Don’t Panic!

1. Don’t Panic! One such reason why the unity and the coherence of the eighteenth-century culture of Enlightenment sometimes escapes us is that we too often understand it as primarily an episode in French cultural history. In fact France is from the standpoint of that culture itself the most backward of the enlightened nations. The French themselves often avowedly looked to English models, but England in turn was overshadowed by the achievements of the Scottish Enlightenment. The greatest figures of all were certainly German: Kant and Mozart. But for intellectual variety as well as intellectual range not even the Germans can outmatch David Hume, Adam Smith, Adam Ferguson, John Millar, Lord Kames and Lord Monboddo. Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue, 3d ed. (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2007), 37.

2. A Three-Stage History For a prerequisite for understanding the present disordered state of the imaginary world was to understand its history, a history that had to be written in three distinct stages. The first stage was that in which the natural sciences flourished, the second that in which they suffered catastrophe and the third that in which they were restored but in a damaged and disordered form. Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue, 3d ed. (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2007), 3.

3. MacIntyre’s History of Modern Morality Stage 1 Morality Flourishes (This part of the story gets told later on.) Stage 2 Catastrophe (16/17th centuries) Reformation & Jansenism (both 16th century) Scientific Revolution (16/17th centuries) Political Revolutions(17th century onwards) Stage 3A The Enlightenment (c1630-c1850) There is a broad consensus over inherited moral beliefs. Philosophy is part of the culture of the educated public. The Enlightenment project is the attempt by philosophers to provide rational foundation for those beliefs. Key figures: David Hume (1711-1776) Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) Søren Kierkegaard (1813-1855) Stage 3B Emotivist Culture (late 19th century to present) Moral consensus replaced by interminable moral disagreement. Emotivist culture obliterates the distinction between manipulative and non-manipulative social relations. Emotivist self lacks criteria for rational evaluation. Dominated by three characters: Manager Therapist Aesthete

4. What is the Enlightenment project? Short answer: the attempt to provide a rational justification for morality. “At the same time as they agree largely on the character of morality, they agree also upon what a rational justification of morality would have to be. Its key premises would characterize some feature or features of human nature; and the rules of morality would then be explained and justified as being those rules which a being possessing just such a human nature could be expected to accept.” Notice the universality of the project: to successfully complete the project would mean providing a justification of morality the validity of which any rational person should be able to recognize. Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue, 3d ed. (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2007), 51-52.

5. Key Figures of the Enlightenment Project 1.Hume: Morality is based on the passions. 2.Kant: Morality is based on reason. 3.Kierkegaard: Morality is based on choice.

6. Hume on reason It is not contrary to reason to prefer the destruction of the whole world to the scratching of my finger.  It is not contrary to reason for me to choose my total ruin, to prevent the least uneasiness of an Indian or person wholly unknown to me.  It is as little contrary to reason to prefer even my own acknowledged lesser good to my greater, and to have a more ardent affection for the former than the latter. David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature (1739-40), Book II. Part iii. Section 3. (Spelling modernized.)

7. Kant and Morality Kant had absolutely no doubt in the reality and authority of morality: “Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing admiration and awe, the more often and steadily reflection is occupied with them: the starry heaven above me and the moral law within me. Neither of them need I seek and merely suspect as if shrouded in obscurity or rapture beyond my own horizon; I see them before me and connect them immediately with my existence.” Immanuel Kant, Critique of Practical Reason, trans. Mary Gregor (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 133.

8. Kant vs. Hume “… is it not thought to be of the utmost necessity to work out for once a pure moral philosophy, completely cleansed of everything that may be only empirical and that belongs to anthropology? For, that there must be such a philosophy is clear of itself from the common idea of duty and of moral laws. Everyone must grant that a law, if it is to hold morally, that is, as a ground of an obligation, must carry with it absolute necessity; that, for example, the command “thou shalt not lie” does not hold only for human beings, as if other rational beings did not have to heed it, and so with all other moral laws properly so called; that, therefore, the ground of obligation here must not be sought in the nature of the human being or in the circumstances of the world in which he is placed, but a priori simply in concepts of pure reason; and that any other precept, which is based on principles of mere experience – even if it is universal in a certain respect – insofar as it rests in the least part on empirical grounds, perhaps only in terms of a motive, can indeed be called a practical rule but never a moral law.” Immanuel Kant, Grounding of the Metaphysics of Morals, trans. Mary Gregor (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 133.

9. Kierkegaard and the End of the Enlightenment Project The influence of negative arguments is equally clear in both Kant and Kierkegaard. Just as Hume seeks to found morality on the passions because his arguments have excluded the possibility of founding it on reason, so Kant founds it on reason because his arguments have excluded the possibility of founding it on the passions, and Kierkegaard on criterionless fundamental choice because of what he takes to be the compelling nature of the considerations which exclude both reason and the passions. Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue, 3d ed. (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2007), 49.