to avoid civil war. It therefore encompasses a view
of the typical causes of civil war, all of which are represented in Behemoth; or, The Long
Parliament (1679), his history of the English Civil Wars. Hobbes produced the first English
translation of Thucydides History of the Peloponnesian War, which he thought contained
important lessons for his contemporaries regarding the excesses of democracy, the worst kind of
dilution of sovereign authority, in his view.
Hobbess works on church history and the history of philosophy also strongly reflect his politics.
He was firmly against the separation of government powers, either between branches of
government or between church and state. His ecclesiastical history emphasizes the way in which
power-hungry priests and popes threatened legitimate civil authority. His history of philosophy is
mostly concerned with how metaphysics was used as a means of keeping people under the
sway of Roman Catholicism at the expense of obedience to a civil authority. His theory of law
develops a similar theme regarding the threats to a supreme civil power posed by common

We all can have knowledge of Gods existence by attending to the quality of the evidence
available to us, primarily the evidence from miracles. Our moral obligations, says Locke,
are divine commands. We can learn about those obligations both by Gods revealing them to us
and by our natural capacities to discover natural laws. He hoped to find a deductive system of
ethics in analogy to our deductive system of truths of geometry.

law and the multiplication of authoritative legal interpreters.

John Locke (1632-1704)
The British philosopher John Locke was especially known for his liberal, anti-authoritarian theory
of the state, his empirical theory of knowledge, his advocacy of religious toleration, and his
theory of personal identity.

Regarding personal identity, Locke provided an original argument that our being the same
person from one time to another consists neither in our having the same soul nor the same body,
but rather the same consciousness.

In his own time, he was famous for arguing that the divine right of kings is supported neither by
scripture nor by the use of reason. In developing his theory of our duty to obey the state, he
attacked the idea that might makes right: Starting from an initial state of nature with no
government, police or private property, we humans could discover by careful reasoning that
there arenatural laws which suggest that we have natural rights to our own persons and to our
own labor. Eventually we could discover that we should create a social contract with others, and

1. Life
John Locke was born at Wrington, a village in Somerset, on August 29, 1632. He was the son of
a country solicitor and small landowner who, when the civil war broke out, served as a captain of
horse in the parliamentary army. I no sooner perceived myself in the world than I found myself in
a storm, he wrote long afterwards, during the lull in the storm which followed the kings return.

But political unrest does not seem to have seriously disturbed the course of his education. He
entered Westminster school in 1646, and passed to Christ Church, Oxford, as a junior student, in
1652; and he had a home there (though absent from it for long periods) for more than thirty
years till deprived of his studentship by royal mandate in 1684. The official studies of the
university were uncongenial to him; he would have preferred to have learned philosophy from
Descartes instead of from Aristotle; but evidently he satisfied the authorities, for he was elected
to a senior studentship in 1659, and, in the three or four years following, he took part in the
tutorial work of the college. At one time he seems to have thought of the clerical profession as a
possible career; but he declined an offer of preferment in 1666, and in the same year obtained a
dispensation which enabled him to hold his studentship without taking orders. About the same
time we hear of his interest in experimental science, and he was elected a fellow of the Royal
Society in 1668. Little is known of his early medical studies. He cannot have followed the regular
course, for he was unable to obtain the degree of doctor of medicine. It was not till 1674 that he
graduated as bachelor of medicine. In the following January his position in Christ Church was
regularized by his appointment to one of the two medical studentships of the college.

months at Montpellier. The journal which he kept at this period is full of minute descriptions of
places and customs and institutions. It contains also a record of many of the reflections that
afterwards took shape in the Essay concerning Human Understanding. he returned to England in
1679, when his patron had again a short spell of office. He does not seem to have been
concerned in Shaftesburys later schemes; but suspicion naturally fell upon him, and he found it
prudent to take refuge in Holland. This he did in August 1683, less than a year after the flight and
death of Shaftesbury. Even in Holland for some time he was not safe from danger of arrest at the
instance of the English government; he moved from town to town, lived under an assumed
name, and visited his friends by stealth. His residence in Holland brought political occupations
with it, among the men who were preparing the English revolution. it had at least equal value in
the leisure which it gave him for literary work and in the friendships which it offered. In particular,
he formed a close intimacy with Philip van Limbroch, the leader of the Remonstrant clergy, and
the scholar and liberal theologian to whom Epistola de Tolerantia was dedicated. This letter was
completed in 1685, though not published at the time; and, before he left for England, in February
1689, the Essay concerning Human Understanding seems to have attained its final form, and an
abstract of it was published in LeclercsBibliotheque universelle in 1688.

His knowledge of medicine and occasional practice of the art led, in 1666, to an acquaintance
with Lord Ashley (afterwards, from 1672, Earl of Shaftesbury). The acquaintance, begun
accidentally, had an immediate effect on Lockes career. Without serving his connection with
Oxford, he became a member of Shaftesburys household, and seems soon to have been looked
upon as indispensable in all matters domestic and political. He saved the statesmans life by a
skillful operation, arranged a suitable marriage for his heir, attended the lady in her confinement,
and directed the nursing and education of her son afterwards famous as the author
of Characteristics. He assisted Shaftesbury also in public business, commercial and political,
and followed him into the government service. When Shaftesbury was made lord chancellor in
1672, Locke became his secretary for presentations to benefices, and, in the following year, was
made secretary to the board of trade. In 1675 his official life came to an end for the time with the
fall of his chief.

The new government recognized his services to the cause of freedom by the offer of the post of
ambassador either at Berlin or at Vienna. But Locke was no place hunter; he was solicitous also
on account of his health; his earlier experience of Germany led him to fear the cold air and
warm drinking; and the high office was declined. But he served less important offices at home.
He was made commissioner of appeals in May 1689, and, from 1696 to 1700, he was a
commissioner of trade and plantations at a salary of L1000 a year. Although official duties called
him to town for protracted periods, he was able to fix his residence in the country. In 1691 he
was persuaded to make his permanent home at Oates in Essex, in the house of Francis and
Lady Masham. Lady Masham was a daughter of Cudworth, the Cambridge Platonist; Lock had
manifested a growing sympathy with his type of liberal theology; intellectual affinity increased his
friendship with the family at Oates; and he continued to live with them till his death on October
28, 1704.

Lockes health, always delicate, suffered from the London climate. When released from the cares
of office, he left England in search of health. Ten years earlier he had his first experience of
foreign travel and of public employment, as secretary to Sir Walter Vane, ambassador to the
Elector of Brandenburg during the first Dutch war. On his return to England, early in 1666, he
declined an offer of further service in Spain, and settled again in Oxford, but was soon induced
by Shaftesbury to spend a great part of his time in London. On his release from office in 1675 he
sought milder air in the south of France, made leisurely journeys, and settled down for many

2. Writings
With the exception of the abstract of the Essay and other less important contributions to
theBibliotheque universelle, Locke had not published anything before his return to England in
1689; and by this time he was in his fifty-seventh year. But many years of reflection and
preparation made him ready at that time to publish books in rapid succession. In March 1689

his Epistola de Tolerantia was published in Holland; an English translation of the same, by
William Popple, appeared later in the same year, and in a corrected edition in 1690. The
controversy which followed this work led, on Lockes part, to the publication of a Second
Letter (1690), and then a Third Letter (1692). In February 1690 the book entitledTwo Treatises of
Government was published, and in March of the same year appeared the long expectedEssay
concerning Human Understanding, on which he had been at work intermittently since 1671. it
met with immediate success, and led to a voluminous literature of attack and reply; young
fellows of colleges tried to introduce it at the universities, and heads of houses sat in conclave to
devise means for its suppression. To one of his critics Locke replied at length. This was Edward
Stillingfleet, bishop of Worcester, who, in his Vindication of the Doctrine of the Trinity (1696), had
attacked the new philosophy. It was the theological consequences which were drawn from the
doctrines of theEssay, not so much by Locke himself as by Toland, in his Christianity not
Mysterious, that the bishop had chiefly in view; in philosophy for its own sake he does not seem
to have been interested. But his criticism drew attention to one of the least satisfactory (if also
one of the most suggestive) doctrines of the Essay its explanation of the idea of substance;
and discredit was thrown on the new way of ideas in general. In January 1697 Locke replied
in A Letter to the Bishop of Worcester. Stillingfleet answered this in May; and Locke was ready
with a second letter in August. Stillingfleet replied in 1698, and Lockes lengthy third letter
appeared in 1699. The bishops death, later in the same year, put an end to the controversy. The
second edition of the Essay was published in 1694, the third in 1695, and the fourth in 1700. The
second and fourth editions contained important additions. An abridgement of it appeared in
1696, by John Wynne, fellow of Jesus College, Oxford; it was translated into Latin and into
French soon after the appearance of the fourth edition. The later editions contain many
modifications due to the authors correspondence with William Molyneux, of Trinity College,
Dublin, a devoted disciple, for whom Locke had a worm friendship. Other correspondents and
visitors to Oates during these years were Isaac Newton and Anthony Collins, a young squire of
the neighborhood, who afterwards made his mark in the intellectual controversies of the time.

tie was given to theology. Among the writings of his which were published after his death are
commentaries on the Pauline epistles, and a Discourse on Miracles, as well as a fragment of
aFourth Letter for Toleration. The posthumously published writings include further An
Examination of Father Malebranches Opinion of Seeing all things in God, Remarks on Some of
Mr Norriss Books, and most important of all the small treatise on The Conduct of the
Understandingwhich had been originally designed as a chapter of the Essay.
a. Plan of the Essay
Lockes greatest philosophical contribution is his Essay, and we have his own account of the
origin of that work. In the winter of 1670, five or six friends were conversing in his room, probably
in London. The topic was the principles of morality and revealed religion, but difficulties arose
and no progress was made. Then, he goes on to say, it came into my thoughts that we took a
wrong course, and that before we set ourselves upon inquiries of that nature, it was necessary to
examine our own abilities, and see what objects our understandings were, or were not, fitted to
deal with. At the request of his friends, Locke agreed to set down his thoughts on this question
at their next meeting, and he expected that a single sheet of paper would suffice for the purpose.
Little did he realize the magnitude of the issue which he raised, and that it would occupy his
leisure for nearly twenty years.
Lockes interest centers on traditional philosophical topics: the nature of the self, the world, God,
and the grounds of our knowledge of them. We reach these questions only in the fourth and last
book of theEssay. The first three books are preliminary, though they have, and Locke saw that
they had, an importance of their own. His introductory sentence makes this plain:
Since it is the understanding that sets man above the rest of sensible beings, and gives him all
the advantage and dominion which he has over them; it is certainly a subject, even for its
nobleness, worth our labour to inquire into. The understanding, like the eye, while it makes us
see and perceive all other things, takes no notice of itself; and it requires art and pains to set it at
a distance and make it its own object. But whatever be the difficulties that lie in the way of this
inquiry; whatever it be that keeps us so much in the dark to ourselves; sure I am that all the light
we can let in upon our minds, all the acquaintance we can make with our own understandings,
will not only be very pleasant, but bring us great advantage, in directing our thoughts in the
search of other things.

Other interests also occupied Locke during the years following the publication of his great work.
The financial difficulties of the new government led in 1691 to his publication of Some
Considerations of the Consequences of Lowering of Interest, and Raising the Value of Money,
and of Further Considerationson the latter question, four years later. In 1693 he published Some
Thoughts concerning Education, a work founded on letters written to a friend, and in 1695
appeared The Reasonableness of Christianity, and later A Vindication of the same against
certain objections; and this was followed by a second vindication two years afterwards. Lockes
religious interest had always been strongly marked, and, in he later years of his life, much of his

Locke will not meddle with the physical consideration of the mind; he has no theory about its
essence or its relation to the body; at the same time, he has no doubt that, if due pains be taken,
the understanding can be studied like anything else: we can observe its object and the ways in
which it operates upon them. The Essay is divided into four books; the first is a polemic against
the doctrine of innate principles and ideas. The second deals with ideas, the third with words,
and the fourth with knowledge.

Locke wishes to avoid any presupposition about matter, or mind, or their relation. It is not difficult
to see that the notions which he has expelled often re-enter. But the peculiar value of his
approach consists in his attempt to keep clear of them. He begins neither with ind nor matter, but
with ideas. Their existence needs no proof: everyone is conscious of them in himself, and mens
words and actions will satisfy him that they are in others. His first inquiry is how they come into
the mind; has next business is to show that they constitute the whole material of our knowledge.
In his answer to the former question we discover the influence of traditional philosophy, or rather
of ordinary common sense views of existence, upon his views. All our ideas, he says, come from
experience. The mind has no innate ideas, but it has innate faculties: it perceives, remembers,
and combines the ideas that come to it from without; it also desires, deliberates, and wills; and
these mental activities are themselves the source of a new class of ideas. Experience is
therefore twofold. Our observation may be employed either about external sensible objects, or
about the internal operations of our minds. The former is the source of most of the ideas which
we have, and, as it depends wholly upon our senses, is called sensation. The latter is a
source of ideas which every man has wholly in himself, and it might be called internal sense;
to it he gives the name reflection.

i. Ideas in General
All the objects of the understanding are described as ideas, and ideas are spoken of as being in
the mind (Intro. 2; Bk. 2:1:5; Bk. 2:8:8). Lockes first problem, therefore, is to trace the origin and
history of ideas, and the ways in which the understanding operates upon them, in order that he
may be able to see what knowledge is and how far it reaches. This wide use of the term idea is
inherited from Descartes. The contemporary term which corresponds with it most nearly is
presentation. But presentation is, strictly, only one variety of Lockes idea, which includes also
representation and image, perception, and concept or notion. His usage of the term thus differs
so widely from the old Platonic meaning that the danger of confusion between them is not great.
It suited the authors purpose also from being a familiar word in ordinary discourse as well as in
the language of philosophers. Herein, however, lays danger from which he did not escape. In
common usage idea carries with it a suggestion of contrast with reality; this is not supposed in
Lockes use.

ii. Simple and Complex Ideas

There are no innate ideas stamped upon the mind from birth; and yet impressions of sense are
not the only source of knowledge: The mind furnishes the understanding with ideas (Bk. 2:1:5).
No distinction is implied here between mind and understanding, so that the sentence might
run, the mind furnishes itself with ideas. As to what these ideas are, we are not left in doubt:
they are ideas of its own operations. When the mind acts, it has an idea of its action, that is, it
is self-conscious, and, as such, is assumed to be an original source of our knowledge. Hume
and Condilac both refused to admit reflection as an original source of ideas, and both,
accordingly, found that they had to face the problem of tracing the growth of self-consciousness
out of a succession of sensations. According to Locke, reflection is an original, rather than an
independent, source of ideas. Without sensation mind would have nothing to operate upon, and
therefore could have no ideas of its operations. It is when he first has any sensation that a
man begins to have any ideas (Bk. 2:1:23). The operations of the mind are not themselves
produced by sensation, but sensation is required to give the mind material for working on.

In the first book of the Essay, on the subject of innate ideas, Locke points to the variety of human
experience, and to the difficulty of forming general and abstract ideas, and he ridicules the view
that any such ideas can be antecedent to experience. All the parts of our knowledge, he insists,
have the same rank and the same history regarding their origin in experience. It is in its most
extreme form that the doctrine of innate ideas is attacked; but he cannot seen any middle ground
between that extreme doctrine and his own view that all ideas have their origin in experience.
Indeed, it is difficult to determine against whom the argument is directed. But when we note
Lockes polemical interest in the question, and remember the significance for him of the empirical
origin of all the elements of human knowledge, we can be content to see in it an earnest protest
against the principle of authority, a vindication of our right to examine critically all the so-called
principles of human knowledge.

The ideas which sensation gives enter by the senses simple and unmixed (Bk. 2:2:1); they
stand in need of the activity of mind to bind them into the complex unities required for

knowledge. The complex ideas of substance, modes, and relations are all the product of the
combining and abstracting activity of mind operating upon simple ideas, which have been given,
without any connection, by sensation or reflection. Lockes account of knowledge thus has two
sides. On the one side, all the material of knowledge is traced to the simple idea. On the other
side, the processes which transform this crude material into knowledge are activities of mind
which themselves cannot be reduced to ideas. Lockes metaphors of the tabula rasa, white
paper (Bk. 2:2:1), and dark room misled his critics and suggested to some of his followers a
theory very different from his own. The metaphors only illustrate what he had in hand at the
moment. Without experience, no characters are written on the tablets of the mind; except
through the windows of sensation and reflection, no light enters the understanding. No ideas
are innate; and there is no source of new simple ideas other than those two. But knowledge
involves relations, and relations are the work of the mind; it requires complex ideas, and complex
ideas are mental formations. Simple ideas do not, of themselves, enter into relation and form
complex ideas. Locke does not, like Hobbes before him and Hume and Condillac after him, look
to some unexplained natural attraction of idea for idea as bringing about these formations.
Indeed, his treatment of the association of ideas is an afterthought, and did not appear in the
earlier editions of the Essay.

soft, hard, and so forth (Bk. 2:1:3). But, towards the end of the second book (Bk. 2:21:75), a very
different list is given: extension, solidity, and mobility (from sensation); perceptivity and motivity
(from reflection); and existence, duration, and number (from both sensation and reflection).
These are said to be our original ideas, and the rest to be derived form or to depend on
them. It is difficult to compare the two lists, instance by instance; but one example may be taken.
According to the first list, hard is a simple idea; according to the second list,solidity is the original
(and therefore simple) idea, and hard will be derived from it and depend on it. It is clear that, in
making the former list, Lock was trying to get back to the primary data of our individual
experience; whereas, in the second list, he is rather thinking of the objective reality on which our
experience depends and which, he assumes, it reveals. But he does not observe the difference.
He seems to forget his view that the original of all knowledge is to be found in the particular, in
something simple and unmixed. Thus he says without hesitation, If any one asks me, what this
solidity is, I send him to the senses to inform him. Let him put a flint of a football between his
hands, and then endeavour to join them, and he will know (Bk. 2:4:4). But he will not know
without going a long way beyond the simple idea. The simple ideas in the case are certain
muscular and tactual sensations; and he interprets these by other means (including knowledge
of external objects and his own organism) when he says that the flint or the football is solid.

Starting from the simple ideas which we get from sensation, or from observing mental operations
as they take place, Locke has two things to explain: the universal element, that is, the general
conceptions with which knowledge is concerned or which it implies; and the reference to reality
which it claims. With the former problem Locke deals at great length; and the general method of
his exposition is clear enough. Complex ideas arise from simple ideas by the processes of
combination and abstraction carried out by the mind. It would be unfair to expect completeness
from his enterprise: but it cannot be denied that his intricate and subtle discussions left many
problems unsolved. Indeed, this is one of his great merits. He raised questions in such a way as
to provoke further enquiry. Principles such as the causal relation, apart from which knowledge of
nature would be impossible, are quietly taken for granted, often without any enquiry into the
grounds for assuming them. Further, the difficulty of accounting for universals is unduly simplified
by describing certain products as simple ideas, although thought has obviously been at work
upon them.

His doctrine of modes is also affected by this same inattention of the fact that a simple idea must
be really simple. Thus he holds that space and extension is a simple idea given both by sight
and by touch (Bk. 2:4). One would expect, therefore, that the original and simple idea of space
would be the particular patch seen at any moment or the particular feel of the exploring limb.
But we are told that each idea of any different distance, or space, is a simple mode or the idea
of space (Bk. 2:8:4). Here again the simple idea is generalized. He professes to begin with the
mere particulars of external and internal sense, and to show how knowledge which is
necessarily general is evolved from them. But, in doing so, he assumes a general or universal
element as already given in the simple idea.
Having gone so far, he might almost have been expected to take a further step and treat the
perceptions of particular things as modes of the simple idea substance. But this he does not do.
Substance is an idea regarding which he was in earnest with his own fundamental theory
(however, he was perplexed about the origin of the idea of substance in general as well as of
the ideas of particular sorts of substances; Bk. 2:23:2-3). He admits that substance is a complex
idea; that is to say, it is formed by the minds action out of simple ideas. Now, this idea of
substance marks the difference between having sensations and perceiving things. Its
importance, therefore, is clear; but there is no clearness in explaining it. We are told that there is

In this connection an important inconsistency becomes apparent in his account of the primary
data of experience. It is, indeed, impossible even to name the mere particular the this, here,
and now of sense without giving it a flavor of generality. But, at the outset, Locke tries to get
as near it as possible. Simple ideas (of sensation) are exemplified by yellow, white, heat, cold,

a supposed or confused idea of substance to which are joined, for example, the simple idea of
a dull whitish colour, with certain degrees of weight, hardness, ductility and fusibility, and, as a
result, we have the idea of lead.

doubtful claim to rank as simple ideas. Lockes prevailing tendency is to identify reality with the
simple idea, but he sometimes comes close to the opposite view that the reference to reality is
the work of thought.

A difficulty might have been avoided if substance could have been interpreted as simply the
combination by the understanding of white, hard, etc., or some similar cluster of ideas of
sensation. But it was not Lockes way thus to ignore facts. He sees that something more is
needed than these ideas of sensation. They are only joined to the supposed or confused idea of
substance, which is there and always the first and chief (Bk. 2:12:6). He holds to it that the
idea is a complex idea and so mad by the mind; but he is entirely at a loss to account for the
materials out of which it is made. We cannot imagine how simple ideas can subsist by
themselves, and so we accustom ourselves to suppose some substratum wherein they do
subsist, and this we call substance. In one place, he even vacillates between the assertions that
we have no clear idea of substance and that we have no idea of it at all (Bk. 1:3:19). It is a
supposition of he knows not what. This uncertainty, as will appear presently, throws its shadow
over our whole knowledge of nature.

iv. Knowledge of Mathematics, Ethics, the Self, and God

In the fourth book of his Essay Locke applies the results of the earlier books to determine the
nature and extent of knowledge. As ideas are the sole immediate objects of the mind, knowledge
can be nothing else than the perception of the connexion of and agreement, or disagreement
and repugnancy, or any of our ideas. This agreement or disagreement is said to be of four sorts:
identity or diversity; relation; co-existence or necessary connection; real existence. Each of these
kinds of knowledge raises its own questions; but, broadly speaking, one distinction may be taken
as fundamental. In the same paragraph in which he restricts knowledge to the agreement or
disagreement of our ideas, he admits one kind of knowledge which goes beyond the ideas
themselves to the significance which they have for real existence. When the reference does not
go beyond the ideas in the mind, the problems that arise are of one order; when there is a
further reference to real things, another problem arises.

iii. Primary and Secondary Qualities

Locke also distinguishes between two degrees of knowledge: intuition and demonstration. In the
former case, the agreement or disagreement is immediately perceived; in the latter, it is
perceived through the mediation of a third idea, but each step in the demonstration is itself an
intuition, the agreement or disagreement between the two ideas compared being immediately
perceived. He believes that mathematics and ethics are demonstrable. When ideas are together
in the mind, we can discover their relation to one another; so long as they are not taken to
represent archetypes outside the mind, there is no obstacle to certainty of knowledge. All
relation terminates in, and is ultimately founded on, those simple ideas we have got from
sensation or reflection (Bk. 2:28:18). but general and certain truths, are only founded in the
habitudes and relations of abstract ideas (Bk. 4:12:7). In this way Locke vindicates the certainty
of mathematics: although instructive, the science is merely idea, and its propositions do not hold
of things outside the mind. He thinks also that morality is capable of demonstration as well as
mathematics. But, in spite of the request of his friend Molyneux, he never set out his ethic
doctrine in detail. In Book II he reduced moral good and evil to pleasure and pain which as
reward and punishment come to us from some lawgiver; thus they point to a source outside
the mind. But his ground for maintaining the demonstrative character of morality is that moral
ideas are mixed modes, and therefore mental products, so that their precise real essence

The new way of ideas is thus hard put to it in accounting for the universal element in
knowledge; it has even greater difficulties to face in defending the reality of knowledge. And, in
the latter case, the author does not see the difficulties so clearly. His view is that the simple idea
is the test and standard of reality. Whatever the mind contributes to our ideas removes them
further from the reality of things; in becoming general, knowledge loses touch with things. But not
all simple ideas carry with them the same significance for reality. Colours, smells, tastes, sounds,
and the like are simple ideas, yet nothing resembles them in the bodies themselves; but, owing
to a certain bulk, figure, and motion of their insensible parts, bodies have a power to produce
those sensations in us. These, therefore, as called secondary qualities of bodies. On the other
hand, solidity, extension, figure, motion or rest, and number are also held by Locke to be simple
ideas; and these are resemblances of qualities in body; their patterns do really exist in the
bodies themselves; accordingly, they are primary qualities of bodies. In this way, by implication
if not expressly, Locke severs, instead of establishing, the connection between simple ideas and
reality. The only ideas which can make good their claim to be regarded as simple ideas have
nothing resembling them in things. Other ideas, no doubt, are said to resemble bodily qualities
(an assertion for which no proof is given and none is possible); but these ideas have only a

may be perfectly known. He ventures upon two examples only of this demonstrative morality;
and neither of them is more than verbal or gives any information about good or evil. Yet the
doctrine is significant as showing the influence upon Locke of another type of demonstrative
thought.

perceiving beings, such as we find ourselves to be (Bk. 4:10). Locke here assumes, without
question, the validity of the causal principle even beyond the range of possible experience.
v. Sensitive Knowledge of the External World

Thus, knowledge of mathematics and ethics may be firmly establish, particularly as these
subjects involve relations between ideas, and thus make no claims about matters of real
existence. When it comes to knowledge of real existence, though, ultimately there are only two
certainties: the existence of ourselves (by intuition) and that of God (by demonstration).

Below the rank of knowledge proper (intuitive and demonstrative), Locke recognizes a third
degree of knowledge, not strictly entitled to the name. This is our sensitive apprehension of
external things, or of real objects other than ourselves and God:
These two, namely, intuition and demonstration, are the degrees of our knowledge; whatever
comes short of one of these, with what assurance soever embraced, is but faith or opinion, but
not knowledge, at least in all general truths. There is, indeed, another perception of the mind,
employed about the particular existence of finite beings without us, which, going beyond bare
probability, and yet not reaching perfectly to either of the foregoing degrees of certainty, passes
under the name of knowledge. There can be nothing more certain than that the idea we receive
from an external object is in our minds: this is intuitive knowledge. But whether there be anything
more than barely that idea in our minds; whether we can thence certainly infer the existence of
anything without us, which corresponds to that idea, is that whereof some men think there may
be a question made; because men may have such ideas in their minds, when no such thing
exists, no such object affects their senses. (Bk. 4:14)

Concerning the self, Locke agrees with Descartes that the existence of the self is implied in
every state of consciousness. Every element of our experience, every idea of which we are
conscious, is a certificate of our own existence, as the subject of that experience:
As for our own existence, we perceive it so plainly and so certainly, that it neither needs nor is
capable of any proof. For nothing can be more evident to us than our own existence. I think, I
reason, I feel pleasure and pain: can any of these be more evident to me than my own
existence? If I doubt of all other things, that very doubt makes me perceive my own existence,
and will not suffer me to doubt of that. For if I know I feel pain, it is evident I have as certain
perception of my own existence, as of the pain I feel: or if I know I doubt, I have ascertain
perception of the existence of the thing doubting, as of that thought which I call doubt.

Does not the very definition of knowledge, as the perception of the agreement or disagreement
of ideas with one another, preclude the perception of the agreement of ideas with non-ideal
reality?

However, Locke fails to point out how the self can be an idea and thus belong to the material of
knowledge. An idea of the self cannot come from sensation; and the simple ideas of reflection
are all of mental operations, and not of the subject or agent of these operations. On the other
hand, when he had occasion to discuss personal identity, he followed his new way of idea, and
made it depend on memory.

Lockes argument for the objective validity of sensitive knowledge consists of several
considerations. First, he urges, our ideas of sensation differ from those of memory and
imagination, that is from mereideas, in being produced in us without any action of our own, and
therefore must necessarily be the product of things operating on the mind, in a natural way, and
producing therein those perceptions which by the Wisdom and Will of our Maker they are
ordained and adapted to. They,

Concerning Gods existence, his proof is a cosmological-type argument. From the certainty of
our own existence that of the existence of God immediately follows. A person knows intuitively
that he is something that actually exists. Next a person knows with intuitive certainty, that
bare nothing can no more produce any real being, than it can be equal to two right angles. it is,
therefore, an evident demonstration, that from eternity there has been something. And since all
the powers of all beings must be traced to this eternal Being, it follows that it is the most
powerful, as well as the most knowing, that is, God. Eternal ind alone can produce thinking,

carry with them all he conformity which is intended; or which our state requires: for they
represent to us things under those appearances which they are fitted to produce in us: whereby
we are enabled to distinguish the sorts of particular substances, to discern the states they are in,
and so to take them for our necessities, and apply them to our uses. (Bk. 4:4:4)

Secondly, pleasure or pain often accompanies the sensation, and is absent from the idea as it
recurs in memory or imagination; and this certainty is as great as our happiness or misery,
beyond which we have no concernment to know or to be (Bk. 4:2:14). Thirdly, our several
senses assist one anothers testimony, and thus enable us to predict our sensational experience.
On these grounds Locke concludes that,

to the co-existence of the qualities of substances, but we cannot strictly know. Possibly
inquisitive and observing men may, by strength of judgment, penetrate further, and, on
probabilities taken from wary observation, and hints well laid together, often guess right at what
experience has not yet discovered to them. But this is but guessing still; it amounts only to
opinion, and had not that certainty which is requisite to knowledge (Bk. 4:6:13)

the certainty of things existing in rerum natura when we have the testimony of our senses for it is
not only as great as our frame can attain to, but as our condition needs. For, our faculties being
suited no to the full extent of being, nor to a perfect, clear, comprehensive knowledge of things
free from all doubt and scruple; but to the preservation of us, in whom they are; and
accommodated to the use of life: they serve to our purpose well enough, if they will but give us
certain notice of those things, which are convenient or inconvenient to us. (Bk. 4:2:14)

Locke finds himself compelled, therefore, to conclude that the so-called science of which
Bacon had talked so proudly, and of whose achievements he had himself spoken so respectfully
in the opening pages of the Essay, is not, in the strict sense, science at all; that, in his own
words, there can be no science of bodies. It is vain to search for the forms of the various
material substances, or to seek to verify the corpuscularian hypothesis as to the connection of
the primary and the secondary qualities of things. I am apt to doubt that, how far soever human
industry may advance useful and experimental philosophy in physical things, scientifical will still
be out of our reach. Certainty and demonstration are things we must not, in these matters,
pretend to (Bk. 4:3:26).

The certainty which Locke attributes to sensitive knowledge is thus seen to be practical, rather
than theoretical; and it is impossible to distinguish this degree of knowledge from the belief or
opinion which results from a balance of probabilities rather than from certain perception.

If we cannot attain to a science of bodies, still less can we expect scientifical understanding of
spirits. Spiritual substance is, as we have seen, as unknown as material substance; and Locke
finds additional reasons for limiting our knowledge in this sphere.

But even granting that our sensitive apprehensions of external reality possesses the certainty
which is the characteristic of knowledge, as distinguished from mere opinion, we must observe
within how very narrow limits it is confined:

If we are at a loss in respect of the powers and operations of bodies, I think it is easy to conclude
we are much more in the dark in reference to spirits; whereof we naturally have no ideas but
what we draw from that of our own, by reflecting on the operations of our own souls within us, as
far as they come within our observation. But how inconsiderable rank the spirits that inhabit our
bodies hold amongst those various and possibly innumerable kinds of nobler beings; and how
far short they come of the endowments and perfections of cherubim and seraphim, and infinite
sorts of spirits above us, is what by a transient hint in another place I have offered to my readers
consideration.

When our senses do actually convey into our understandings any idea, we cannot but be
satisfied that there doth something at that time really exist without us, which doth affect our
senses, and by them give notice of itself to our apprehensive faculties, and actually produce that
idea which we then perceive: and we cannot so far distrust their testimony, as to doubt that
suchcollections of simple ideas as we have observed by our senses to be united together, do
really exist together. But this knowledge extends as far as the present testimony of our senses,
employed about particular objects that do then effect them, and no further. (Bk. 4:11:9)
We cannot demonstrate the necessity of the co-existence of those ideas which constitute the
modes or qualities of substances; we cannot perceive their necessary connexion or
repugnancy. The connection between the secondary and the primary qualities remains
inexplicable. And therefore there are very few general propositions to be made concerning
substances, which carry with them undoubted certainty (Bk. 4:6:76). Our knowledge in all these
inquires reaches very little further than our experience (Bk. 4:3:13-14). Beyond the strict warrant
of experience, or the testimony of our senses, we may venture upon opinion or judgment as

vi. Judgment
The closing chapters of Book IV of the Essay are devoted to a consideration of that kind of
apprehension of reality which Locke calls judgment, as distinguished from knowledge. The
faculty which God has given man to supply the want of clear and certain knowledge, in cases
where that cannot be hand, isjudgment: whereby the mind takes its ideas to agree or disagree;

10

or, which is the same, any proposition to be true or false, without perceiving a demonstrative
evidence in the proofs (Bk 4:19:1-2). So-called scientific truths being generally of this kind, one
would have expected Locke to give here some account of the procedure of inductive science,
some directions for the careful and methodical study of the facts, and cautions against the
temptations to hasty and unwarranted generalization, such as we find in BaconsNovum
Organum. But instead of this, he contents himself with general observations on the degrees of
assent, on reason (and syllogism), on faith and reason, on enthusiasm, and on wrong assent,
or error. The treatment of, that is to say, is limited to general considerations regarding the
function of faith and the relations of faith and reason as guides of the human mind.

the academy or lyceum. The greatest part of mankind have not leisure for learning and logic, and
superfine distinctions of the schools.
What people need is not intellectual insight or theological dogma, but practical guidance. Locke
seems less confident than he was in the Essay of the possibility of a rational science of morals.
It should seem, by the little that has hitherto been done in it, that it is too hard a task for
unassisted reason to establish morality, in all its parts, upon its true foundation, with a clear and
convincing light. It is plain, in fact, that human reason unassisted failed men in its great and
proper business of morality.

What is especially significant here is Lockes refusal to oppose faith and reason in the fashion of
Bacon and Hobbes, and his refusal to accept any authority which cannot vindicate itself through
reason. Even in his insistence upon the necessity of supplementing our knowledge by faith,
Locke emphasized the use of reason:

b. Two Treatises of Government

In Two Treatises of Government he has two purposes in view: to refute the doctrine of the divine
and absolute right of the Monarch, as it had been put forward by Robert Filmers Patriarcha, and
to establish a theory which would reconcile the liberty of the citizen with political order. The
criticism of Filmer in the first Treatise is complete. His theory of the absolute sovereignty of
Adam, and so of kings as Adams heirs, has lost all interest; and Lockes argument has been
only too effective: his exhaustive reply to so absurd a thesis becomes itself wearisome. Although
there is little direct reference to Hobbes, Locke seems to have had Hobbes in mind when he
argued that the doctrine of absolute monarchy leaves sovereign and subjects in the state of
nature towards one another. The constructive doctrines which are elaborated in the second
treatise became the basis of social and political philosophy for generations. Labor is the origin
and justification of property; contract or consent is the ground of government and fixes its limits.
Behind both doctrines lies the idea of the independence of the individual person. The state of
nature knows no government; but in it, as in political society, men are subject to the moral law,
which is the law of God. Men are born free and equal in rights. Whatever a man mixes his
labour with is his to use. Or, at least, this was so in the primitive condition of human life in which
there was enough for all and the whole earth was America. Locke sees that, when men have
multiplied and land has become scarce, rules are needed beyond those which the moral law or
law of nature supplies. But the origin of government is traced not to this economic necessity, but
to another cause. The moral law is always valid, but it is not always kept. In the state of nature all
men equally have the right to punish transgressors: civil society originates when, for the better
administration of the law, men agree to delegate this function to certain officers. Thus
government is instituted by a social contract; its powers are limited, and they involve reciprocal
obligations; moreover, they can be modified or rescinded by the authority which conferred them.

Faith is nothing but a firm assent of the mind: which, if it be regulated, as is our duty, cannot be
afforded to anything but upon good reason; and so cannot be opposite to it. He that believes
without having any reason for believing, may be in love with his own fancies; but neither seeks
truth as he ought, nor pays the obedience due to his maker. (Bk. 4:27:24)
Locke is at one with the rationalist theologians of his century in their antagonism to an
enthusiasm which would substitute for the insight of reason and of rational faith, the so called
revelation of private experience. Against such a view, he insists upon the necessity of judging
revelation by reason: God when he makes the prophet does not unmake the man. He leaves all
his faculties in the natural state, to enable him to judge of his inspirations, whether they be
of divine original or no. Reason must be our last judge and guide in everything (Bk. 4:19:14).
Yet reason clearly limits the field of its own insight; it is only reasonable to believe where we
cannot know and yet must act. However, as morality and religion cannot be compassed by
reason, such knowledge must be supplemented by faith if we are to fulfill our divine destiny. This
is the point of view, not only of the closing chapters of the Essay, but of his Resonableness of
Christianity (1695). The aim of this treatise is to recall men from the contentions of the
theological schools to the simplicity of the gospel as the rule of human life.:
The writers and wranglers in religion fill it with niceties, and dress it up with notions, which they
make necessary and fundamental parts of it; as if there were no way into the church, but through

11

Lockes theory is thus no more historical than Hobbess. It is a rendering of the facts of
constitutional government in terms of thought, and it served its purpose as a justification of the
Revolution settlement in accordance with the ideas of the time.

Charles-Louis de Secondat, baron de La Brde et de Montesquieu, (born January 18,

1689, Chteau La Brde, near Bordeaux, Francedied February 10, 1755, Paris), French
political philosopher whose major work, The Spirit of Laws, was a major contribution to political
theory.

c. Economic Writings
Lockes writings on economic subjects do not rank in importance with his treatises on
government. They deal with particular questions raised by the necessities of the political
situation. No attempt had yet been made to isolate the fact of wealth and make it the subject of a
special science. The direction of industry and commerce was held to be part of the statesmans
duty; but, in the seventeenth century, it began to be carried out with less thoroughness than
before; and at the same time new problems were opened up by the growth of the national life.
The American colonies, the enterprise of the East India Company, the planting of Ireland, the
commercial rivalry with Holland and withy France, as well as questions regarding the rate of
interest and the currency, occupied the attention of a crowd of writers in the second half of the
century. Lockes own contributions were occasioned be the financial problems which faced the
new government after the revolution. His reflections on the rate of interest show the growing
disfavor with which appeals for state interference were beginning to be met. He points out the
obstacles to trade that are caused when the rate of interest is fixed by law, and he argues in
favor of freedom for what he calls, in words which suggest Adam Smith, the natural interest of
money. Money turns the wheels of trade; therefore its course should not be stopped. At the
same time, he holds no general brief against the interference of the state in matters of
commerce; nor is the language of the mercantilist foreign to him. Riches consist in plenty of gold
and silver, for these command all the conveniences of life. Now, in a country not furnished with
mines, there are but two ways of growing rich, either conquest or commerce. For us commerce
is the only way; and Locke condemns the amazing politics of some late reigns which had let in
other competitors with us for the sea. In the concluding portion of Some Considerations of the
Consequences of the Lowering of Interest and Raising the Value of Money (1691), Locke laid
stress on the importance of a uniform and stable measure of values; four years later, in
hisFurther Considerations he defended his view against the proposals involving a depreciation of
the standard, which William Lowndes, secretary of the treasury, had set forth in An Essay for the
amendment of the silver coins (1695).

Early life and career.

His father, Jacques de Secondat, belonged to an old military family of modest wealth that had
been ennobled in the 16th century for services to the crown, while his mother, Marie-Franoise
de Pesnel, was a pious lady of partial English extraction. She brought to her husband a great
increase in wealth in the valuable wine-producing property of La Brde. When she died in 1696,
the barony of La Brde passed to Charles-Louis, who was her eldest child, then aged seven.
Educated first at home and then in the village, he was sent away to school in 1700. The school
was the Collge de Juilly, close to Paris and in the diocese of Meaux. It was much patronized by
the prominent families of Bordeaux, and the priests of the Oratory, to whom it belonged, provided
a sound education on enlightened and modern lines.
Charles-Louis left Juilly in 1705, continued his studies at the faculty of law at the University of
Bordeaux, was graduated, and became an advocate in 1708; soon after he appears to have
moved to Paris in order to obtain practical experience in law. He was called back to Bordeaux by
the death of his father in 1713. Two years later he married Jeanne de Lartigue, a wealthy
Protestant, who brought him a respectable dowry of 100,000 livres and in due course presented
him with two daughters and a son, Jean-Baptiste. Charles-Louis admired and exploited his wifes
business skill and readily left her in charge of the property on his visits to Paris. But he does not
appear to have been either faithful or greatly devoted to her. In 1716 his uncle, JeanBaptiste, baron de Montesquieu, died and left to his nephew his estates, with the barony of
Montesquieu, near Agen, and the office of deputy president in the Parlement of Bordeaux. His
position was one of some dignity. It carried a stipend but was no sinecure.
The young Montesquieu, at 27, was now socially and financially secure. He settled down to
exercise his judicial function (engaging to this end in the minute study of Roman law), to
administer his property, and to advance his knowledge of the sciencesespecially of geology,
biology, and physicswhich he studied in the newly formed academy of Bordeaux.

Charles-Louis de Secondat, baron de La Brde et de Montesquieu

12

In 1721 he surprised all but a few close friends by publishing his Lettres persanes (Persian
Letters, 1722), in which he gave a brilliant satirical portrait of French and particularly Parisian
civilization, supposedly seen through the eyes of two Persian travellers. This exceedingly
successful work mocks the reign of Louis XIV, which had only recently ended; pokes fun at all
social classes; discusses, in its allegorical story of the Troglodytes, the theories of Thomas
Hobbes relating to the state of nature. It also makes an original, if naive, contribution to the new
science of demography; continually compares Islm and Christianity; reflects the controversy
about the papal bull Unigenitus, which was directed against the dissident Catholic group known
as the Jansenists; satirizes Roman Catholic doctrine; and is infused throughout with a new spirit
of vigorous, disrespectful, and iconoclastic criticism. The works anonymity was soon penetrated,
and Montesquieu became famous. The new ideas fermenting in Paris had received their most
scintillating expression.

examine the mines. He entered Italy, and, after tasting the pleasures of Venice, proceeded to
visit most of the other cities. Conscientiously examining the galleries of Florence, notebook in
hand, he developed his aesthetic sense. In Rome he heard the French minister Cardinal
Polignac and read his unpublished Latin poem Anti-Lucretius. In Naples he skeptically witnessed
the liquefaction of the blood of the citys patron saint. From Italy he moved through Germany to
Holland and thence (at the end of October 1729), in the company of the statesman and wit Lord
Chesterfield, to England, where he remained until the spring of 1731.
Montesquieu had a wide circle of acquaintances in England. He was presented at court, and he
was received by the Prince of Wales, at whose request he later made an anthology of French
songs. He became a close friend of the dukes of Richmond and Montagu. He was elected a
Fellow of the Royal Society. He attended parliamentary debates and read the political journals of
the day. He became a Freemason. He bought extensively for his library. His stay in England was
one of the most formative periods of his life.

Montesquieu now sought to reinforce his literary achievement with social success. Going to
Paris in 1722, he was assisted in entering court circles by the Duke of Berwick, the exiled Stuart
prince whom he had known when Berwick was military governor at Bordeaux. The tone of life at
court was set by the rakish regent, the Duc dOrlans, and Montesquieu did not disdain its
dissipations. It was during this period that he made the acquaintance of the English
politicianViscount Bolingbroke, whose political views were later to be reflected in Montesquieus
analysis of the English constitution.

Jean-Jacques Rousseau (17121778)

In Paris his interest in the routine activities of the Parlement in Bordeaux, however, had
dwindled. He resented seeing that his intellectual inferiors were more successful than he in
court. His office was marketable, and in 1726 he sold it, a move that served both to reestablish
his fortunes, depleted by life in the capital, and to assist him, by lending colour to his claim to be
resident in Paris, in his attempt to enter the Acadmie Franaise. A vacancy there arose in
October 1727. Montesquieu had powerful supporters, with Madame de Lamberts salon firmly
pressing his claims, and he was elected, taking his seat on Jan. 24, 1728.
This official recognition of his talent might have caused him to remain in Paris to enjoy it. On the
contrary, though older than most noblemen starting on the grand tour, he resolved to complete
his education by foreign travel. Leaving his wife at La Brde with full powers over the estate, he
set off for Vienna in April 1728, with Lord Waldegrave, nephew of Berwick and lately British
ambassador in Paris, as travelling companion. He wrote an account of his travels as interesting
as any other of the 18th century. In Vienna he met the soldier and statesman Prince Eugene of
Savoy and discussed French politics with him. He made a surprising detour into Hungary to

13

Jean-Jacques Rousseau was one of the most influential thinkers during the Enlightenment in
eighteenth century Europe. His first major philosophical work, A Discourse on the Sciences and
Arts, was the winning response to an essay contest conducted by the Academy of Dijon in 1750.
In this work, Rousseau argues that the progression of the sciences and arts has caused the
corruption of virtue and morality. This discourse won Rousseau fame and recognition, and it laid
much of the philosophical groundwork for a second, longer work, The Discourse on the Origin of
Inequality. The second discourse did not win the Academys prize, but like the first, it was widely
read and further solidified Rousseaus place as a significant intellectual figure. The central claim
of the work is that human beings are basically good by nature, but were corrupted by the
complex historical events that resulted in present day civil society.Rousseaus praise of nature is
a theme that continues throughout his later works as well, the most significant of which include
his comprehensive work on the philosophy of education, the Emile, and his major work on
political philosophy, The Social Contract: both published in 1762. These works caused great
controversy in France and were immediately banned by Paris authorities. Rousseau fled France
and settled in Switzerland, but he continued to find difficulties with authorities and quarrel with
friends. The end of Rousseaus life was marked in large part by his growing paranoia and his
continued attempts to justify his life and his work. This is especially evident in his later
books, The Confessions, The Reveries of the Solitary Walker, and Rousseau: Judge of JeanJacques.

could potentially offend his readers, Rousseau claims, I am not abusing scienceI am
defending virtue before virtuous men. (First Discourse, Vol. I, p. 4). In addition to this
introduction, the First Discourse is comprised of two main parts.
The first part is largely an historical survey. Using specific examples, Rousseau shows how
societies in which the arts and sciences flourished more often than not saw the decline of
morality and virtue. He notes that it was after philosophy and the arts flourished that ancient
Egypt fell. Similarly, ancient Greece was once founded on notions of heroic virtue, but after the
arts and sciences progressed, it became a society based on luxury and leisure. The one
exception to this, according to Rousseau, was Sparta, which he praises for pushing the artists
and scientists from its walls. Sparta is in stark contrast to Athens, which was the heart of good
taste, elegance, and philosophy. Interestingly, Rousseau here discusses Socrates, as one of the
few wise Athenians who recognized the corruption that the arts and sciences were bringing
about. Rousseau paraphrases Socrates famous speech in the Apology. In his address to the
court, Socrates says that the artists and philosophers of his day claim to have knowledge of
piety, goodness, and virtue, yet they do not really understand anything. Rousseaus historical
inductions are not limited to ancient civilizations, however, as he also mentions China as a
learned civilization that suffers terribly from its vices.

Rousseau greatly influenced Immanuel Kants work on ethics. His novel Julie or the New
Heloiseimpacted the late eighteenth centurys Romantic Naturalism movement, and his political
ideals were championed by leaders of the French Revolution.

The second part of the First Discourse is an examination of the arts and sciences themselves,
and the dangers they bring. First, Rousseau claims that the arts and sciences are born from our
vices: Astronomy was born from superstition; eloquence from ambition, hate, flattery, and
falsehood; geometry from avarice, physics from vain curiosity; all, even moral philosophy, from
human pride. (First Discourse, Vol. I, p. 12). The attack on sciences continues as Rousseau
articulates how they fail to contribute anything positive to morality. They take time from the
activities that are truly important, such as love of country, friends, and the unfortunate.
Philosophical and scientific knowledge of subjects such as the relationship of the mind to the
body, the orbit of the planets, and physical laws that govern particles fail to genuinely provide
any guidance for making people more virtuous citizens. Rather, Rousseau argues that they
create a false sense of need for luxury, so that science becomes simply a means for making our
lives easier and more pleasurable, but not morally better.

a. Discourse on the Sciences and Arts

This is the work that originally won Rousseau fame and recognition. The Academy of Dijon
posed the question, Has the restoration of the sciences and arts tended to purify morals?
Rousseaus answer to this question is an emphatic no. The First Discourse won the academys
prize as the best essay. The work is perhaps the greatest example of Rousseau as a counterEnlightenment thinker. For the Enlightenment project was based on the idea that progress in
fields like the arts and sciences do indeed contribute to the purification of morals on individual,
social, and political levels.

The arts are the subject of similar attacks in the second part of the First Discourse. Artists,
Rousseau says, wish first and foremost to be applauded. Their work comes from a sense of
wanting to be praised as superior to others. Society begins to emphasize specialized talents
rather than virtues such as courage, generosity, and temperance. This leads to yet another

The First Discourse begins with a brief introduction addressing the academy to which the work
was submitted. Aware that his stance against the contribution of the arts and sciences to morality

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danger: the decline of military virtue, which is necessary for a society to defend itself against
aggressors. And yet, after all of these attacks, the First Discourse ends with the praise of some
very wise thinkers, among them, Bacon, Descartes, and Newton. These men were carried by
their vast genius and were able to avoid corruption. However, Rousseau says, they are
exceptions; and the great majority of people ought to focus their energies on improving their
characters, rather than advancing the ideals of the Enlightenment in the arts and sciences.

understanding (a capacity that he will later say is completely undeveloped in natural man).
However, it seems in other parts of the Second Discourse that Rousseau is positing an actual
historical account. Some of the stages in the progression from nature to civil society, Rousseau
will argue, are empirically observable in so-called primitive tribes. And so the precise historicity
with which one ought to regard Rousseaus state of nature is the matter of some debate.
Part one is Rousseaus description of human beings in the pure state of nature, uncorrupted by
civilization and the socialization process. And although this way of examining human nature is
consistent with other modern thinkers, Rousseaus picture of man in his natural state, is
radically different. Hobbes describes each human in the state of nature as being in a constant
state of war against all others; hence life in the state of nature is solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and
short. But Rousseau argues that previous accounts such as Hobbes have all failed to actually
depict humans in the true state of nature. Instead, they have taken civilized human beings and
simply removed laws, government, and technology. For humans to be in a constant state of war
with one another, they would need to have complex thought processes involving notions of
property, calculations about the future, immediate recognition of all other humans as potential
threats, and possibly even minimal language skills. These faculties, according to Rousseau, are
not natural, but rather, they develop historically. In contrast to Hobbes, Rousseau describes
natural man as isolated, timid, peaceful, mute, and without the foresight to worry about what the
future will bring.

b. Discourse on the Origin of Inequality

The Second Discourse, like the first, was a response to a question put forth by the academy of
Dijon: What is the origin of inequality among men; and is it authorized by the natural law?
Rousseaus response to this question, the Discourse on the Origin of Inequality, is significantly
different from theFirst Discourse for several reasons. First, in terms of the academys response,
the Second Discourse was not nearly as well received. It exceeded the desired length, it was
four times the length of the first, and made very bold philosophical claims; unlike the First
Discourse, it did not win the prize. However, as Rousseau was now a well-known and respected
author, he was able to have it published independently. Secondly, if the First Discourse is
indicative of Rousseau as a counter-Enlightenment thinker, theSecond Discourse, by contrast,
can rightly be considered to be representative of Enlightenment thought. This is primarily
because Rousseau, like Hobbes, attacks the classical notion of human beings as naturally
social. Finally, in terms of its influence, the Second Discourse is now much more widely read,
and is more representative of Rousseaus general philosophical outlook. In the Confessions,
Rousseau writes that he himself sees the Second Discourse as far superior to the first.

Purely natural human beings are fundamentally different from the egoistic Hobbesian view in
another sense as well. Rousseau acknowledges that self-preservation is one principle of
motivation for human actions, but unlike Hobbes, it is not the only principle. If it were, Rousseau
claims that humans would be nothing more than monsters. Therefore, Rousseau concludes that
self-preservation, or more generally self-interest, is only one of two principles of the human soul.
The second principle is pity; it is an innate repugnance to see his fellow suffer. (Second
Discourse, Vol. II, p. 36). It may seem that Rousseaus depiction of natural human beings is one
that makes them no different from other animals. However, Rousseau says that unlike all other
creatures, humans are free agents. They have reason, although in the state of nature it is not yet
developed. But it is this faculty that makes the long transition from the state of nature to the state
of civilized society possible. He claims that if one examines any other species over the course of
a thousand years, they will not have advanced significantly. Humans can develop when
circumstances arise that trigger the use of reason.

The Discourse on the Origin of Inequality is divided into four main parts: a dedication to the
Republic of Geneva, a short preface, a first part, and a second part. The scope of Rousseaus
project is not significantly different from that of Hobbes in the Leviathan or Locke in the Second
Treatise on Government. Like them, Rousseau understands society to be an invention, and he
attempts to explain the nature of human beings by stripping them of all of the accidental qualities
brought about by socialization. Thus, understanding human nature amounts to understanding
what humans are like in a pure state of nature. This is in stark contrast to the classical view, most
notably that of Aristotle, which claims that the state of civil society is the natural human state.
Like Hobbes and Locke, however, it is doubtful that Rousseau meant his readers to understand
the pure state of nature that he describes in the Second Discourse as a literal historical account.
In its opening, he says that it must be denied that men were ever in the pure state of nature,
citing revelation as a source which tells us that God directly endowed the first man with

15

Rousseaus praise of humans in the state of nature is perhaps one of the most misunderstood
ideas in his philosophy. Although the human being is naturally good and the noble savage is
free from the vices that plague humans in civil society, Rousseau is not simply saying that
humans in nature are good and humans in civil society are bad. Furthermore, he is not
advocating a return to the state of nature, though some commentators, even his contemporaries
such as Voltaire, have attributed such a view to him. Human beings in the state of nature are
amoral creatures, neither virtuous nor vicious. After humans leave the state of nature, they can
enjoy a higher form of goodness, moral goodness, which Rousseau articulates most explicitly in
the Social Contract.

The Discourse on the Origin of Inequality remains one of Rousseaus most famous works, and
lays the foundation for much of his political thought as it is expressed in the Discourse on
Political Economy andSocial Contract. Ultimately, the work is based on the idea that by nature,
humans are essentially peaceful, content, and equal. It is the socialization process that has
produced inequality, competition, and the egoistic mentality.

Having described the pure state of nature in the first part of the Second Discourse, Rousseaus
task in the second part is to explain the complex series of historical events that moved humans
from this state to the state of present day civil society. Although they are not stated explicitly,
Rousseau sees this development as occurring in a series of stages. From the pure state of
nature, humans begin to organize into temporary groups for the purposes of specific tasks like
hunting an animal. Very basic language in the form of grunts and gestures comes to be used in
these groups. However, the groups last only as long as the task takes to be completed, and then
they dissolve as quickly as they came together. The next stage involves more permanent social
relationships including the traditional family, from which arises conjugal and paternal love. Basic
conceptions of property and feelings of pride and competition develop in this stage as well.
However, at this stage they are not developed to the point that they cause the pain and
inequality that they do in present day society. If humans could have remained in this state, they
would have been happy for the most part, primarily because the various tasks that they engaged
in could all be done by each individual. The next stage in the historical development occurs when
the arts of agriculture and metallurgy are discovered. Because these tasks required a division of
labor, some people were better suited to certain types of physical labor, others to making tools,
and still others to governing and organizing workers. Soon, there become distinct social classes
and strict notions of property, creating conflict and ultimately a state of war not unlike the one
that Hobbes describes. Those who have the most to lose call on the others to come together
under a social contract for the protection of all. But Rousseau claims that the contract is
specious, and that it was no more than a way for those in power to keep their power by
convincing those with less that it was in their interest to accept the situation. And so, Rousseau
says, All ran to meet their chains thinking they secured their freedom, for although they had
enough reason to feel the advantages of political establishment, they did not have enough
experience to foresee its dangers. (Second Discourse, Vol. II, p. 54).

The Discourse on Political Economy originally appeared in Diderot and dAlemberts

Encyclopedia. In terms of its content the work seems to be, in many ways, a precursor to
the Social Contract, which would appear in 1762. And whereas the Discourse on the Sciences
and Arts and the Discourse on the Origin of Inequality look back on history and condemn what
Rousseau sees as the lack of morality and justice in his own present day society, this work is
much more constructive. That is, the Discourse on Political Economy explains what he takes to
be a legitimate political regime.

c. Discourse on Political Economy

The work is perhaps most significant because it is here that Rousseau introduces the concept of
the general will, a major aspect of his political thought which is further developed in the Social
Contract. There is debate among scholars about how exactly one ought to interpret this concept,
but essentially, one can understand the general will in terms of an analogy. A political society is
like a human body. A body is a unified entity though it has various parts that have particular
functions. And just as the body has a will that looks after the well-being of the whole, a political
state also has a will which looks to its general well-being. The major conflict in political
philosophy occurs when the general will is at odds with one or more of the individual wills of its
citizens.
With the conflict between the general and individual wills in mind, Rousseau articulates three
maxims which supply the basis for a politically virtuous state: (1) Follow the general will in every
action; (2) Ensure that every particular will is in accordance with the general will; and (3) Public
needs must be satisfied. Citizens follow these maxims when there is a sense of equality among
them, and when they develop a genuine respect for law. This again is in contrast to Hobbes, who
says that laws are only followed when people fear punishment. That is, the state must make the
penalty for breaking the law so severe that people do not see breaking the law to be of any
advantage to them. Rousseau claims, instead, that when laws are in accordance with the

16

general will, good citizens will respect and love both the state and their fellow citizens. Therefore,
citizens will see the intrinsic value in the law, even in cases in which it may conflict with their
individual wills.

b. The General Will

The concept of the general will, first introduced in the Discourse on Political Economy, is further
developed in the Social Contract although it remains ambiguous and difficult to interpret. The
most pressing difficulty that arises is in the tension that seems to exist between liberalism and
communitarianism. On one hand, Rousseau argues that following the general will allows for
individual diversity and freedom. But at the same time, the general will also encourages the wellbeing of the whole, and therefore can conflict with the particular interests of individuals. This
tension has led some to claim that Rousseaus political thought is hopelessly inconsistent,
although others have attempted to resolve the tension in order to find some type of middle
ground between the two positions. Despite these difficulties, however, there are some aspects of
the general will that Rousseau clearly articulates. First, the general will is directly tied to
Sovereignty: but not Sovereignty merely in the sense of whomever holds power. Simply having
power, for Rousseau, is not sufficient for that power to be morally legitimate. True Sovereignty is
directed always at the public good, and the general will, therefore, speaks always infallibly to the
benefit of the people. Second, the object of the general will is always abstract, or for lack of a
better term, general. It can set up rules, social classes, or even a monarchial government, but it
can never specify the particular individuals who are subject to the rules, members of the classes,
or the rulers in the government. This is in keeping with the idea that the general will speaks to
the good of the society as a whole. It is not to be confused with the collection of individual wills
which would put their own needs, or the needs of particular factions, above those of the general
public. This leads to a related point. Rousseau argues that there is an important distinction to be
made between the general will and the collection of individual wills: There is often a great deal
of difference between the will of all and the general will. The latter looks only to the common
interest; the former considers private interest and is only a sum of private wills. But take away
from these same wills the pluses and minuses that cancel each other out, and the remaining
sum of the differences is the general will. (Social Contract, Vol. IV, p. 146). This point can be
understood in an almost Rawlsian sense, namely that if the citizens were ignorant of the groups
to which they would belong, they would inevitably make decisions that would be to the
advantage of the society as a whole, and thus be in accordance with the general will.

4. The Social Contract

a. Background
The Social Contract is, like the Discourse on Political Economy, a work that is more
philosophically constructive than either of the first two Discourses. Furthermore, the language
used in the first and second Discourses is crafted in such a way as to make them appealing to
the public, whereas the tone of the Social Contract is not nearly as eloquent and romantic.
Another more obvious difference is that theSocial Contract was not nearly as well-received; it
was immediately banned by Paris authorities. And although the first two Discourses were, at the
time of their publication, very popular, they are not philosophically systematic. The Social
Contract, by contrast, is quite systematic and outlines how a government could exist in such a
way that it protects the equality and character of its citizens. But although Rousseaus project is
different in scope in the Social Contract than it was in the first twoDiscourses, it would be a
mistake to say that there is no philosophical connection between them. For the earlier works
discuss the problems in civil society as well as the historical progression that has led to them.
The Discourse on the Sciences and Arts claims that society has become such that no emphasis
is put on the importance of virtue and morality. The Discourse on the Origin of Inequality traces
the history of human beings from the pure state of nature through the institution of a specious
social contract that results in present day civil society. The Social Contract does not deny any of
these criticisms. In fact, chapter one begins with one of Rousseaus most famous quotes, which
echoes the claims of his earlier works: Man was/is born free; and everywhere he is in chains.
(Social Contract, Vol. IV, p. 131). But unlike the first two Discourses, the Social Contract looks
forward, and explores the potential for moving from the specious social contract to a legitimate
one.

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c. Equality, Freedom, and Sovereignty

b. Education

One problem that arises in Rousseaus political theory is that the Social Contract purports to be a
legitimate state in one sense because it frees human beings from their chains. But if the state is
to protect individual freedom, how can this be reconciled with the notion of the general will, which
looks always to the welfare of the whole and not to the will of the individual? This criticism,
although not unfounded, is also not devastating. To answer it, one must return to the concepts of
Sovereignty and the general will. True Sovereignty, again, is not simply the will of those in power,
but rather the general will. Sovereignty does have the proper authority override the particular will
of an individual or even the collective will of a particular group of individuals. However, as the
general will is infallible, it can only do so when intervening will be to the benefit of the society. To
understand this, one must take note of Rousseaus emphasis on the equality and freedom of the
citizens. Proper intervention on the part of the Sovereign is therefore best understood as that
which secures the freedom and equality of citizens rather than that which limits them. Ultimately,
the delicate balance between the supreme authority of the state and the rights of individual
citizens is based on a social compact that protects society against factions and gross differences
in wealth and privilege among its members.

The basic philosophy of education that Rousseau advocates in the Emile, much like his thought
in the first two Discourses, is rooted in the notion that human beings are good by nature.
The Emile is a large work, which is divided into five Books, and Book One opens with
Rousseaus claim that the goal of education should be to cultivate our natural tendencies. This is
not to be confused with Rousseaus praise of the pure state of nature in the Second Discourse.
Rousseau is very clear that a return the state of nature once human beings have become
civilized is not possible. Therefore, we should not seek to be noble savages in the literal sense,
with no language, no social ties, and an underdeveloped faculty of reason. Rather, Rousseau
says, someone who has been properly educated will be engaged in society, but relate to his or
her fellow citizens in a natural way.
At first glance, this may seem paradoxical: If human beings are not social by nature, how can
one properly speak of more or less natural ways of socializing with others? The best answer to
this question requires an explanation of what Rousseau calls the two forms of self-love: amourpropre and amour de soi. Amour de soi is a natural form of self-love in that it does not depend on
others. Rousseau claims that by our nature, each of us has this natural feeling of love toward
ourselves. We naturally look after our own preservation and interests. By contrast, amourpropre is an unnatural self-love that is essentially relational. That is, it comes about in the ways
in which human beings view themselves in comparison to other human beings. Without amourpropre, human beings would scarcely be able to move beyond the pure state of nature
Rousseau describes in the Discourse on Inequality. Thus, amour-propre can contribute positively
to human freedom and even virtue. Nevertheless, amour-propre is also extremely dangerous
because it is so easily corruptible. Rousseau often describes the dangers of what commentators
sometimes refer to as inflamed amour-propre. In its corrupted form, amour-propre is the source
of vice and misery, and results in human beings basing their own self worth on their feeling of
superiority over others. While not developed in the pure state of nature, amour-propre is still a
fundamental part of human nature. Therefore goal of Emiles natural education is in large part to
keep him from falling into the corrupted form of this type of self-love.

5. The Emile

a. Background
The Emile or On Education is essentially a work that details Rousseaus philosophy of education.
It was originally published just several months after the Social Contract. Like the Social Contract,
the Emile was immediately banned by Paris authorities, which prompted Rousseau to flee
France. The major point of controversy in the Emile was not in his philosophy of education per
se, however. Rather, it was the claims in one part of the book, the Profession of Faith of the
Savoyard Vicar in which Rousseau argues against traditional views of religion that led to the
banning of the book. The Emile is unique in one sense because it is written as part novel and
part philosophical treatise. Rousseau would use this same form in some of his later works as
well. The book is written in first person, with the narrator as the tutor, and describes his
education of a pupil, Emile, from birth to adulthood.

Rousseaus philosophy of education, therefore, is not geared simply at particular techniques that
best ensure that the pupil will absorb information and concepts. It is better understood as a way
of ensuring that the pupils character be developed in such a way as to have a healthy sense of
self-worth and morality. This will allow the pupil to be virtuous even in the unnatural and
imperfect society in which he lives. The character of Emile begins learning important moral

18

lessons from his infancy, thorough childhood, and into early adulthood. His education relies on
the tutors constant supervision. The tutor must even manipulate the environment in order to
teach sometimes difficult moral lessons about humility, chastity, and honesty.

all of his previously held ideas. Doubting everything, the priest attempts a Cartesian search for
truth by doubting all things that he does not know with absolute certainty. But unlike Descartes,
the Vicar is unable to come to any kind of clear and distinct ideas that could not be doubted.
Instead, he follows what he calls the Inner Light which provides him with truths so intimate that
he cannot help but accept them, even though they may be subject to philosophical difficulties.
Among these truths, the Vicar finds that he exists as a free being with a free will which is distinct
from his body that is not subject to physical, mechanical laws of motion. To the problem of how
his immaterial will moves his physical body, the Vicar simply says I cannot tell, but I perceive
that it does so in myself; I will to do something and I do it; I will to move my body and it moves,
but if an inanimate body, when at rest, should begin to move itself, the thing is incomprehensible
and without precedent. The will is known to me in its action, not in its nature. ( Emile, p. 282).
The discussion is particularly significant in that it marks the most comprehensive metaphysical
account in Rousseaus thought.

c. Women, Marriage, and Family

As Emiles is a moral education, Rousseau discusses in great detail how the young pupil is to be
brought up to regard women and sexuality. He introduces the character of Sophie, and explains
how her education differs from Emiles. Hers is not as focused on theoretical matters, as mens
minds are more suited to that type of thinking. Rousseaus view on the nature of the relationship
between men and women is rooted in the notion that men are stronger and therefore more
independent. They depend on women only because they desire them. By contrast, women both
need and desire men. Sophie is educated in such a way that she will fill what Rousseau takes to
be her natural role as a wife. She is to be submissive to Emile. And although Rousseau
advocates these very specific gender roles, it would be a mistake to take the view that Rousseau
regards men as simply superior to women. Women have particular talents that men do not;
Rousseau says that women are cleverer than men, and that they excel more in matters of
practical reason. These views are continually discussed among both feminist and Rousseau
scholars.

The Profession of Faith also includes the controversial discussion of natural religion, which was
in large part the reason why Emile was banned. The controversy of this doctrine is the fact that it
is categorically opposed to orthodox Christian views, specifically the claim that Christianity is the
one true religion. The Vicar claims instead that knowledge of God is found in the observation of
the natural order and ones place in it. And so, any organized religion that correctly identifies God
as the creator and preaches virtue and morality, is true in this sense. Therefore, the Vicar
concludes, each citizen should dutifully practice the religion of his or her own country so long as
it is in line with the religion, and thus morality, of nature.a. Julie or the New Heloise
Julie or the New Heloise remains one of Rousseaus popular works, though it is not a
philosophical treatise, but rather a novel. The work tells the story of Julie dEtange and St. Preux,
who were one time lovers. Later, at the invitation of her husband, St. Preux unexpectedly comes
back into Julies life. Although not a work of philosophy per se, Julie or the New Heloise is still
unmistakably Rousseaus. The major tenets of his thought are clearly evident; the struggle of the
individual against societal norms, emotions versus reason, and the goodness of human nature
are all prevalent themes.

d. The Profession of Faith of the Savoyard Vicar

The Profession of Faith of the Savoyard Vicar is part of the fourth Book of the Emile. In his
discussion of how to properly educate a pupil about religious matters, the tutor recounts a tale of
an Italian who thirty years before was exiled from his town. Disillusioned, the young man was
aided by a priest who explained his own views of religion, nature, and science. Rousseau then
writes in the first person from the perspective of this young man, and recounts the Vicars
speech.
The priest begins by explaining how, after a scandal in which he broke his vow of celibacy, he
was arrested, suspended, and then dismissed. In his woeful state, the priest began to question

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b. Reveries of the Solitary Walker

It is difficult to overestimate Rousseaus influence, both in the Western philosophical tradition,

and historically. Perhaps his greatest directly philosophical influence is on the ethical thought
of Immanuel Kant. This may seem puzzling at first glance. For Kant, the moral law is based on
rationality, whereas in Rousseau, there is a constant theme of nature and even the emotional
faculty of pity described in theSecond Discourse. This theme in Rousseaus thought is not to be
ignored, and it would be a mistake to understand Rousseaus ethics merely as a precursor to
Kant; certainly Rousseau is unique and significant in his own respect. But despite these
differences, the influence on Kant is undeniable. The Profession of Faith of the Savoyard Vicar is
one text in particular that illustrates this influence. The Vicar claims that the correct view of the
universe is to see oneself not at the center of things, but rather on the circumference, with all
people realizing that we have a common center. This same notion is expressed in the
Rousseaus political theory, particularly in the concept of the general will. In Kants ethics, one of
the major themes is the claim that moral actions are those that can be universalized. Morality is
something separate from individual happiness: a view that Rousseau undoubtedly expresses as
well.

Rousseau began writing the Reveries of the Solitary Walker in the fall of 1776. By this time, he
had grown increasingly distressed over the condemnation of several of his works, most notably
the Emile and theSocial Contract. This public rejection, combined with rifts in his personal
relationships, left him feeling betrayed and even as though he was the victim of a great
conspiracy. The work is divided into ten walks in which Rousseau reflects on his life, what he
sees as his contribution to the public good, and how he and his work have been misunderstood.
It is interesting that Rousseau returns to nature, which he had always praised throughout his
career. One also recognizes in this praise the recognition of God as the just creator of nature, a
theme so prevalent in the Profession of Faith of the Savoyard Vicar. The Reveries of the Solitary
Walker, like many of Rousseaus other works, is part story and part philosophical treatise. The
reader sees in it, not only philosophy, but also the reflections of the philosopher himself.

A second major influence is Rousseaus political thought. Not only is he one of the most
important figures in the history of political philosophy, later influencing Karl Marx among others,
but his works were also championed by the leaders of the French Revolution. And finally, his
philosophy was largely instrumental in the late eighteenth century Romantic Naturalism
movement in Europe thanks in large part to Julie or the New Heloise and the Reveries of the
Solitary Walker.

c. Rousseau: Judge of Jean Jacques

The most distinctive feature of this late work, often referred to simply as the Dialogues, is that it
is written in the form of three dialogues. The characters in the dialogues are Rousseau and an
interlocutor identified simply as a Frenchman. The subject of these characters conversations is
the author Jean-Jacques, who is the actual historical Rousseau. This somewhat confusing
arrangement serves the purpose of Rousseau judging his own career. The character
Rousseau, therefore, represents Rousseau had he not written his collected works but instead
had discovered them as if they were written by someone else. What would he think of this
author, represented in the Dialogues as the character Jean-Jacques? This self-examination
makes two major claims. First, like the Reveries, it makes clearly evident the fact that Rousseau
felt victimized and betrayed, and shows perhaps even more so than theReveries, Rousseaus
growing paranoia. And second, the Dialogues represent one of the few places that Rousseau
claims his work is systematic. He claims that there is a philosophical consistency that runs
throughout his works. Whether one accepts that such a system is present in Rousseaus
philosophy or not is a question that was not only debated during Rousseaus time, but is also
continually discussed among contemporary scholars.

Contemporary Rousseau scholarship continues to discuss many of the same issues that were
debated in the eighteenth century. The tension in his political thought between individual liberty
and totalitarianism continues to be an issue of controversy among scholars. Another aspect of
Rousseaus philosophy that has proven to be influential is his view of the family, particularly as it
pertains to the roles of men and women.
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant (17241804) is the central figure in modern philosophy. He synthesized early
modern rationalism and empiricism, set the terms for much of nineteenth and twentieth century
philosophy, and continues to exercise a significant influence today in metaphysics, epistemology,
ethics, political philosophy, aesthetics, and other fields. The fundamental idea of Kant's critical
philosophy especially in his three Critiques: the Critique of Pure Reason (1781, 1787), the

7. Historical and Philosophical Influence

20

Critique of Practical Reason (1788), and the Critique of the Power of Judgment (1790) is
human autonomy. He argues that the human understanding is the source of the general laws of
nature that structure all our experience; and that human reason gives itself the moral law, which
is our basis for belief in God, freedom, and immortality. Therefore, scientific knowledge, morality,
and religious belief are mutually consistent and secure because they all rest on the same
foundation of human autonomy, which is also the final end of nature according to the teleological
worldview of reflecting judgment that Kant introduces to unify the theoretical and practical parts
of his philosophical system.

philosophy are metaphysics , the investigation a priori of the nature of reality, and ethics , which
seeks a priorifor rules governing the way in which beings with free will ought to decide what to
do.
An important difference between the traditional practice of metaphysics and ethics illustrates
Kant's fundamental orientation toward philosophy. He believed that traditional metaphysics
attempts to describe objects that are completely beyond the scope of the senses. It divides
objects into a sensible world and an intelligible world and claims that human reason has insight
into the nature of purely intelligible objects. Ethics, on the contrary, treats the practical use of
reason as if it were concerned only with sensible objects, most importantly with their relation to
pleasure and pain. Kant maintained that metaphysics must be confined solely to the discovery of
those rules which govern the sensible world, while ethics has nothing to do with anything
sensible.

Kant lived in the remote province where he was born for his entire life. His father, a saddler, was,
according to Kant, a descendant of a Scottish immigrant, although scholars have found no basis
for this claim; his mother, an uneducated German woman, was remarkable for her character and
natural intelligence. Both parents were devoted followers of the Pietist branch of the Lutheran
church, which taught that religion belongs to the inner life expressed in simplicity and obedience
to moral law. The influence of their pastor made it possible for Kantthe fourth of nine children
but the eldest surviving childto obtain an education.

Kant considered himself to be a revolutionary thinker. He believed that he brought to philosophy

a new method, which he called criticism. Other philosophers had brought forth their systems
without having examined beforehand the power of human reason to think objects a priori.
Criticism reveals the inherent limitations of reason in its theoretical employment, and as a result
it repudiates transcendent metaphysics. But it also reveals the power of reason over its own
domain of objects, objects of experience. It further reveals that reason dictates to itself the moral
law.

At the age of eight Kant entered the Pietist school that his pastor directed. This was
a Latinschool, and it was presumably during the eight and a half years he was there that Kant
acquired his lifelong love for the Latin classics, especially for the naturalistic poet Lucretius. In
1740 he enrolled in the University of Knigsberg as a theological student. But, although he
attended courses in theology and even preached on a few occasions, he was principally
attracted to mathematics and physics. Aided by a young professor who had studied Christian
Wolff, a systematizer of rationalist philosophy, and who was also an enthusiast for
the scienceof Sir Isaac Newton, Kant began reading the work of the English physicist and, in
1744, started his first book, Gedanken von der wahren Schtzung der lebendigen
Krfte (1746; Thoughts on the True Estimation of Living Forces), dealing with a problem
concerning kinetic forces. Though by that time he had decided to pursue an academic career,
the death of his father in 1746 and his failure to obtain the post of undertutor in one of the
schools attached to the university compelled him to withdraw and seek a means of supporting
himself.

Adam Smith
With The Wealth of Nations Adam Smith installed himself as the leading expositor of economic
thought. Currents of Adam Smith run through the works published by DAVID RICARDO and KARL
MARX in the nineteenth century, and by JOHN MAYNARD KEYNES andMILTON FRIEDMAN in the
twentieth.
Adam Smith was born in a small village in Kirkcaldy, Scotland, where his widowed mother raised
him. At age fourteen, as was the usual practice, he entered the University of Glasgow on
scholarship. He later attended Balliol College at Oxford, graduating with an extensive knowledge
of European literature and an enduring contempt for English schools.

Philosophy, according to Kant, is the outcome of the use of human reason, which undertakes
investigations a priori, or independently of experience. Reason also has both a theoretical and
a practical employment. Reason is theoretical when it is concerned with the way things really
are, and it is practical when it considers how things ought to be. Thus the two main branches of

21

He returned home, and after delivering a series of well-received lectures was made first chair of
logic (1751), then chair of moral philosophy (1752), at Glasgow University.

Charity, while a virtuous act, cannot alone provide the essentials for living. Self-interest is the
mechanism that can remedy this shortcoming. Said Smith: It is not from the benevolence of the
butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we can expect our dinner, but from their regard to their
own interest (ibid.).

He left academia in 1764 to tutor the young duke of Buccleuch. For more than two years they
traveled throughout France and into Switzerland, an experience that brought Smith into contact
with his contemporaries Voltaire, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, FRANOIS QUESNAY, and AnneRobert-Jacques Turgot. With the life pension he had earned in the service of the duke, Smith
retired to his birthplace of Kirkcaldy to write The Wealth of Nations. It was published in 1776, the
same year the American Declaration of Independence was signed and in which his close
friend DAVID HUME died. In 1778 he was appointed commissioner of customs. In this job he
helped enforce laws against smuggling. In The Wealth of Nations, he had defended smuggling
as a legitimate activity in the face of unnatural legislation. Adam Smith never married. He died
in Edinburgh on July 19, 1790.

Someone earning money by his own labor benefits himself. Unknowingly, he also benefits
society, because to earn income on his labor in a competitive market, he must produce
something others value. In Adam Smiths lasting imagery, By directing that industry in such a
manner as its produce may be of greatest value, he intends only his own gain, and he is in this,
as in many other cases, led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his
intention.5
The Wealth of Nations, published as a five-book series, sought to reveal the nature and cause of
a nations prosperity. Smith saw the main cause of prosperity as increasing division of labor.
Using the famous example of pins, Smith asserted that ten workers could produce 48,000 pins
per day if each of eighteen specialized tasks was assigned to particular workers.
Average PRODUCTIVITY: 4,800 pins per worker per day. But absent the division of labor, a worker
would be lucky to produce even one pin per day.

Today Smiths reputation rests on his explanation of how rational self-interest in a free-market
economy leads to economic well-being. It may surprise those who would discount Smith as an
advocate of ruthless individualism that his first major work concentrates on ethics and CHARITY.
In fact, while chair at the University of Glasgow, Smiths lecture subjects, in order of preference,
were natural theology, ethics, jurisprudence, and economics, according to John Millar, Smiths
pupil at the time. In The Theory of Moral Sentiments, Smith wrote: 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.1

Just how individuals can best apply their own labor or any other resource is a central subject in
the first book of the series. Smith claimed that an individual would invest a resourcefor
example, land or laborso as to earn the highest possible return on it. Consequently, all uses of
the resource must yield an equal rate of return (adjusted for the relative riskiness of each
enterprise). Otherwise reallocation would result. GEORGE STIGLER called this idea the central
proposition of economic theory. Not surprisingly, and consistent with another Stigler claim that
the originator of an idea in economics almost never gets the credit, Smiths idea was not original.
The French economist TURGOT had made the same point in 1766.

At the same time, Smith had a benign view of self-interest, denying that self-love was a principle
which could never be virtuous in any degree.2 Smith argued that life would be tough if our
affections, which, by the very nature of our being, ought frequently to influence our conduct,
could upon no occasion appear virtuous, or deserve esteem and commendation from anybody.3

Smith used this insight on equality of returns to explain why wage rates differed. Wage rates
would be higher, he argued, for trades that were more difficult to learn, because people would
not be willing to learn them if they were not compensated by a higher wage. His thought gave
rise to the modern notion of HUMAN CAPITAL. Similarly, wage rates would also be higher for those
who engaged in dirty or unsafe occupations (see Job Safety), such as coal mining and
butchering; and for those, like the hangman, who performed odious jobs. In short, differences in
work were compensated by differences in pay. Modern economists call Smiths insight the theory
of compensating wage differentials.

Smith did not view sympathy and self-interest as antithetical; they were complementary. Man
has almost constantoccasion for the help of his brethren, and it is in vain for him to expect it from
their benevolence only, he explained in The Wealth of Nations.4

22

Smith used numerate economics not just to explain production of pins or differences in pay
between butchers and hangmen, but to address some of the most pressing political issues of the
day. In the fourth book of The Wealth of Nationspublished, remember, in 1776Smith told
Great Britain that its American colonies were not worth the cost of keeping. His reasoning about
the excessively high cost of British imperialism is worth repeating, both to show Smith at his
numerate best and to show that simple, clear economics can lead to radical conclusions:

government of country B against imports from country A. It is true that Smith thought they might
be justified, but he was fairly skeptical. He argued that causing additional harm to one's own
citizens is a high price to pay that tends not to compensate those who were harmed by the
foreign tariff while also hurting innocent others who had no role in formulating the tariff policy. He
wrote:
There may be good policy in retaliations of this kind, when there is a probability that they will
procure the repeal of the high duties or prohibitions complained of. The recovery of a great
foreign market will generally more than compensate the transitory inconveniency of paying
dearer during a short time for some sorts of goods. To judge whether such retaliations are likely
to produce such an effect does not, perhaps, belong so much to the science of a legislator,
whose deliberations ought to be governed by general principles which are always the same, as
to the skill of that insidious and crafty animal, vulgarly called a statesman or politician, whose
councils are directed by the momentary fluctuations of affairs. When there is no probability that
any such repeal can be procured, it seems a bad method of compensating the injury done to
certain classes of our people to do another injury ourselves, not only to those classes, but to
almost all the other classes of them. When our neighbours prohibit some manufacture of ours,
we generally prohibit, not only the same, for that alone would seldom affect them considerably,
but some other manufacture of theirs. This may no doubt give encouragement to some particular
class of workmen among ourselves, and by excluding some of their rivals, may enable them to
raise their price in the home-market. Those workmen, however, who suffered by our neighbors
prohibition will not be benefited by ours. On the contrary, they and almost all the other classes of
our citizens will thereby be obliged to pay dearer than before for certain goods. Every such law,
therefore, imposes a real tax upon the whole country, not in favour of that particular class of
workmen who were injured by our neighbours prohibition, but of some other class.

A great empire has been established for the sole purpose of raising up a nation of customers
who should be obliged to buy from the shops of our different producers all the goods with which
these could SUPPLY them. For the sake of that little enhancement of price which
this MONOPOLYmight afford our producers, the home-consumers have been burdened with the
whole expense of maintaining and defending that empire. For this purpose, and for this purpose
only, in the two last wars, more than a hundred and seventy millions [in pounds] has been
contracted over and above all that had been expended for the same purpose in former wars. The
interest of this debt alone is not only greater than the whole extraordinary profit, which, it ever
could be pretended, was made by the monopoly of the colony trade, but than the whole value of
that trade, or than the whole value of the goods, which at an average have been annually
exported to the colonies.6
Smith vehemently opposed MERCANTILISMthe practice of artificially maintaining a trade surplus
on the erroneous belief that doing so increased wealth. The primary advantage of trade, he
argued, was that it opened up new markets for surplus goods and also provided some
commodities from abroad at a lower cost than at home. With that, Smith launched a succession
of free-trade economists and paved the way for David Ricardos and JOHN STUART MILLs
theories ofCOMPARATIVE ADVANTAGE a generation later.

Some of Smiths ideas are testimony to his breadth of imagination. Today, vouchers and school
choice programs are touted as the latest reform in public EDUCATION. But Adam Smith addressed
the issue more than two hundred years ago:

Adam Smith has sometimes been caricatured as someone who saw no role for government in
economic life. In fact, he believed that government had an important role to play. Like most
modern believers in free markets, Smith believed that the government should enforce contracts
and grant patents and copyrights to encourage inventions and new ideas. He also thought that
the government should provide public works, such as roads and bridges, that, he assumed,
would not be worthwhile for individuals to provide. Interestingly, though, he wanted the users of
such public works to pay in proportion to their use.

Were the students upon such charitable foundations left free to choose what college they liked
best, such liberty might contribute to excite some emulation among different colleges.
A REGULATION, on the contrary, which prohibited even the independent members of every
particular college from leaving it, and going to any other, without leave first asked and obtained
of that which they meant to abandon, would tend very much to extinguish that emulation.7

Many people believe that Smith favored retaliatory tariffs. A retaliatory tariff is one levied by, say,
the government of country A against imports from country B to retaliate for tariffs levied by the

23

Smiths own student days at Oxford (17401746), whose professors, he complained, had given
up altogether even the pretense of teaching, left him with lasting disdain for the universities of
Cambridge and Oxford.

At the seminary Hegel read deeply in German poetry and Greek literature, in the company of
Friedrich Hlderlin, the poet, and Schelling, who was to reach early eminence as a philosopher
of romanticism. The three friends professed ardent sympathy with the French Revolution and
took for their motto "Freedom and Reason."

Smiths writings are both an inquiry into the science of economics and a policy guide for realizing
the wealth of nations. Smith believed that economic development was best fostered in an
environment of free COMPETITION that operated in accordance with universal natural laws.
Because Smiths was the most systematic and comprehensive study of economics up until that
time, his economic thinking became the basis for classical economics. And because more of his
ideas have lasted than those of any other economist, some regard Adam Smith as the alpha and
the omega of economic science.

Employment as Tutor
For the next 3 1/2 years Hegel was engaged as a private tutor in Berne. Though his duties left
him little time for study and writing, he acquainted himself with the Bernese political situation. His
first published work, in 1798, consisted of notes accompanying his translation of letters by an
exiled Bernese lawyer criticizing the city's oligarchy.

Georg W. Hegel

Thanks to Hlderlin's initiative, in 1797 Hegel was rescued from his cheerless situation through
an appointment as a private tutor in Frankfurt. His employer owned a fine library and allowed him
time to be with friends, especially Hlderlin. Most importantly, he had time to write. Among his
many concerns were the "conditions of profit and property" in England, the history of Christianity,
love, the Prussian penal code, and theology. Some of his Frankfurt writings were published
posthumously by Hermann Nohl (1907) and were translated by T. M. Knox and R. Kroner
in Early Theological Writings(1948).

The German philosopher and educator Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831) took all of
knowledge as his domain and made original contributions to the understanding of history, law,
logic, art, religion, and philosophy.
Living in a time of geniuses and revolutions, G. W. F. Hegel claimed his own work to be not so
much a revolution as the consummation of human development, and not so much the product of
genius as the final expression of all philosophy up to that time. Among the great figures living
then were the writers Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, and Novalis; the
philosophers Immanuel Kant, Jean Jacques Rousseau, Johann Gottlieb Fichte, and F. W. J. von
Schelling; and the composers Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Ludwig van Beethoven. When
Hegel was 19 the French Revolution began, and for most of his lifetime all Europe was
in foment.

Hegel's father died in January 1799, leaving a legacy that enabled him to leave tutoring and
prepare seriously for an academic career. In 1801 he lived with Schelling, already a professor, at
the great University of Jena. There he worked fervently; he wrote a detailed, critical study of the
Constitution of the German Empire and completed his first published book, The Difference
between Fichte's and Schelling's Systems of Philosophy (1801). Challenging the popular view
that Fichte and Schelling were master and disciple, Hegel brought out their obscured but basic
differences. Each, to be sure, had made significant discoveries; but both were ingenious at the
expense of systematic thoroughness. Recognizing that their philosophies were irreconcilable on
their own terms, Hegel resolved to work out a complete system that would account for the
common aim and many differences of previous philosophies. Hegel's would have to be the
system of all philosophy.

Hegel was born in Stuttgart on Aug. 27, 1770, the son of an official serving the Duke of
Wrttemberg. He received a classical education and was a precocious pupil. Urged by his Pietist
father to enter the clergy, he registered in the Tbingen Lutheran seminary in 1788. A fair
student, Hegel generally preferred the conviviality of cafs and country walks to
scholarly asceticism. His love of wine and company, his passion for the secular writings of Jean
Jacques Rousseau, and his interest in practical political matters prevailed over the stern
demands of a religious calling. Nevertheless, he studied philosophy for 2 years and theology for
3, completing his theological examination in 1793.

In 1801 Hegel also submitted a Latin dissertation on the orbits of the planets and consequently
was granted the right to teach in any German university (the venia legendi). He began to give
lectures at Jena and eventually became one of the better-known lecturers. A student wrote about
him later: "Hegel succeeded in captivating his students with the intensity of his speculation.

24

[His eyes] were large but introverted, the refracted gaze filled with deep ideality, which at certain
moments would exert a visible and poignant power. The earnestness in his noble features at
first had something that, although not intimidating, kept others at a distance; but the gentleness
and amiability of his expression were winning and inviting." In addition to teaching and writing,
Hegel worked with Schelling to found and edit the Kritisches Journal der Philosophie (18021803), to which he contributed several articles and reviews.

For 8 years Hegel taught philosophy and occasionally Greek literature and calculus. His
administration was conservative and effective, but the position was ill-suited to his genius. In
1811 Hegel married Marie von Tucher, only 20 years old, after a tender courtship. Soon a
daughter was born to them, but she died only a few months later. Then, in 1813, a son, Karl, was
born, and a year later a second son, Immanuel. Hegel had had another son, Ludwig, born in
1807 to his landlord's wife; in 1816 Hegel invited him to join his household.

Phenomenology of Spirit

Science of Logic

While at Jena the idea of a wholly reconciling philosophy was gestating in Hegel's mind. It came
to fruition in
1806
as
the
dense
but
exciting tome called Phnomenologie
des
Geistes (Phenomenology of Spirit). It is the reflective study (logos) of the historical selfmanifestation (phenomenon) of the Spirit, which all men have in common.

While at Nuremberg, Hegel completed his second major work, Wissenschaft der Logik (Science
of Logic), publishing part I of the first volume in 1811. Part II appeared in 1813, and the second
volume in 1816. This difficult book presents the science of thought, purified of all reference to
experience, to acts, or to facts of nature. In fact, the Logic consists of a closed series of "thought
determinations" - for example, quantity and quality, form and matter - and displays both the
differences between them and the way each meshes with every other. This pure science
"contains thought insofar as it is just as much the thing in itself, or the thing in itself insofar as it is
just as much pure thought." In other words, the Logic deals with reality, not solely with man's
instruments for knowing or discussing it. "Logic [is] the system of pure reason the kingdom
of pure thought. This kingdom is the truth as it is, without covering, in and for itself." But this
kingdom of pure thought, for Hegel, presupposes man's rootedness in the complex, developing
world of experience. The Phenomenology and the Logic, then, are interdependent portions of a
single system. The study of logic, Hegel says, "is the absolute education and discipline of
consciousness."

The stages in the development of the general Spirit, as shown in the conflicts and reconciliations
of history, are also the stages of the individual's growth. Thus, the Phenomenology of Spirit can
be read as a discipline of self-education, through which the individual absorbs and prepares to
go beyond the present development of Spirit. The Phenomenology develops from the simplest
level of experience, sense perception, to the richest, here called "absolute knowledge."
This movement of Spirit is "dialectical"; that is, Spirit develops in stages, undergoing successions
of internal opposition and reconciliation. The stages must necessarily evolve in a continuous
pattern, omitting none. There can be no short cuts to truth - a point Hegel stressed in criticizing
romantic philosophers. The dialectical process of Spirit is always going on; it is what is "most
real," though men are rarely conscious of it. Hegel's achievement was to cast the universal
experience in the language appropriate to it, enabling consciousness to grasp it.

Heidelberg and the Encyclopedia

In 1816 Hegel was called to the University of Heidelberg. In his opening lecture he remarked that
the peace following on Napoleon's exile might revive "the courage of truth, a faith in the power of
the spirit," which is the "prime requirement of philosophy." "Man, being spirit, may and should
consider himself worthy of the highest if he retains this faith, nothing will be so hard
and unyielding that it will not open up to him." Feeling the need for a restatement and
improvement of his earlier work, he published The Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences in
Outline (1817). This summary of his system was later revised considerably, in 1827 and again in
1830. The book began with a section on logic, followed by "the philosophy of nature" and "the
philosophy of spirit," and concluded with the self-knowledge vouchsafed only to philosophy.
Another name for this self-knowledge is freedom. Since philosophy includes every kind of

The entire book was written in haste and was completed on October 13, the very day Napoleon
and his troops occupied Jena. Later, Hegel said of Napoleon, "It is truly a wonderful sensation to
see such an individual, concentrated here on a single point, astride a single horse, yet reaching
across the world and ruling it."
Since the university was in disarray and his own financial situation desperate, Hegel arranged
through his friend F. I. Niethammer to become editor of a newspaper, the Bamberger Zeitung. He
held this position for a year, and on Nov. 15, 1808, thanks once again to Niethammer, he was
appointed headmaster of the gymnasium, or secondary school, at Nuremberg.

25

knowledge, true freedom is not separation but the most complete relatedness. The free man is
actively at home in and with both nature and history.

Hegel's influence on subsequent generations is incalculable. It has been said that the history of
European thought since Hegel has been a series of revolts against his ideas. No thinker since
has combined such ambition with such rigor and insight, and many who are sympathetic to his
achievement regard his legacy as the "crisis of philosophy" which so preoccupies philosophers a
century later.

Berlin and Fame

In 1817 Hegel was granted a professorship at Berlin. There he quickly found himself the center
of a following, though he was hardly a seeker of followers. On the contrary, he took pains
to discourage what he called "tutelage." It is reported, moreover, that he preferred the company
of affable and urbane folk to that of earnest intellectuals.

Mao Zedong

By this time Hegel's enthusiasm for the French Revolution had waned, and to some it appeared
that he was an apologist for Prussian reaction. However, his major political work - the only book
he published while at Berlin - confounds such a simple interpretation. Here he insists, "Whatever
happens, every individual is a child of his time; so philosophy too is its own time apprehended in
thought." It is for statesmen, not philosophers, to prescribe for tomorrow. Published in 1821, the
book has a double title: Naturrecht und Staatswissenschaft im Grundrisse and Grundlinien der
Philosophie des Rechts(translated by T. M. Knox as Hegel's Philosophy of Right, 1952).

Mao Zedong was born in 1893 and he died in 1976. Mao Zedong is considered to be the father
of Communist China and along side Sun Yat-sen and Chiang Kai-shek played a fundamental
part in China's recent history.

The sphere of reality examined in political philosophy is "objective Spirit." But the highest sphere,
in which the accidents of nationality, economics, geography, and climate are transcended, is
"absolute Spirit," which develops through three kinds of activity: art, religion, and philosophy.
Although Hegel lectured on these subjects regularly, he did not write a book on them. However,
some former students, after his death, compiled and published their notes from the lectures. A
portion of these notes has been published as On Art, Religion, and Philosophy, edited by J.
Glenn Gray (1970). Hegel's attempt to ferret out the truth of Spirit is a study of history, but a
special kind of study since history is comprehended as the development of human freedom,
rather than as a series of events and stories.

He first encountered Marxism while he worked as a library assistant at Peking University. In

1921, he co-founded the Chinese Communist Party. Mao gave a geographic slant to Marxism as
he felt that within an Asiatic society, communists had to concentrate on the countryside rather
than the industrial towns. In reality, this was a logical belief as China had very little industry but
many millions involved with agriculture. Mao believed that a revolutionary elite would only be
found in the peasantry and not among those who worked in towns.

Mao was born in Chaochan in Hunan province. He came from a peasant family. As with all
peasants living in Nineteenth Century China, his upbringing was hard and he experienced no
luxuries.

With Zhou Enlai, Mao established a revolutionary base on the border of Hunan. In 1931, Mao set
up a Chinese Soviet republic in Kiangsi. This lasted until 1934 when Mao and his followers were
forced to leave Kiangsi and head for Shensi in the legendary Long Marchwhich lasted to 1935.
Here they were relatively safe from the Kuomintang lead by Chiang Kai-shek but far removed
from the real seat of power in China Peking (Beijing).

Hegel became rector of the university in 1830. The next year he wrote a critical study of the
situation in England, On the English Reform Bill, parts of which were published in a Prussian
journal. The remainder was censored by state authorities to avoid antagonizing the English. For
the fall semester of 1831, he announced two lecture courses: philosophy of law and the history
of philosophy. He gave his first lectures on November 10; on November 14 Hegel succumbed
to cholera, then epidemic in Europe.

From 1937 to 1945, the enmity between the KMT and the Communists was put to one side as
both concentrated their resources on the Japanese who had launched a full-scale invasion
of China in 1937. It was during this time that Mao developed his knowledge about guerrilla
warfare that he was to use with great effect in the civil war against the KMT once the war with
Japan had ended in 1945.

26

By the spring of 1948, Mao switched from guerrilla attacks to full-scale battles. The KMT had
been effectively broken by the skill of Maos guerrilla tactics and defeat was not long in coming.
In October 1949, Mao was appointed Chairman of the Peoples Republic of China.

I.

Introduction

Henry David Thoreau, one of America's premier philosophers, has, over the course of time, been
categorized on many levels. His writing is beautiful and puts him in the great tradition of the
romantic period. He is also easily identified as a part of the transcendental movement in
American intellectual history. While time has brought over a century of criticism to his text
Walden, much of the criticism has been focused on analyzing the text in a variety of traditions
that can place it historically. These analyses often attempt to classify the text. Such
classification risks a limited understanding of Walden. What has been lost in much of the
literature surrounding Walden is the radical philosophical message that Thoreau is sending his
reader. What is unique about Walden as compared to much of the other philosophy of the period
is that Thoreau is speaking to individuals to reconsider their lives, not simply to society in an
attempt for greater social change. Stanly Cavell writes on the importance of Walden: "In
rereading Walden twenty years after first reading it, I seemed to find a book of sufficient
intellectual scope and consistency to have established or inspired a tradition of thinking. One
reason it did not is that American culture has never really believed in its capacity to produce
anything of permanent value except itself. So it forever overpraises and undervalues its
achievements." (Cavell 1972: 32 33) In reading and studying Walden in preparation for this
project, I feel confident in saying that Cavell's statement on the text and the American culture
would leave Thoreau with a great feeling of accomplishment. Not only is Cavell correct in his
praise of the text, but also in his assessment of society as Thoreau has critiqued it throughout
Walden. In this paper, I will examine the various important arguments given for different
interpretations of Walden. These are interpretations of Walden as an ecological text, as a sacred
or spiritual text and as a critique of society. Each of these interpretations holds great merit in
reading Thoreau, but when used to limit ideology surrounding understandings of the text,
Thoreau's true meaning is lost. I will argue that in Walden, Thoreau asks readers to consider a
paradigm shift in their lives towards who they really are. To do this, the individuals must take
themselves out of a life that is defined by society and enter into a life that is true to themselves.
The experience with the natural environment at Walden Pond serves as an instigator for this
process in Thoreau's life.

He governed a country that was many years behind the worlds post-war powers. Chinas
problems were huge and Mao decided to introduce radical solutions for Chinas domestic
weaknesses rather than rely on conservative ones.
From 1950 on Mao introduced land reforms and the first Five Year Plan started in 1953. Peasant
co-operatives were set up. In 1958, the Great Leap Forward was introduced as were the first
land communes. Though he used the term "Five Year Plan", Mao did not accept the theory that
all ideas had to start with Russia and China would have to follow. In fact, Mao remained very
independent of Russia and publicly criticised the rule of Khrushchev when he became leader of
Russia.
In 1959, Mao gave up the position of head of state. This went to Liu Shao-chi. He did remain
party chairman and concentrated his efforts on ideological changes. From 1960 to 1965, a
struggle took place between Liu and Mao over who were the more important - the industrial
workers or the peasants. Mao still placed his faith in the peasants. Liu favoured the urban
workers.
This clash formed the background to the Cultural Revolution of 1966 when Mao openly and
successfully sided with the peasants. Mao had sheer numbers on his side as China was still an
agricultural nation despite exploding an atomic bomb in 1964. From 1966 on, some essays by
Mao entitled "Thoughts" became all but compulsory reading for Chinese people especially the
young who Mao actively courted. This was to become Maos famous "Little Red Book".
Mao continually proved to the Chinese that he was fit to lead them by swimming miles down the
Yangste River each year. He remained leader of China in the later years of his life though Zhou
Enlai did much of the foreign policy work.

II.

Maos death in 1976, plunged China into national grief.

Background

To truly understand the Walden experiment, one must first examine the project in relation to
Thoreau's life. Reading Walden with knowledge of Thoreau's life in mind is necessary because
one can see the dramatic shift in his relation to the world before and after his time at Walden

Henry David Thoreau's Walden: A Radical Philosophical Charge for Individuality

27

Pond. Thoreau was a Harvard man and became acquainted there with the work of Ralph Waldo
Emerson. Emerson and Thoreau later became close companions, and for the first part of
Thoreau's professional career it was hard to distinguish between the two philosophers. Thoreau
was a part of the transcendental tradition in American history. The Transcendental Club, which
met in Concord, became active while Thoreau was still at Harvard. Emerson and others founded
this club with several common beliefs:

III.

Thoreau as an Ecological Philosopher

William J. Wolf creates an interesting perspective on Thoreau as a part of an ecological tradition

in philosophy. The chapters in Walden that most often place Thoreau in this tradition are "Winter
Animals" "The Ponds" and "The Pond in Winter". Thoreau's careful study of the pond,
measuring depth and other aspects of it through observation, provided detailed and accurate
information about the natural environment. Thoreau also made groundbreaking discoveries
about the succession of forest trees and was active in an early form of forest management. His
Journal also exemplifies the attention to detail and interest in the natural world that dominated
much of his thoughts during his time at Walden Pond. It is also clear from Thoreau's Journal and
Walden that he had the unique perspective of seeing human society as intruding into an
ecosystem that belongs to the wild. The natural response to Walden often seems to understand
it in a tradition of writing that calls for a return to the natural world, the world of ant battles and
cracking ice and sprouting beans. Many readers of Walden may categorize it as a nature text
because of the setting and poetic language that is used to describe the environment. Wolf's
interpretation of the text as a possible part of the ecological tradition does not rely on such
superficial understandings of Walden as a nature text, but rather puts it into perspective with the
transcendentalist tradition and with Thoreau's foundational understanding of natural philosophy.

Maintaining that the senses were unreliable allies in the personal search for absolute truth, they
(transcendentalists) believed that insight into the universal reality of God came directly to each
individual human mind.
Rational Scientific investigation, the transcendentalists argued,
uncovered knowledge only of the inferior material world. To know God, each individual must set
aside reason and fall back on intuitive perception. Doing so, the individual would discover within
knowledge of genuine beauty, morality and justice. (McGregor 1997: 37 38)
As a student, Thoreau was first exposed to this school of thought by reading Emerson's book
Nature. He began to incorporate transcendental ideology into his thought and writing. After
Harvard, Thoreau met Emerson and the two became close friends. Over the course of the
several years, the two thinkers went through a series of losses and emotional experiences
together. Their bond became so close that much of history and criticism fails to see their
uniqueness as thinkers and authors. However, the distinction between the two became apparent
after the publication of Walden.

Wolf uses the term "ecologist" to refer to Thoreau with the definition of someone who
practices the "study of the household or environment." (Wolf 1974: 147) The careful study of
nature was important to Thoreau not only because of his experience at Walden Pond but also
because of the spiritual role that the natural world plays in his personal understanding of reality.
Wolf's emphasis on the spiritual aspect of a human relationship with nature has its foundation in
understanding Thoreau as a part of the transcendental movement. Wolf characterized two major
components to Thoreau's ecological philosophy. The first component is "a mystical sense of
oneness of all life through reciprocal interrelationships," and the second component is sensitivity
toward all of nature, organic and inorganic, and a desire for fellowship with all things." (Wolf
1974: 147) These two components shape Thoreau's philosophy about the relationship between
human beings and nature. For many philosophers, including members of the Transcendental
Club such as Emerson, the dominating quest for an understanding of reality bridged from the
relationship between people and nature to God.
By looking to the natural world,
transcendentalists would claim one becomes open to a relationship with God that is not found in
the modern world. Thoreau found, in his time at Walden, that the bridge to God was not
necessary. Harmony and spirituality that Thoreau found in a life directed from a relationship with
nature brings life to a new level. This level fulfills his spiritual needs completely, leaving no

Thoreau's writing is often characterized as part of the romantic tradition in literature.

Romanticism of Thoreau's time was drawn towards depicting the natural world. This tradition
links Thoreau with other authors such as Wordsworth, Goethe, Poe, Melville, Emerson and many
others. (McIntosh 1974: 58) Thoreau's development of ideas of self and nature are, in the eyes
of literary scholars, created in the truly romantic way because of the life and vigor he puts into
the concepts as he writes. (McIntosh 1974: 50) Walden is often read as a part of a core
curriculum to understand these characteristics of the romantic period. Thoreau's work is often
cherished by literary scholars because of his amazing use of metaphor and satire. It is important
to remember that these romantic characteristics of Thoreau's work, such as his nature
metaphors and satirical statements about society, are simply that, and not a way to classify
Walden.

28

necessary bridge to a god outside of the natural world. Thoreau did not need to pray to a deity,
such as God, that existed outside of the physical world of nature because he found spirituality
within nature.

i. Response

To write, Thoreau must use words, such as nature, that in our language hold the
connotation of an attitude that views human society a separate and above the natural world.
Wolf spends a great deal of time clarifying the use of the word nature as he believes Thoreau
meant it. "Nature for Thoreau is therapy for tired and despairing people." (Wolf 1974 pg. 152)
While this is not a definition of nature, this explanation does illustrate the purpose Wolf believes
nature serves for human beings. Wolf continues to outline the positive effects of a relationship
with nature to the self, ranging from the preservation of an intellectual mind to a renewal of spirit
and soul. Wolf develops his theory that, when one cannot go into the woods, Thoreau believes
that one may become closer to such renewal through reading about the natural world. Thoreau
found such peace when reading natural histories during the winters at Walden Pond. The text
Walden can easily serve a similar purpose for its reader.

Wolf provides many accurate reflections on Thoreau's philosophy in Walden. These glimpses
that Wolf provides at the harmony and spiritual side of a relationship with the natural world do not
extend to the entire scope of Thoreau's philosophy. While transcendence through the natural
world is a way that both Thoreau inWalden and his contemporaries in the Transcendental Club
achieved a better way of life, this is just one of the many levels at which Walden is attempting to
show the reader a way of life outside of society. There is never a point in the text at which the
reader should assume that a retreat into the natural world is the only way that they may achieve
a better life. Thoreau is very clear in showing that the Walden experiment worked in his life and
that it may not extend to everyone's experience. Wolf, by showing how the ecological emphasis
in this text, hits on the fact that through the Walden experiment Thoreau saw a better way to live
with a consciousness of his relationship to the various aspects the ecosystem. The ecological
perspective is the foundation from which one can draw themselves into Thoreau's philosophy,
but not the place to make conclusions about Walden as a whole.

In the transcendental tradition, Thoreau does not look at nature as a subject from which
he is separated, but looks through nature to understand greater meanings. Nature serves as a
viewfinder for transcendence. Thoreau wants to detail scientific facts about the natural world so
that they can become moral truths about how one is supposed to live. Wolf writes: "In Walden,
Thoreau wrote a mythology of human experience communicated in part, at least, by the
symbolism of nature as a universalizing agent." (Wolf 1974: 153) By categorizing nature as a
"universalizing agent" Wolf is developing Thoreau's use of nature in the text to show that humans
and the wild are a part of the same universal reality. In Walden Thoreau shifts between two
understandings about the relationship between nature and humans: the necessity of humans in
nature and the need to keep the presence of people from overwhelming nature. Wolf sees the
median of these two understandings in Walden in Thoreau's passion for the wild. The wild is the
natural environment, free of human society. It exists in an interdependence of relationships of
living creatures and organic matter that is untamed by any part of humanity. The wild serves as
a visible sign of reality that exists with people but without the corruption of society. Wolf sees
Walden as an effective text because it shows the reader the wild, its power and its spirit. The
simple life that Thoreau led at Walden Pond exemplifies the possibilities of understanding nature
and human existence before the institutionalized, cultural understanding of life that exists in
American society. For Wolf, Walden is a text founded on ecological philosophy that is developed
around the possibility of spiritual transcendence in nature.

Thoreau deals with the idea that Walden will be placed in the tradition of nature writers
within the text. Stanley Cavell gives an interpretation of the chapter entitled "The Bean Field"
that shows the satirical nature of some of Thoreau's work. In this chapter, Thoreau details the
experience of growing the beans. Thoreau takes us through the process by detailing plowing the
field, planting the beans and watching them sprout and grow. Thoreau's objective is not only to
feed himself, but also to know the beans. This chapter is extremely detailed and gives a great
since of the sort of meditative process that can occur in planting, nourishing and growing plants.
Thoreau himself refers to the process of growing beans as a parable and allies the action of
weeding the bean field with the actions of the epic Trojan War. In this chapter, Thoreau has a
mocking tone for both parable and epic, two qualifying terms that have often been used to
describe much of his text. Cavell writes: "What the writer is mocking in the obviousness of this
parable is parable-making itself, those moralizings over nature that had become during the past
century a literary pastime, and with which his writing would be confused." (Cavell 1972: 21) As
we see in this chapter, Thoreau can poke humor both at his contemporaries within the
transcendental and romantic traditions and at his own work. It is clear that, while Thoreau
respected other thinkers, such as Emerson, he did not want Walden to fall into a category of
works that society was producing and praising during the period. Walden reaches beyond
showing its readers the beauty of nature and their place in it to challenging the very nature of
human beings.

29

IV.

Walden as a Spiritual Text

The connection between Thoreau's theory and the fundamental understanding of mind/body
dualism in Platonic thought cannot be ignored. Pickard sees Thoreau's understanding of the
body through a lens of dualism; this dualism is characterized with the low being appetites, the
high being spiritual and the harmonizer being mediation of the two. Both the savage and
spiritual aspects are necessary within human beings, but spirituality can only be achieved when
the two co-exist in harmony, maintaining moderation within the soul. Thoreau calls these
instincts toward a spiritual life "the faintest but constant suggestions of his (Thoreau's) genius."
Pickard sees Thoreau's "genius" as the highest reality, the "inner being through which the
Absolute is revealed." (Pickard 1964: 86) In Pickard's understanding of "Higher Laws," the
"Absolute" is the spirituality that may be achieved when the savage within a human is being
moderated by the genius. This concept refers back to the Emersonian concept of self reliance.
The genius, unlike the appetite instincts of the body, cannot mislead man. The genius is a part
of the nature of man that stands in contrast with man's instincts towards savagery. The genius is
often overpowered by man's savage nature because man does not have access to his genius
without disciplining his savage instincts, which he must learn to do. When directed, the genius
gives man insight to the "higher laws." Higher laws are characterized as "poetic faculties" that
Thoreau associates with the imagination as "innate and beyond mere understanding which
enables man's mind to perceive and ultimate supersensous reality." (Pickard 1964: 87) The
ultimate reality is achieved when the spirituality of a human soul is guided by harmony between
the savage and the genius.

John B. Pickard provides an interpretation of what he believes to be the basic principles of

Walden in his essay "The Religion of 'Higher Laws'". (Pickard 1968: 85-92) Pickard believes
that "Higher Laws", a central chapter in Walden, serves as an illumination of the Walden
experience. Metaphors of "Higher Laws," when connected to the rest of the book, provide a
consistent series of images of rebirth and renewal, growth and fruition and daylight and dawn.
Pickard's analysis of the chapter as a guide and outline of the true "religion" behind Walden puts
the texts in the tradition of transcendentalist ideology, because nature serves as the link between
man and his spirituality. The chapter "reflects Emerson's concepts in Nature, that every man
possesses an inner spiritual instinct which, if carefully nurtured, will reveal the divine. Though
this force may be weakened and coarsened by man's predatory appetite, it can elevate this
physical drive and direct it towards a spiritual goal." (Pickard 1968: 85) From this basis comes
the paradoxical nature of man's search for spirituality that is dominant in "Higher Laws" and
throughoutWalden as a whole.
The natural instincts toward savagery, which Thoreau develops at the start of the chapter
with a metaphor about food and appetite, are a part of the complete man, and when they are
moderated and disciplined, they can promote a greater religious end. The religious end is
achieved when man transcends his natural instincts towards savagery. The natural instincts are
parts of the total man that are below reason. They have the capacity to dehumanize man if they
are let free to dominate behavior. In "Higher Laws", we see Thoreau struggle with his savage
instinct to eat a woodchuck raw. Thoreau writes: "I caught a glimpse of a woodchuck stealing
across my path, and felt a strange thrill of savage delight, and was strongly tempted to seize and
devour him raw; not that I was hungry then, except for the wildness he represented." (Thoreau
1958: 157) Thoreau's hunger is an internal desire to fulfill the savage side of his natural
instincts. If Thoreau follows through on such instincts toward savagery he loses his humanness
and becomes a part of the wild.

Thoreau is optimistic that most men can achieve this pure state of existence because of
the powerful natural appeal of the opposing natural instincts. As "Higher Laws" develops,
Thoreau begins to equate instincts with temperance and chastity. This reflects his faith that the
genius can come to a front within man's nature and the savage instincts can be tamed.
Temperance and chastity are equalizing characteristics when applied to the natural instincts
toward savagery. The human exercise of temperance and chastity rely on the will and discipline
to transform the brutish appetites of the body into direct "channels of grace and sainthood."
(Pickard 1964: 86)

Thoreau sees another instinct in man. This instinct is towards a higher, spiritual life. Pickard
writes:

The movement of the seasons throughout Walden is important to understanding the

spiritual nature of the text. Spring and summer time are periods full of attractions for the savage
appetites of the soul. The activity and stimulation of spring and summer drain the soul of
deliberation and direction towards "higher laws." Within Walden we see this strain throughout
nature as it blooms, mates and battles during the warm months. Fall serves as the preparation
for the winter. We see the animals scavenge for nuts and such to prepare their cabinets for the

This instinct symbolizes an attraction toward the spiritual existing in all men, which transcends
the senses and the individual ego without denying them. Fundamentally, the chapter is
concerned with the complex problem of reconciling the discordant attraction of the wild (body)
and of the good (soul). (Pickard 1968: 86)

30

long cold winter. Winter is a time for isolation that gives the complete man an opportunity for
"religious rebirth to his vital spiritual core." (Pickard 1964: 87) The placement of "Higher Laws"
in the text of Walden affirms the understanding of the importance of winter as a period of
isolation and opportunity for rebirth.

escape the paradoxical struggle Thoreau presents in "Higher Laws". John Farmer is a folk hero
for this text. He is an everyman, but his occupation as a farmer is very important because his
profession brings him into closeness with nature. This makes him "instinctively responsive to
nature's spiritual significance." (Pickard 1964: 90) John Farmer sits on his doorstep, which
Pickard sees as a threshold or gateway to his house, society and nature. The action of sitting at
this threshold has prepared him for the intimations of higher law. Before he sat down, he
washed himself of the dirt of a hard days work. This act has implications both of baptism
(making John Farmer spiritually ready) and of a shift from being a brute man to an intellectual
man. Furthermore, the use of water is a symbol for rebirth and purity throughout the book.

The paradox of the two opposing natural instincts, savagery and genius, is developed in
"Higher Laws" through Thoreau's experience that makes up the text as a whole. The water-soulpurity image is an example of the connection of this paradox to the rest of the text. In "The
Ponds" the water is clear and pure. The pond is an embodiment of the higher laws and of God's
creation. In "Higher Laws" Thoreau sees the pond both as an embodiment that contains God but
also that contains equally the savage instinct of nature that can destroy God. The water is
cleansing, nourishing and clear but it also has a harsh side that will suffocate and devour any
who dare enter its waters. The paradox lies in the fact that the pure and divine can be destroyed
by the savage instincts within nature; this is disturbing for Thoreau. This image extends to man's
existence. Pickard finds the most disturbing part of this paradox to be that God keeps the
savage destructive instincts of man alive and constantly overpowering the spiritual needs of the
soul. Thoreau does not find transcendence of the savage natural instincts of man but
maintenance of temperance between the soul and the savage body as the reality of the human
condition. The natural world, where many scholars believe Thoreau has found spirituality, has
failed him. It has failed him because nature holds the savage instincts as primary, lacking the
taming genius that exists in human beings. "Higher Laws" shows that nature does not
necessarily reveal the divine; it can also reveal only the savage. In this chapter it seems that
Thoreau believes that spiritual rebirth occurs only when nature is overcome. Man is reborn
spiritually when he overcomes a life directed by savagery. This rebirth cannot occur without a
deliberate focus to overcome his natural instincts throughout his life. Thoreau is struggling with
the transcendental tradition that he longs to validate with his Walden experience and the reality
that the natural world may not truly be the key to transcendence. What Thoreau must achieve at
the end of "Higher Laws" is a qualification for the Walden experiment in relation to the
paradoxical way he has represented the dueling parts of man and nature. This is necessary so
that his theory does not destroy the impact of the text. Thoreau does this by telling a parable,
the story of John Farmer.

The time is set on a September evening, symbolizing the transition of the seasons. The
transition to winter after the fall's harvest is a transition into "enclosure, isolation, and ultimately
spiritual renewal." (Pickard 1964: 90) The cool darkness of the evening in which John Farmer is
resting comes after a hard days work (activity) in the hot sun. This is also symbolic of the
change of season that is about to occur. John Farmer is resting while many of his neighbors are
worried about the possibility of frost. This is not of concern to him. He sees beyond the danger
of the frost to its spiritual significance.
John Farmer is partially engrossed with thinking about the day's activities when he
begins to hear the music of a flute. The music is symbolic of man's slow emergence to divinity.
For man to reach a state in which he knows the divine, he must slowly overcome his appetites
and train himself to let "higher laws" guide his life. This is a gradual process. Entranced by the
music, John Farmer realizes that the products of his labor and mental planning are preparatory
for the spiritual work to come. "As he responds more fully to the music, time and space are
transcended, for the notes do away with 'the street, the village, and the state in which he lived.'"
(Pickard 1964: 91) He finds a new divine state of blessedness.
Thoreau does not give us a formula to achieve this mystical experience. Rather, we are
left wondering what John Farmer must do to maintain this transcended state. According to
Pickard's interpretation, we find that he must return to his labor and through it seek the higher
laws. He must hold a strict spiritual economy so that he may mesh his vision with his actual life.
The mind must make its way back to the body so that it may redeem it. And John Farmer must
treat his body with respect, as it is the house both of his natural instinct but also of his instinct
towards higher law. The labor of farming unites the three necessary aspects of John Farmers
life: austerity, redemption and respect. The parable closes with John Farmer's attempt "to
harmonize the physical and the spiritual." (Pickard 1964: 90 92)

The parable of John Farmer serves to restate the central religious meaning of the
Walden experience; "that man is both natural and divine and that he must discover the spiritual
laws which are a part of nature and yet beyond it." (Pickard 1964: 90) Pickard provides a
detailed and lengthy interpretation of this parable that shows the reader of Walden how to

31

The German Ideology, co-written with Engels in 1845, was also unpublished but this is where we
see Marx beginning to develop his theory of history. The Communist Manifestois perhaps Marx's
most widely read work, even if it is not the best guide to his thought. This was again jointly
written with Engels and published with a great sense of excitement as Marx returned to Germany
from exile to take part in the revolution of 1848. With the failure of the revolution Marx moved to
London where he remained for the rest of his life. He now concentrated on the study of
economics, producing, in 1859, his Contribution to a Critique of Political Economy. This is largely
remembered for its Preface, in which Marx sketches out what he calls the guiding principles of
his thought, on which many interpretations of historical materialism are based. Marx's main
economic work is, of course, Capital Volume 1, published in 1867, although Volume 3, edited by
Engels, and published posthumously in 1894, contains much of interest. Finally, the late
pamphletCritique of the Gotha Programme (1875) is an important source for Marx's reflections
on the nature and organisation of communist society.

Karl Marx
Karl Marx (18181883) is best known not as a philosopher but as a revolutionary communist,
whose works inspired the foundation of many communist regimes in the twentieth century. It is
hard to think of many who have had as much influence in the creation of the modern world.
Trained as a philosopher, Marx turned away from philosophy in his mid-twenties, towards
economics and politics. However, in addition to his overtly philosophical early work, his later
writings have many points of contact with contemporary philosophical debates, especially in the
philosophy of history and the social sciences, and in moral and political philosophy. Historical
materialism Marx's theory of history is centered around the idea that forms of society rise
and fall as they further and then impede the development of human productive power. Marx sees
the historical process as proceeding through a necessary series of modes of production,
characterized by class struggle, culminating in communism. Marx's economic analysis of
capitalism is based on his version of the labour theory of value, and includes the analysis of
capitalist profit as the extraction of surplus value from the exploited proletariat. The analysis of
history and economics come together in Marx's prediction of the inevitable economic breakdown
of capitalism, to be replaced by communism. However Marx refused to speculate in detail about
the nature of communism, arguing that it would arise through historical processes, and was not
the realisation of a pre-determined moral ideal.

The works so far mentioned amount only to a small fragment of Marx's opus, which will
eventually run to around 100 large volumes when his collected works are completed. However
the items selected above form the most important core from the point of view of Marx's
connection with philosophy, although other works, such as the 18th Brumaire of Louis
Napoleon (1852), are often regarded as equally important in assessing Marx's analysis of
concrete political events. In what follows, I shall concentrate on those texts and issues which
have been given the greatest attention within the Anglo-American philosophical literature.
The Early Writings
The intellectual climate within which the young Marx worked was dominated by the influence of
Hegel, and the reaction to Hegel by a group known as the Young Hegelians, who rejected what
they regarded as the conservative implications of Hegel's work. The most significant of these
thinkers was Ludwig Feuerbach, who attempted to transform Hegel's metaphysics, and, thereby,
provided a critique of Hegel's doctrine of religion and the state. A large portion of the
philosophical content of Marx's works written in the early 1840s is a record of his struggle to
define his own position in reaction to that of Hegel and Feuerbach and those of the other Young
Hegelians.

Marx's Life and Works

Karl Marx was born in Trier, in the German Rhineland, in 1818. Although his family was Jewish
they converted to Christianity so that his father could pursue his career as a lawyer in the face of
Prussia's anti-Jewish laws. A precocious schoolchild, Marx studied law in Bonn and Berlin, and
then wrote a PhD thesis in Philosophy, comparing the views of Democritus and Epicurus. On
completion of his doctorate in 1841 Marx hoped for an academic job, but he had already fallen in
with too radical a group of thinkers and there was no real prospect. Turning to journalism, Marx
rapidly became involved in political and social issues, and soon found himself having to consider
communist theory. Of his many early writings, four, in particular, stand out. Contribution to a
Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right, Introduction, and On The Jewish Question, were both
written in 1843 and published in the Deutsch-Franzsische Jahrbcher. The Economic and
Philosophical Manuscripts, written in Paris 1844, and the Theses on Feuerbach of 1845,
remained unpublished in Marx's lifetime.

Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts

The Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts cover a wide range of topics, including much
interesting material on private property and communism, and on money, as well as developing
Marx's critique of Hegel. However, the manuscripts are best known for their account of alienated
labour. Here Marx famously depicts the worker under capitalism as suffering from four types of
alienated labour. First, from the product, which as soon as it is created is taken away from its

32

producer. Second, in productive activity (work) which is experienced as a torment. Third, from
species-being, for humans produce blindly and not in accordance with their truly human powers.
Finally, from other human beings, where the relation of exchange replaces the satisfaction of
mutual need. That these categories overlap in some respects is not a surprise given Marx's
remarkable methodological ambition in these writings. Essentially he attempts to apply a
Hegelian deduction of categories to economics, trying to demonstrate that all the categories of
bourgeois economics wages, rent, exchange, profit, etc. are ultimately derived from an
analysis of the concept of alienation. Consequently each category of alienated labour is
supposed to be deducible from the previous one. However, Marx gets no further than deducing
categories of alienated labour from each other. Quite possibly in the course of writing he came to
understand that a different methodology is required for approaching economic issues.
Nevertheless we are left with a very rich text on the nature of alienated labour. The idea of nonalienation has to be inferred from the negative, with the assistance of one short passage at the
end of the text On James Mill in which non-alienated labour is briefly described in terms which
emphasise both the immediate producer's enjoyment of production as a confirmation of his or
her powers, and also the idea that production is to meet the needs of others, thus confirming for
both parties our human essence as mutual dependence. Both sides of our species essence are
revealed here: our individual human powers and our membership in the human community.

Contribution to a Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right, Introduction

This work is home to Marx's notorious remark that religion is the opiate of the people, and it is
here that Marx sets out his account of religion in most detail. Just as importantly Marx here also
considers the question of how revolution might be achieved in Germany, and sets out the role of
the proletariat in bringing about the emancipation of society as a whole.With regard to religion,
Marx fully accepted Feuerbach's claim in opposition to traditional theology that human beings
had created God in their own image; indeed a view that long pre-dated Feuerbach. Feuerbach's
distinctive contribution was to argue that worshipping God diverted human beings from enjoying
their own human powers. While accepting much of Feuerbach's account Marx's criticizes
Feuerbach on the grounds that he has failed to understand why people fall into religious
alienation and so is unable to explain how it can be transcended. Marx's explanation is that
religion is a response to alienation in material life, and therefore cannot be removed until human
material life is emancipated, at which point religion will wither away. Precisely what it is about
material life that creates religion is not set out with complete clarity. However, it seems that at
least two aspects of alienation are responsible. One is alienated labour, which will be explored
shortly. A second is the need for human beings to assert their communal essence. Whether or
not we explicitly recognize it, human beings exist as a community, and what makes human life
possible is our mutual dependence on the vast network of social and economic relations which
engulf us all, even though this is rarely acknowledged in our day-to-day life. Marx's view appears
to be that we must, somehow or other, acknowledge our communal existence in our institutions.
At first it is deviously acknowledged by religion, which creates a false idea of a community in
which we are all equal in the eyes of God. After the post-Reformation fragmentation of religion,
where religion is no longer able to play the role even of a fake community of equals, the state fills
this need by offering us the illusion of a community of citizens, all equal in the eyes of the law.
But the state and religion will both be transcended when a genuine community of social and
economic equals is created.

It is important to understand that for Marx alienation is not merely a matter of subjective feeling,
or confusion. The bridge between Marx's early analysis of alienation and his later social theory is
the idea that the alienated individual is a plaything of alien forces, albeit alien forces which are
themselves a product of human action. In our daily lives we take decisions that have unintended
consequences, which then combine to create large-scale social forces which may have an
utterly unpredicted effect. In Marx's view the institutions of capitalism themselves the
consequences of human behaviour come back to structure our future behaviour, determining
the possibilities of our action. For example, for as long as a capitalist intends to stay in business
he must exploit his workers to the legal limit. Whether or not wracked by guilt the capitalist must
act as a ruthless exploiter. Similarly the worker must take the best job on offer; there is simply no
other sane option. But by doing this we reinforce the very structures that oppress us. The urge to
transcend this condition, and to take collective control of our destiny whatever that would
mean in practice is one of the motivating and sustaining elements of Marx's social analysis.

Of course we are owed an answer to the question how such a society could be created. It is
interesting to read Marx here in the light of his third Thesis on Feuerbach where he criticises an
alternative theory. The crude materialism of Robert Owen and others assumes that human
beings are fully determined by their material circumstances, and therefore to bring about an
emancipated society it is necessary and sufficient to make the right changes to those material
circumstances. However, how are those circumstances to be changed? By an enlightened
philanthropist like Owen who can miraculously break through the chain of determination which
ties down everyone else? Marx's response, in both the Theses and the Critique, is that the

33

proletariat can break free only by their own self-transforming action. Indeed if they do not create
the revolution for themselves guided, of course, by the philosopher they will not be fit to
receive it.

consequences of human behaviour come back to structure our future behaviour, determining
the possibilities of our action. For example, for as long as a capitalist intends to stay in business
he must exploit his workers to the legal limit. Whether or not wracked by guilt the capitalist must
act as a ruthless exploiter. Similarly the worker must take the best job on offer; there is simply no
other sane option. But by doing this we reinforce the very structures that oppress us. The urge to
transcend this condition, and to take collective control of our destiny whatever that would
mean in practice is one of the motivating and sustaining elements of Marx's social analysis.

2.3 Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts

The Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts cover a wide range of topics, including much
interesting material on private property and communism, and on money, as well as developing
Marx's critique of Hegel. However, the manuscripts are best known for their account of alienated
labour. Here Marx famously depicts the worker under capitalism as suffering from four types of
alienated labour. First, from the product, which as soon as it is created is taken away from its
producer. Second, in productive activity (work) which is experienced as a torment. Third, from
species-being, for humans produce blindly and not in accordance with their truly human powers.
Finally, from other human beings, where the relation of exchange replaces the satisfaction of
mutual need. That these categories overlap in some respects is not a surprise given Marx's
remarkable methodological ambition in these writings. Essentially he attempts to apply a
Hegelian deduction of categories to economics, trying to demonstrate that all the categories of
bourgeois economics wages, rent, exchange, profit, etc. are ultimately derived from an
analysis of the concept of alienation. Consequently each category of alienated labour is
supposed to be deducible from the previous one. However, Marx gets no further than deducing
categories of alienated labour from each other. Quite possibly in the course of writing he came to
understand that a different methodology is required for approaching economic issues.
Nevertheless we are left with a very rich text on the nature of alienated labour. The idea of nonalienation has to be inferred from the negative, with the assistance of one short passage at the
end of the text On James Mill in which non-alienated labour is briefly described in terms which
emphasise both the immediate producer's enjoyment of production as a confirmation of his or
her powers, and also the idea that production is to meet the needs of others, thus confirming for
both parties our human essence as mutual dependence. Both sides of our species essence are
revealed here: our individual human powers and our membership in the human community.
It is important to understand that for Marx alienation is not merely a matter of subjective feeling,
or confusion. The bridge between Marx's early analysis of alienation and his later social theory is
the idea that the alienated individual is a plaything of alien forces, albeit alien forces which are
themselves a product of human action. In our daily lives we take decisions that have unintended
consequences, which then combine to create large-scale social forces which may have an
utterly unpredicted effect. In Marx's view the institutions of capitalism themselves the

34

35

MODERN POLITICAL THINKERS

COMPILED BY:
MELLO JANE G. DEDOSIN
AB Pol Sci 3

SUBMITTED TO:
MRS. RAZEL G. TAQUISO
Adviser

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