Bishop Joseph Butler

While we have already considered the complete naturalization of theology in the form of Deism, it is important to note that tendency to appeal more to the book of nature over the book of scripture in search of God and His will was by no means isolated to those who rejected Christianity. In this post we will see how this environment set the stage for Bishop Joseph Butler’s argument that human nature, including what those things which “happened” to, according to God’s design, produce pleasure and pain in us, were also expressions of God’s will for us and thus a ground for human morality.

Bishop George Berkeley

The philosophical ideas of Bishop George Berkeley (1685-1783) are ones which are terribly difficult to explain to non-philosophers without evoking any eye-rolls. The question of whether a tree falling in the forest with nobody present makes a sound or not is typically seen as a perfect example of how philosophers contribute nothing at all to human well-being. It will be the purpose of this post, however, I will attempt to show that not only does Berkeley’s philosophy give us more than a merely trivial thought experiment, but that the falling-tree story is not even a very accurate description of the absolute idealism which Berkeley advocates.

Bernard Mandeville

Upon coming back from a brief break from blogging, I’ve come to realize that I am so far behind schedule with my intellectual history series so as to leave me in a bit of despair. There are A LOT of topics which I wish to blog on as well (topics such as emotions, argumentation, axiology and religion), but I feel that such topics would be treated in a far more detailed and responsible manner after I’ve completed my survey of Western thought. So without further adieu, let’s continue with our journey.

Charles de Secondat, baron de Montesquieu

Charles de Secondat, baron de Montesquieu played a number of important roles in the development of 18th century thought. He published a number of works which were aimed at throwing cold water on any unrestrained sense of Euro-centrism by providing various accounts of the (sometimes exaggerated) differences between his own Judeo-Christian culture and other non-Christian cultures which seemed to get by just as well. Nevertheless, he did not accept, and indeed fought against the strong form of cultural relativism which such accounts might seem to suggest. He saw that while there were innumerable and significant differences across cultures, he also saw similarities which arose from each culture being forced to interact with the same natural reality. Montesquieu would take these similarities and develop an account of the role of despotism in societies, an account which would greatly influence America’s Founding Fathers.

Giambattista Vico

One of the more important dissents from the project of Enlightenment in the early 18th century came from Giambattista Vico (1688-1744). Vico took an evolutionary view of human history which prefigured that of Karl Marx, in that it makes strong appeals to class struggle as a mechanism for change, as well as that of Alasdair MacIntyre, in its insistence upon tradition (especially religious tradition) as indispensable part of stable society. He argued that the tendencies of Enlightenment had many inherent dangers in them and that these tendencies could lead to very undesirable consequences.

The Deists

The turn of the 18th century is marked by a generation in which a radical revolution takes place in the Western European’s mind as to how truth is to be sought and found. The achievements of Newton convincingly demonstrated that not only could the New Philosophy, as advocated by Bacon, Descartes, etc., know things which the Old Scholastic Philosophy had not, but more importantly that the authority which had been received from the past had been wrong. Thus we can see that not only did the New Philosophy emerge as a viable contender to Scholasticism, but that Scholasticism itself had suffered a serious blow to its integrity, whether the New Philosophy was ultimately “better” than it or not. Following Galileo and Newton, the educated population began to turn more and more to the book of nature and less and less to the book of scripture in search of truth. The seemingly inevitable movement which would result from such an environment was Deism.

Pierre Bayle

Like Blaise Pascal, Pierre Bayle was a fideist who had little confidence in mankind’s search for knowledge of any kind and thus saw such shortcomings as indicative of the need for faith. While Pascal came from the Catholic tradition, however, Bayle came from a Calvinist background. While Bayle’s name is hardly of celebrity status today, it is important to understand that Bayle was perhaps the most widely read author throughout all of Europe during the 17th and 18th centuries. This post will address the conflict which he sought to establish between religious faith and philosophical reasoning.

John Locke

John Locke (1632-1704) was a great admirer and close friend to Isaac Newton, and this relationship will shine through in our treatment of Locke’s epistemology. While Locke’s theories of knowledge and mind may sound quaint to 21st century ears, we should not allow this to blind us to the fact that Locke’s empiricism shaped 18th century philosophy as much as any other person did. It will be the purpose of this post to explain both what Locke’s epistemological theory was, as well as how it departed from what had come before, especially Descartes.

Isaac Newton

If there was any one person who could be considered the hero of the enlightenment, such an honor would undoubtedly go to Sir Isaac Newton. In conversation with a co-worker of mine, he told me that philosophy was a bunch of garbage which eventually and thankfully was replaced by science with the coming of Isaac Newton. I told my co-worker that he was wrong, oh so very wrong, for it was Newton himself who said “If I have seen farther than others it is because I have stood on the shoulders of giants.” Those giants were philosophers. As should be apparent by now, had there been no Bacon, Kepler, Galileo or Descartes there simply would have been no Newton, at least the Newton that we know. Nevertheless, as we will see, the genius of Newton and his discoveries are difficult indeed to exaggerate.

Vengeance and Justice

This post will deal with ideas which seem so obvious to me that I’m sure they must have been thought up by somebody before me, though I have not read them in any other source. I will argue that there is a fundamental similarity which underlies both vengeance and justice, and that the only differences which exist between these two principles lie primarily in the way in which this common underlying principle is implemented in reality.