Classical Social Theory - Essay Example

Ernst Cassirer, The Philosophy of the Enlightenment, trans. Fritz Koelln and James Pettegrove (Princeton: Princeton Press, 1951), 134. Of course, any particular thinker's orientation toward religion must be understood in the context of his specific social and political circumstances. Thus the bitterness of the French enlightenment critique of the traditional Church is not entirely replicated in the religious thought of the English enlightenment. This distinction prompted Ernst Cassirer to remark that, although the German and English enlightenments pose problems for a traditional view of enlightenment as defined by a "critical and skeptical attitude toward religion," the French enlightenment uniquely appears to confirm such a view. Condorcet, Sketch, for a Historical Picture of the Progress of the Human Mind, 77. In Condorcet's historical account of the heroic march of human reason, it is invariably priestly deception and barbarity which threatens future progress or plunges mankind into lengthy periods of darkness and ignorance. Speaking for many of his philosophe peers, Condorcet depicts the Middle Ages as history's bleakest epoch: "Nothing could penetrate the profound darkness save a few shafts of talent, a few rays of kindness and magnanimity. Man's only achievements were theological day-dreaming and superstitious imposture, his only morality religious intolerance." James Byrne, Religion and the Enlightenment: Front Descartes to Kant (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1996), ch. 5, 99-123. The French enlightenment's special virulence toward the contemporary institutions of organized religion can be attributed to the uniquely powerful position of the French clergy as members of the ruling elite. The resolution of the Gallican controversy in 1682 cemented an especially close relationship between the clergy and the crown in France. Moreover, French religious dissenters and freethinkers confronted an especially hostile and oppressive environment in the aftermath of the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, guaranteeing minimal toleration to Protestants, in 1685. This atmosphere of intolerance and rigid absolutism bred a particularly bitter anticlericalism; the perceived power machinations and profligacy of the clergy encouraged scathing denunciations of priestly hypocrisy and cynical manipulation. In relatively more tolerant Protestant England, such intense animosity was unlikely to arise. Nonetheless, the basic principles of enlightenment thought produced skeptical and critical accounts of revealed religion across national boundaries, and English deists were especially active in promulgating the foundation for a more rational, simplified, and less doctrinaire faith. Voltaire, Letters in England , trans. Leonard Tancock (New York: Penguin Books, 1980), 120. In his final letter from England, Voltaire systematically attempts to dismantle the claims of Blaise Pascal in the Pensees. Profoundly disturbed by the "hateful light" in which Pascal appears to depict man, Voltaire proposes to "champion humanity against this sublime misanthropist." Voltaire's crusade against Pascal's misanthropy neatly illustrates many of the central objections which enlightenment thinkers made against religion, and Christianity in particular. Voltaire, Letters in England , trans. Leonard Tancock (New York: Penguin Books, 1980), 120-122. Voltaire, a relative moderate on religious questions, does not actually seek to dismantle belief in God.' Rather, he takes exception to the misery, wickedness, and helplessness which Pascal, attributes to mankind's natural condition, as well as the social disarray which is held to follow from man's corruption. Claiming that Pascal "attributes to the essence of our nature what applies only to certain men," Voltaire does not accept that original sin is a permanent and irrevocable stain on all of humanity.' Rather, he insists that man has both good and bad impulses, and that we can use our reason to govern our passions so as to lead upright lives: "He [man] is, like everything else we behold, a mixture of good and bad, of pleasure and pain. He is provided with passions to make him act, and with reason to govern his acts." This objection to the pessimism of original sin, in particular its insistence that man is ultimately the hapless victim of his own base and vicious passions, is a core element in enlightenment optimism. Indeed, Cassirer holds that a unilateral opposition to original sin in fact unifies all the diverse thinkers and strands of the enlightenment: "The concept of original sin is the common opponent against which all the different trends of the philosophy of the Enlightenment join forces" insisting on mankind's capacity for goodness, Voltaire vindicates both reason and the passions, provided the proper relationship obtains between the two, and rescues man from a position of helpless dependence on a completely inscrutable and mysterious divine grace. Voltaire, Letters in England , trans. Leonard Tancock (New York: Penguin Books, 1980), 32. Responding explicitly to Pascal's contention that the highest achievement of reason is to recognize our own ignorance, Voltaire proclaims: This thought is a pure sophism, and the falsity consists in this word ignorance, used with two different meanings. A person who cannot read or write is ignorant, but a mathematician, because he is ignorant of the principles hidden in nature, is not at the degree of ignorance from which he set out when he began to learn to read. Newton did not know why a man can move his arm when he wants to, but he was nonetheless learned about everything else. Here again we confront a characteristic stance of enlightenment. Taking exception to Pascal's insistence that absent revelation, man is condemned to a state of absolute ignorance, Voltaire vindicates the power of human reason to deduce basic truths about the world. He certainly does not suggest that reason is all powerful in this regard, and recognizes there are limits upon our capacity for knowledge. Nonetheless, by affording reason some capacity to understand the world, Voltaire immediately carves out an independant sphere within which man can generate and use knowledge. The independence of this sphere allows for a purely secular pursuit of knowledge. Voltaire thus lays the groundwork for the independence of science and philosophy from Church dogma. Blaise Pascal, Pensees, trans. Isaac Taylorr (London: Fount Paperbacks, 1995). 1-38. For Pascal, man exists in a perpetual state of painful self-contradiction: simultaneously the most magisterial and the most pathetic of God's creations, man is continually tortured by his own self-awareness. Man's capacity to think affords him his dignity, yet at the same time, it reveals to him the depths of his degradation. The thinking principle allows man to understand and aspire to moral goodness, yet simultaneously it confronts him with his perpetual failure to reach his aspirations - the necessary consequence of original sin. Social life is ruled by vanity and a cutthroat competition for reputation and status, the result of the poisonous pride which infects our nature. Meanwhile, our search for certain knowledge of the world is perpetually derailed by the radical inadequacy of our corrupted and sinful reason; we find ourselves in a state of profound ignorance and uncertainty. Thus, any serious and sincere self-reflection can only lead man into a deep and profound unhappiness. Yet this portrait of man's bleak condition is not intended to produce despair as its end product. Rather, Pascal aims to persuade his readers of the necessity of faith and divine grace. Reason alone, in a godless world, can produce only misery. Man, left to his own devices, sinks to the level of beasts. Blaise Pascal, Pensees, trans. Isaac Taylor (London: Fount Paperbacks, 1995). 21. Pascal's interpretation of original sin produces not only moral but also epistemological despair. Our objective efforts to know the world are perpetually lead astray by our subjective passions and biases. Moreover, there is a fundamental disconnect between our very constitution and the requirements of knowledge: And what perhaps renders us totally incapable of knowing all things is, that while other objects are essentially simple, we are composed of two heterogeneous natures, soul and body; for it is impossible that the part of us which reasons should be anything but spiritual: and to presume that we are simply corporeal, would only exclude us more completely from the knowledge of things, since nothing is so inconceivable as the assertion, that matter can know itself. Blaise Pascal, Pensees, trans. Isaac Taylor (London: Fount Paperbacks, 1995). 68. Ultimately, he concludes that "the highest attainment of reason is to know that there are an infinite number of things beyond its reach9'- thus laying the groundwork for the necessary turn to faith." This faith stands as the only alternative to a radical Pyrrhonism: "What mainly supports the scheme of the Pyrrhonists is this, that apart from faith and Revelation we have no certainty of the first principles of knowledge ..." Blaise Pascal, Pensees, trans. Isaac Taylor (London: Fount Paperbacks, 1995). 7. Pascal derives an exceedingly pessimistic vision of human society from his depiction of prideful and degraded human nature. In many ways, his description of society prefigures Jean-Jacques Rousseau's damning portrait of modern civilization, though of course Rousseau did not attribute man's corruption to original sin, or to any inherent taint on human nature. Voltaire's reaction to Pascal thus replicates his reaction to Rousseau on many fronts-in both instances, he is determined to rebut the critique that man in society craves reputation and status to feed his vanity, and thus lives perpetually in the shadow of others' opinions. Pascal writes: We are not content with the life we have in ourselves, and in our individual being; we wish to live an imaginary life in the thoughts of others, and for this purpose, strive to make a figure in the world. We labour incessantly to cherish and adorn this imaginary being, and neglect the real one; and if we possess tranquility, or generosity, or fidelity, we are eager to make it known, that such virtues may be transferred to this creature of the imagination; in order to effect their union with it, we are willing to detach them from ourselves, and would be content to be cowards, if we could only gain the repute of being valiant. Read More