A Short History of Modern Philosophy: From Descartes to Wittgenstein

by Roger Scruton

  A SHORT HISTORY OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY

  This new edition of Roger Scruton's widely acclaimed Short History covers all the major thinkers in the Western tradition, from Descartes to Wittgenstein. It is an ideal introduction to philosophical history for all those with an interest in this fascinating subject.

  In order to reflect recent debates and advances in scholarship and in response to the explosion of interest in the history of philosophy, Roger Scruton has substantially revised his book, while retaining the lucid and accessible style of the original version. He has also enlarged and updated the bibliography.

  A Short History of Modern Philosophy will make excellent reading for anyone who would like to understand the principal ideas and arguments that have shaped modern philosophy.

  Roger Scruton is well known as a writer, broadcaster and journalist. He has written numerous books, including The Meaning of Conservatism, Sexual Desire and Xanthippic Dialogues.

  Related titles from Routledge:

  Philosophy: The Basics

  Nigel Warburton

  Classical Modern Philosophers

  Richard Schacht

  The Continental Philosophy Reader

  Edited by Richard Kearney and Mara Rainwater

  A Dictionary of Philosophy

  A.R.Lacey

  Contents

  Contents

  Preface to the First Edition

  Preface to the Second Edition

  Introduction

  1 - HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY AND HISTORY OF IDEAS

  2 - THE RISE OF MODERN PHILOSOPHY

  Part One - Rationalism

  3 - DESCARTES

  4 - THE CARTESIAN REVOLUTION

  5 - SPINOZA

  6 - LEIBNIZ

  Part Two - Empiricism

  7 - LOCKE AND BERKELEY

  8 - THE IDEA OF A MORAL SCIENCE

  9 - HUME

  Part Three - Kant and idealism

  10 - KANT I: THE CRITIQUE OF PURE REASON

  11 - KANT II: ETHICS AND AESTHETICS

  12 - HEGEL

  13 - REACTIONS: SCHOPENHAUER, KIERKEGAARD AND NIETZSCHE

  Part Four - The political transformation

  14 - POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY FROM HOBBES TO HEGEL

  15 - MARX

  16 - UTILITARIANISM AND AFTER

  Part Five - Recent Philosophy

  17 - FREGE

  18 - PHENOMENOLOGY AND EXISTENTIALISM

  19 - WITTGENSTEIN

  Bibliography

  Index

  PREFACE TO THE FIRST EDITION

  This book provides a synthetic vision of the history of modern philosophy, from an analytical perspective. It is necessarily selective, but I hope that I have identified the principal figures, and the principal intellectual preoccupations, that have formed Western philosophy since Descartes. It is, I believe, fruitful to approach these matters from the standpoint of analytical philosophy, which in recent years has become interested in the history which it had ignored for so long, and has sought to re-establish its connections with the Western intellectual tradition. Areas which were of the greatest concern to historical philosophers— aesthetics, politics, theology, the theory of the emotions—had been for some years ill-served in English and American writings; moreover, an increasing narrowness of vision, an obsession with technique and competence, had tended to replace that broad sensitivity to the human condition which is the traditional attribute of the speculative philosopher. The renewed interest in philosophical history promises to remedy those defects, and already fields such as aesthetics and political philosophy are beginning to appear, if not central, at least not wholly marginal, to a mature philosophical understanding.

  I discuss analytical philosophy through the imaginative thought of its greatest exponent, Wittgenstein, and I have been obliged to pass over the many interesting, but perhaps overrated, achievements of the English and American thinkers for whom logic and language have equally been philosophy’s first concern. My intention has been to give a perspective that is as broad as possible, and to show the underlying continuity of argument which recent achievements help us to perceive.

  In the first chapter I explain why I confine my discussion for the most part to the leading figures of post-Renaissance philosophy, and why my methods differ from those of the historian of ideas. My concern is to describe the content of philosophical conclusions and arguments, and not the contexts in which they occurred or the influences which led to them. Those with an interest in the history of ideas will wish to go back over the ground covered by this book and to explore the historical conditions from which the arguments grew, and the currents of influence which led from Hobbes to Spinoza, from Malebranche to Berkeley, from Rousseau to Kant, and from Schopenhauer to Wittgenstein. The classifications of schools and arguments that I have adopted may then begin to appear, if not arbitrary, at least very much matters of philosophical convenience.

  It is necessary to mention the peculiarities of the standpoint from which this book is written. Although it has taken time for analytical philosophy to emerge from its cultural isolation, it seems to me that the light that it has begun to cast on the history of philosophy is greater than any that was cast by the compendious surveys which appeared during the hundred years preceding its development. A new style of philosophical history has emerged, which attempts to discover arguments which might be put forward and accepted, not just at the time when they were first announced, but at any time. To ask whether it is possible now to believe what Leibniz wrote is to submit one’s interpretation to a severe intellectual discipline. It becomes necessary to discover what Leibniz really meant by his conclusions, and what arguments justified, or might justify, his belief in them. It becomes necessary to translate the thought of previous philosophers from the jargon that might obscure its meaning, to remove from it all that is parochial and time-bound, and to present it in the idiom which modern people would use in the expression of their own most serious beliefs. In the bibliography to this work the reader will find references to recent studies in the history of philosophy which, while they may lack the range and the cultural sophistication of earlier studies, seem to me to have changed irreversibly the way in which philosophical history now appears, precisely by looking to the past for answers to present questions. Just as the discovery of the new logic enabled philosophers to understand the researches of medieval logicians for the first time, so has the new philosophy of language and mind made the arguments of Kant intelligible in a way that they were not intelligible to those whom Kant first influenced.

  It should not be thought, however, that the analytical version of the history of philosophy bears no relation to the history of philosophy as it is seen by thinkers from other schools. The interpretation that I offer is one that would be acceptable, in its broad outlines, to many phenomenologists. Like the phenomenologists I see the main current in modern philosophy as springing from the Cartesian theory of the subject, and from the consequent divorce between subject and object, between the realm of certainty and the realm of doubt. I believe that this current runs through epistemology, metaphysics, ethics and political philosophy, throughout the period that I survey. I also believe that Wittgenstein’s detailed demonstration of the untenability of the Cartesian vision has effectively brought a period of philosophical history to an end. However, the arguments of Wittgenstein to which I refer also, I believe, destroy the credibility of phenomenology.

  Needless to say, because this book is as brief as I could make it, it can serve only as a guide; my task will have been accomplished if it helps the rea
der to understand and enjoy the works of the philosophers that I discuss.

  PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION

  During the fifteen years since this book was first published, analytical philosophers have devoted much of their attention to philosophical history. Although the broad outlines of the subject remain the same, the details have inevitably changed. In certain cases—notably that of Hume— the traditional understanding of a philosopher’s aims and arguments has been entirely revised. And thinkers whose work had been for many years dismissed, or passed over with a cursory and disapproving glance, have been rehabilitated—Fichte and Reid being prominent examples.

  Although this recent scholarship lies beyond the scope of this short introduction, it has necessitated considerable revisions of the text and a much fuller bibliography than was provided in the first edition. It goes without saying that a short introduction is bound to be controversial. Nevertheless I have tried to represent accurately, and in the minimum space, what the great modern philosophers have thought, and to show why they are still important.

  I have been greatly helped in preparing this second edition by comments and criticisms from friends, colleagues and students. I am particularly grateful to Fiona Ellis, whose scholarly expertise has saved me from many grievous errors.

  Malmesbury, 1995

  Introduction

  1 - HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY AND HISTORY OF IDEAS

  The subject matter of this work is ‘modern’ philosophy. In common with others I suppose that modern philosophy begins with Descartes, and that its most significant recent manifestation is to be found in the writings of Wittgenstein. I hope to give some ground for these assumptions, but my principal purpose will be to present the history of modern Western philosophy as briefly as the subject allows.

  It is my intention that the contents of this book should be intelligible to those who have no specialised knowledge of contemporary analytical philosophy. It is unfortunately very difficult to describe the nature of philosophy in a small compass; the only satisfaction that an author can draw from the attempt to do so lies in the knowledge that an answer to the question ‘What is philosophy?’ is apt to seem persuasive only to the extent that it is brief. The more one ponders over the qualifications that any reasoned answer must contain, the more one is driven to the conclusion that this question is itself one of the principal subjects of philosophical thinking. It goes without saying that the description that I now give of the nature of philosophy will reflect the particular philosophical standpoint of which I feel persuaded, and its merit in the eyes of the reader must reside in the fact that it has recommended itself to a philosopher who is also a contemporary.

  The nature of philosophy can be grasped through two contrasts: with science on the one hand, and with theology on the other. Simply speaking, science is the realm of empirical investigation; it stems from the attempt to understand the world as we perceive it, to predict and explain observable events and to formulate the ‘laws of nature’ (if there be any) according to which the course of human experience is to be explained. Now any science will generate a number of questions which lie beyond the reach of its own methods of enquiry, and which it will therefore prove powerless to solve. Consider the question, asked of some episode deemed remarkable, ‘What caused that?’ A scientific answer is likely to be formulated in terms of preceding events and conditions, together with certain laws or hypotheses, which connect the event to be explained with the events that explain it. But someone might ask the same question of those other events, and if the same kind of answer is given then, potentially at least, the series of causes could go on for ever, stretching backwards into infinite time. Perceiving the possibility of this, one might be prompted to ask the further question ‘What caused the series to exist at all?’ or, yet more abstractly, ‘Why should there be any events?’: not just, why should there be this event or that, but why is there anything? In the nature of the case, scientific investigation, which takes us from what is given to what explains it, presupposes the existence of things. Hence it cannot solve this more abstract and more puzzling question. It is a question that seems to reach beyond empirical enquiry and yet at the same time to arise naturally out of it. Science itself will not provide the answer, and yet it does not seem nonsensical to suggest that there might be an answer.

  At every point we find that science generates questions which pass beyond its own ability to solve them. Such questions have been called metaphysical: they form a distinctive and inescapable part of the subject matter of philosophy. Now, in considering the particular metaphysical problem that I have mentioned, people might have recourse to an authoritative system of theology. They might find their answer in the invocation of God, as the first cause and final aim of everything. But if this invocation is founded merely on faith, then it claims no rational authority beyond that which can be attributed to revelation. Anyone who lets the matter rest in faith, and enquires no further into its validity, has, in a sense, a philosophy. He has staked his claim in a metaphysical doctrine, but has affirmed that doctrine dogmatically: it is, for him, neither the conclusion of reasoned argument, nor the result of metaphysical speculation. It is simply a received idea, which has the intellectual merit of generating answers to metaphysical puzzles, but with the singular disadvantage of adding no authority to those answers that is not contained in the original dogmatic assumption.

  Any attempt to give a rational grounding for theology will, for the very reason that theology provides answers to metaphysical questions, itself constitute a form of philosophical thought. It is not surprising, therefore, that, while theology alone is not philosophy, the question of the possibility of theology has been, and to some extent still is, the principal philosophical question.

  In addition to metaphysical questions of the kind I have referred to, there are other questions that have some prima facie right to be considered philosophical. In particular there are questions of method, typified by the two studies of epistemology (the theory of knowledge) and logic. Just as scientific investigation may be pushed back to the point where it becomes metaphysics, so may its own method be thrown in question by repeatedly asking for the grounds for each particular assertion. In this way science inevitably gives rise to the studies of logic and epistemology, and if there is a temptation to say that the conclusions of these studies are empty or meaningless, or that their questions are unanswerable, that in itself is a philosophical opinion, as much in need of argument as the less sceptical alternatives.

  To the studies of metaphysics, logic and epistemology one must add those of ethics, aesthetics and political philosophy, since here too, as soon as we are led to enquire into the basis of our thought, we find ourselves pushed to levels of abstraction where no empirical enquiry can provide a satisfactory answer. For example, while everybody will realise that a commitment to a moral principle forbidding theft involves an abstention from theft on any particular occasion, everybody also recognises that a starving man’s theft of bread from one who has no need of it is an act which must be considered differently from a rich man’s theft of another’s most precious possession. But why do we regard these acts differently, how do we reconcile this attitude, if at all, with adherence to the original principle, and how do we justify the principle itself? All these questions lead us towards distinctively philosophical regions; the purviews of morality, of law, of politics themselves will be left behind, and we find ourselves reaching out for abstractions, often with little conviction that they might suffice to uphold a system of beliefs, and often with a renewed desire to take refuge in the dogmas of theology.

  What, then, distinguishes philosophical thought? The questions that philosophers ask have two distinguishing features from which we might begin to characterise them: abstraction, and concern for truth. By abstraction I mean roughly this: that philosophical questions arise at the end of all other enquiries, when questions about particular things, events and practical difficulties have been solved according to the methods available, a
nd when either those methods themselves, or some metaphysical doctrine which they seem to presuppose, are put in question. Hence the problems of philosophy and the systems designed to solve them are formulated in terms which tend to refer, not to the realm of actuality, but to the realms of possibility and necessity: to what might be and what must be, rather than to what is.

  The second feature—the concern with truth—is one that might seem too obvious to be worth mentioning. But in fact it is easily forgotten, and when it is forgotten philosophy is in danger of degenerating into rhetoric. The questions that philosophy asks may be peculiar in that they have no answer—some philosophers have been driven to think so. But they are nevertheless questions, so that any answer is to be evaluated by giving reasons for thinking it to be true or false. If there are no answers, then all putative answers are false. But if someone proposes an answer, he must give reasons for believing it.

  During the course of this work we shall come across several writers and schools of thought which have been founded in what one might call ‘meta-philosophy’—that is, in some theory as to the nature of philosophical thought, designed to explain how there can be an intellectual-discipline that is both wholly abstract and yet dedicated to the pursuit of truth. Such meta-philosophies tend to belong to one of two kinds, according as they uphold speculation or analysis as the aim of philosophical thinking.

  Some say—following in the tradition of Pythagoras and Plato—that philosophy gains its abstract quality because it consists in the speculative study of abstract things, in particular of certain objects, or certain worlds, which are inaccessible to experience. Such philosophies are likely to denigrate empirical investigation, saying that it yields only half-truths, since it studies appearance alone, whereas speculative philosophy has the superior virtue of attaining to the realm of necessity, where the true contents of the world (or the contents of the true world) are revealed. Others regard philosophy as reaching to abstraction not because it speculates about some other more elevated world, but because it occupies itself with the more mundane task of intellectual criticism, studying the methods and aims of our specific forms of thought, in order to reach conclusions concerning their limits and validity. According to this second approach, abstraction is merely abstraction from the particular; it is not abstraction towards something else, in particular not towards some other realm of being. As for the pursuit of truth, that is explained immediately as an offshoot of the desire to settle what can be known, what can be proved—philosophical truth is simply truth about the limits of human understanding.