Overview of 17th Century
Philosophy

A Study and Critique

The
period of transition from medieval to modern philosophy ended with the 16th
century. In the 17th, there appeared more or less rounded systems of
non-Scholastic and anti-Scholastic philosophy. The most notable philosophers of
this time were Francis Bacon, John Locke, and Rene Descartes. A common note in
the philosophies of these three, a note common to all the philosophies of the
last three centuries and right down to our own day, is the confusing of the
realms of sense-knowledge and intellectual knowledge.

Bacon,
Locke, and Descartes are at one in another point: the mistaken effort to
remodel and rebuild the whole structure of philosophy, Now, the man who is
confused on the proper spheres of sensation and intellection, and who,
notwithstanding, blandly assumes that he knows enough to discard as useless all
the achievements of his predecessors, is not only guilty of mountainous pride;
he is deliberately destructive of that bond of continuity and endurance which
is at once the test and the guarantee of true philosophy.

We
shall here make a short and sketchy study of the chief doctrines of Bacon,
Locke, and Descartes, and we shall glance briefly at the teachings of four
other 17th century philosophers, Hobbes, Malebranche,
Spinoza, and Leibniz.

1. Francis Bacon, Lord Verulam, Viscount St. Albans (1561-1626) was a native of London; he was educated at Cambridge. He was a lawyer, a politician,
a statesman of sorts, and a philosopher. Such are the parts which history
assigns him. Rumor imputes to him two others: that of a dipper into public
funds for personal profit, and that of the writing of the plays commonly
ascribed to Shakespeare. We are interested in Bacon solely as philosopher.

Bacon's
Instauratio Magna or Great
Reconstruction was a book which proposed to rebuild the entire edifice of
philosophy. Bacon would first clear away, then build. To clear away, he would
have man banish prejudices (that is, prejudgments, long accepted notions)
because these are merely idols in the temple of the mind. There are four types
of such idols:
First, there are idols
of the den, which are prejudices that come of one's own natural bent
or bias and of one's own dullness.
Secondly, there are idols
of the tribe, or prejudices inherited, or born of early environment
and education.
Thirdly, there are idols
of the marketplace, or prejudices acquired from the spirit of the
times or from local influences.
Fourthly, there are idols
of the theatre, or prejudices that come of reading
and esteeming the pre-Baconian philosophers,
especially those of the Medieval era.

The
clearing away process demanded by Bacon recalls the Socratic "confession
of ignorance," but any resemblance in the two processes is superficial.
Socrates was essentially a humble man; his clearing away of the self-esteem of
the pupil was a lesson in the docility required for learning anything. All
sound teachers commend the process. Huxley, who failed to follow his own
prescription, enunciated it well when he said that a sincere student or
scientist must "sit down before fact like a little child." But Bacon
was, whether consciously or unconsciously, a proud man; his clearing away of
"idols" was a snub to all thinkers who had lived before his time.
Socrates said in effect, "Let us labor to rid our minds of faulty notions,
especially the notion that we are wise or well informed." Bacon said in
effect, "Now I'll take charge. Please rid your minds of the things I
dislike very much."

Having
cleared out the idols, Bacon would build. He would use the one and only scientific
method, that
is induction. He held deductive reasoning useless; he rejected
metaphysics. The first thing of all that the builder must do is the arranging
of subjects of study, the "lineup" of sciences. The Scholastics,
following Aristotle, had made this subordinatio
scientiarum an objective thing; they were guided
by the objects studied; in this they were realistic and sane. Bacon made
his arrangement of sciences subjective; he based it upon the powers or
faculties of the investigator: memory, imagination, reason.

Having
made out the list or schedule of sciences, Bacon would attack each with the
most careful observation and experiment. He would draw up lists,
and follow tables of...
essence or presence,
deviation or
absence-in-proximity,
comparison, and
absence or rejection.

If,
for example, the investigator were trying to find the nature of heat, he would
list all objects and activities in which heat is always present (Table of
Presence); then he would make a list of things that lack heat but appear to
bear in themselves no opposition to it (Table of Deviation or
Absence-in-Proximity); next he would list hear-bearing things to show
variations in degree (Table of Comparison); finally, he would list things
incompatible with heat (Table of Absence or Rejection). Out of such slow and
elaborate effort the investigator would learn at last the true cause of heat,
and through its cause he would arrive at a knowledge
of its nature.

Bacon
was neither a great philosopher nor a notable scientist; he was a literary
theorist about philosophy and science. His ambitious and impossible intention
of making philosophy over foredoomed him to futility and failure. Three
particular weaknesses marked his effort:
First, a false subordinatio scientiarum;

Second, an inordinate
stressing of induction;
Third, a constant confusion
of sentient with intellectual knowledge.

The
second and third of these points still endure in modern philosophy, and they
rob it of effectiveness and solid achievement. Bacon has gone into history as
the originator of modern empiricism, that is, the system of those who
place all faith in observation and experiment, playing up the role of the
senses and minimizing the place of reasoning in the attaining of truth.
Empiricism is sometimes called (with partial accuracy) by the name of sensism.

2. John Locke
(1632-1704) was another notable exponent of empiricism. He was a native of Wrington in Somersetshire, England, and was educated at Oxford. His most notable piece of
writing is An Essay Concerning the Human Understanding.

Locke
had the characteristics of most of the articulate university men of his day; a
petulant rejection of Medieval philosophy without
understanding it; a self-confident notion of doing philosophy all over again
from the ground up; a readiness to speak with an air of finality upon subjects
imperfectly mastered.

Now,
the desire to see philosophical doctrines so clearly expressed and proved that
none may doubt them is human and natural and even admirable. But the assumption
that all philosophy can be reduced to the clarity of A-B-C is fantastic. And
the further assumption that all philosophers of past times have been
woolly-minded blunderers is ignorance and intolerable "cheek." The old
impatience, the old want of humility, which brought in Humanism, the
Renaissance, the Reformation, and all the other thin veneerings
which have tried to pass for truth are evident in Locke as they are evident in
Bacon, Descartes, and nearly all non-Classical Realistic philosophers from the
14th century to the present day.

Locke
had doubtlessly in mind the recasting of philosophy, for he was not wholly
pleased with Bacon's plan. Still, he seems to have had no detailed plan of his
own. Indeed, he did not feel the need of any plan. He was convinced that, once
the human mind had learned to grasp things clearly, once it knew its own powers
and recognized its true limitations, once it was sure of the nature and extent
of its knowledge, the developing of philosophy would be a sheerly
natural growth. Thus, Locke's special interest was the critical question
(the theory of knowledge), and he wrote of it in his famous Essay.

Keen
as he was on clarity of knowledge, Locke did not escape the fatal confounding
of sense-knowledge with intellectual knowledge. And so he proceeded to make
confusion more confounded, so that one may take not only different, but
opposite, doctrines from the premises his theories afford. Follow him in one
set of principles and develop these to the end; you find yourself in idealism,
the dream-philosophy which turns reality into shadow. Follow him in another set
of thoughts, and you will be involved in sensism
and positivism which takes the reality round us as the only thing there
is, and denies value to the intellect and to reasoning (even to the reasoning
by which you have reached this dull conclusion).

This
impossible agglomeration of conflicting theories was proposed, explicitly or
implicitly, by a man of undoubted mental gifts who was thwarted as the outset
by his muddling of the basic question of all philosophy, the critical question.
It is pathetic to realize that he knew it was the basic question.

Inevitably,
Locke went wrong in his ethical doctrine, especially in point of the norm or
rule of morality; for out of man's philosophy of reality and knowledge comes
his theory of morals, and Locke's philosophy of
reality and knowledge was wrong philosophy. Locke admitted the existence of a
natural law, but it plays little part in his practical conclusions. His moral
theory comes to this: our deliberate conduct is good and praiseworthy if it
conforms to public opinion of what such conduct should be; otherwise it is evil
and blameworthy. This is not only a cheap and futile theory, but it is
impossible to apply, for public opinion is the most fluid and changeable of
things, and what is a virtue at one moment might well be a vice at another.
This theory of moral relativism is utterly false and destructive.

Locke
is remembered for his distinguishing of primary and secondary
sense-qualities in bodily things. In his study upon the nature of knowledge, he
had constantly to face such questions as: are sense-objects really what they
appear to be; is the grass really green; is the whirling wheel actually in
motion; is the stone truly solid? Locke decided that there are certain
qualities common to all bodies (impenetrability, extension, shape, rest,
motion) and these are primary qualities which exist as objective things.

He
said that there are also other qualities not found in all bodies alike
(color, sound, taste, odor, temperature, resistance) and these are secondary
qualities which are largely subjective, that is, not so much objective
things as the perceivings or feelings of the person
who senses them. Locke's distinction of sense-qualities as primary and
secondary may serve us as a mere convenient list.

But
his theory of their objective reality cannot stand. For we
are wholly unaware of the primary qualities except through the medium of the
secondary. And if the secondary be unreliable (being largely subjective)
we have no reason to put any trust in the actuality of the primary qualities.
Locke's theory on sense-qualities points the way to the self-contradiction of
complete skepticism.

One
thing Locke did in a masterly way. He refuted innatism,
the theory that our knowledge is inborn, and that it advances in us, not by the
acquiring of anything from without, but by its inward growth or development.
Apart from his refutation of innatism, Locke's
contribution to philosophy is negligible; indeed he is a confusing and a
destructive force.

3. Rene Descartes (1596-1650) has been called the father of modern
philosophy, a title which would have more meaning if "modern
philosophy" had any sort of consistency or would stand still long enough
to be identified. For all that, the title is justified. For "modern
philosophy," although it is composed of wildly variant theories, is one in
its tentativeness, its hesitancy, its dubious tenure.
And the man who injected the note of doubt as a positive element into
human thinking was a delicate little French mathematician named Rene Descartes.
Descartes -- whose Latinized name Cartesius
explains the fact that his theories are called the Cartesian philosophy --
will be gratefully remembered by all school pupils as the inventor of
analytical geometry.

Descartes
had a great mind, but he had the mental shortcomings of his time: the contempt
for classical realistic philosophy (which he took no trouble to understand);
the lack of careful distinguishing between the essentially different types of
human knowledge, that of sense and that of intellect; and, above all, the
consuming desire "to shatter philosophy into bits and then remold it
nearer to the heart's desire."

Descartes
was a mathematician. He wished to make philosophy a kind of mathematical
science; at least, he wished to express it with mathematical clarity. As
geometry beings with self-evident truths called axioms, philosophy must begin
with some basic truth which is so evident, so inevitable, that it cannot be
doubted even by a fictitious doubt of the mind. Descartes found that we may
doubt, or pretend to doubt, everything except ourselves doubting. In
other words, I can doubt everything by an effort of mind; but I cannot doubt
that I am making an effort of mind.

That I
exist as a thinking individual is the primal and
indubitable truth. Descartes formulated it thus: "Cogito ergo
sum" (Je pense donc je suis; I think therefore I am). But the ergo (or
the donc or the therefore) has
not the implication of a reasoned conclusion. No, the two facts of existence
and thought are simultaneously and inevitably recognized. Upon the fact of the
thinking existence, as upon the one fundamental certitude, all philosophy
must be built up.

Upon
this foundation Descartes proceeds to build accordingly. I think. My
thoughts are reduced to elements; ideas and judgments and feelings. Ideas and
feelings are what they are; they are true in themselves. But when I make
judgment upon thoughts and feelings I may go wrong. I am only safe in judging
upon such ideas as I recognize to be wholly objective, not my own making or
devising.

Now, I
find that I have an idea of absolute perfection, of absolute actuality. I could
not have made up this idea, for its perfection is beyond my powers. Therefore
this idea must have been impressed upon me by the existing reality which is
absolute perfection. Such a being exists. Thus am I aware, with full certitude,
of the existence of God. No God, the all-perfect, would not, in fact, be
all-perfect if He were in any sense a deceiver. Therefore, He has given me
reliable, and not deceiving, knowing-powers. These, of course, are limited, for
I am limited myself. My senses and my mind may not present reality to me
perfectly, but what they present is reality. Of the bodily world I can be sure,
at the least, that it actually exists as an extended
or bodily reality.

The
human mind, says Descartes, is essentially thought. A bodily being is,
in its essence, extension. Plants and brutes are not truly alive; they
have no life-principle or soul; they are splendid automata, fine pieces of
machinery which the Creator works. Man has the only type of soul there is: it
is a thinking, a reasoning soul.

Descartes
is wholly wrong, despite the fact that his intellectual powers were splendid.
He starts wrong, and the farther he proceeds along the way of his theory, the
farther off he veers from the straight line of truth. Such is the tragedy of a
logical mind after a false start.

Descartes
find the thinking individual the indubitable reality. But is thought more
immediate and sure than feeling? Besides, if I am sure only of myself
thinking, I can develop no philosophy; for I have no self-evident certitude
(in the Cartesian sense) of the value of my thinking. I cannot argue, as
does Descartes, that the inevitable thought of an infinite being proves the
existence of such a being as the cause of the thought; for, according to
Descartes, the principle of causality is subject to doubt. Nor can I argue that
God's existence is proved by my knowing-faculties, and then prove my
knowing-faculties reliable because God would not deceive me; this is reasoning
in a circle, proving A by B and B by A. (The fallacy of the circular argument
or begging the question.)

In
nearly every point, the philosophy of Descartes is misleading, and in most
points it is plainly false. Yet this philosophy, or welter of theories, has had
a tremendous influence upon human thinking for nearly three hundred years.

4. Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679), English politician and philosopher, was, in
the main, a follower of Bacon. He insists on the distinction between
sense-knowledge and intellectual knowledge, and then immediately mixes them up
confusedly, to the extent that he attributes a sort of intellect to brute
animals.

In
political theory, he holds that man is not naturally a social being, but that
civil society (i.e., the State) is the result of a social contract or social
compact. He teaches State absolutism, and declares that the civil power must
regulate all our activities, even those of religion. In his theory of
knowledge, Hobbes is a nominalist; in physical
philosophy, he is a materialist.

5. Nicholas Malebranche (1638-1715), Parisian
philosopher and ecclesiastic, thought it impious to say that a creature is the
cause of its activities, since God alone is to be regarded as the source of all
action. Creatures furnish the occasion ("the stage setting")
for God to intervene and cause them to act or operate. This quite fanciful and
fallacious theory is called occasionalism.

Further,
Malebranche taught that our knowledge (in its
elements, that is, ideas) comes from the inborn idea of God, in
the light of which other things are understood. For the logical order (that is,
the order of thinking or knowing) must follow the ontological order (that is,
the order of things). As God is first in the ontological order, He is first in
the logical order. This doctrine is known as ontologism.

6. Baruch Spinoza (1632-1677), a Dutch Jew, followed Descartes in an attempt
to set forth philosophy in a mathematical fashion. His philosophy amounts to pantheism
which is involved in his definition of substance as a reality which does
not require the idea of any other thing in order to be understood. Spinoza
inconsistently insists on the existence of the individual soul and its
immortality, together with its obligation to practice virtue.

Spinoza
is a somewhat pathetic figure. Ousted by the Synagogue, unacceptable to the
Gentiles, he shrank from public notice and was content with the humble
employment of a polisher of lenses, a trade which returned him what sufficed
for his simple requirements and gave him many hours of freedom for the study of
philosophy.

Spinoza
has the appeal of genius misunderstood and maltreated. He has a particular
attraction for the dilettanti and the parlor-philosophers. But with all regard
for the man's sincerity, and with proper commiseration for him as the butt of
meanness and persecution, we must recognize his teachings as false and
pernicious.

7. Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz (1648-1716) has been described
as "the most extraordinary example of versatile scholarship on
record." He was a mathematician, and the inventor of differential
calculus. He was a linguist, a historian, a theologian, a philosopher. Yet for
all his splendid mind and great learning, he was wrong in his fundamental
philosophical theories.

He
taught that the world is a composite of material and spiritual things, all of
which are made up of unextended elements called monads.
Each monad is independent of the others, yet each, by the law of
pre-established harmony, reflects in itself all the modifications or
changes that occur in every other.

Soul
and body in man are like two clocks, each keeping perfect time (by the law of
pre-established harmony) but without any real influence upon each other. The
soul is a monad; it reflects in itself, as do all monads, the entire cosmos,
not by the influence of other things upon it, for such influence does not
exist, but by being the sufficient setting or occasion for such reflection
through the operation of the law of harmony. The soul is unaware of most of the
things reflected in it; time and experience, however, bring it a clear and
usable knowledge of some of the images, and these are its ideas. Thus
Leibniz taught a sort of innatism.

God's
pre-established harmony moves man's will to determine action, yet in such wise
that man remains free (physical premotion).

Leibniz
offers cogent proofs for the existence and perfections of God, arguing from the
contingency of the world of creatures to the necessary existence of a
Self-Subsistent Power and Infinite Intelligence. Leibniz also acknowledges and
reshapes the "ontological argument" of St. Anselm, and reasons that
if a Self-Subsistent Being is possible, it must actual. Leibniz holds that God,
by reason of His complete and boundless perfection, had made this world the
best world possible (cosmological optimism).

Leibniz's
doctrine on the constitution of the world is called monadology.
It is a theory in conflict with both reason and experience. Yet it intrigues
unwary minds, particularly because the doctrine of pre-established harmony cuts
many difficulties from the path of physicist and philosopher. But it is a
doctrine of unreality. Monads are unextended,
non-bodily, and hence the universe has no true existence as an extended
reality; it becomes illusory, a dream-world. Thus Leibniz is but a step removed
from idealism which denies value to the findings of the senses and
reduces the world to a set of mental images. The philosophers of the next
generation took that step.