Philosophy of the Modern Era

The Influence of Locke

From Locke’s time to the present day, two main philosophical currents have emerged in Europe: one, indebted to Locke for both its theory and method, and the other primarily rooted in Descartes and subsequently Kant. Kant himself believed he had synthesized the philosophies of Descartes and Locke; however, this claim is historically disputable, as Kant’s followers tended to adhere more to Cartesian than to Lockean traditions. Locke's true successors are, first and foremost, Berkeley and Hume; secondly, those French philosophers not aligned with Rousseau; thirdly, Bentham and the philosophical radicals; and fourthly, with a significant overlay of continental philosophy, Marx and his disciples. Nevertheless, Marx's system is eclectic, and any simplistic judgment about it is likely to be erroneous; thus, I will refrain from evaluation until I undertake a detailed analysis.

During Locke’s lifetime, his main philosophical adversaries were the Cartesians and Leibniz. Paradoxically, Locke’s philosophy triumphed in England and France largely due to the prestige of Newton. Descartes' authority as a philosopher grew during his lifetime through his work in mathematics and natural philosophy; yet his theory of vortices as an explanation for the solar system's origin paled in comparison to Newton's laws of gravitation. The victory of Newtonian cosmology diminished the respect accorded to Descartes and increased admiration for England. These factors fostered a favorable disposition towards Locke. In eighteenth-century France, educated individuals, vehemently opposing outdated, corrupt, and weak despotism, regarded England as the homeland of freedom and thus welcomed Locke’s philosophy due to its political theories. In the years leading up to the revolution, Locke’s influence in France was further amplified by Hume, who lived in France for a time and was personally acquainted with many prominent thinkers. However, it was Voltaire who played the most significant role in propagating English influence in France.

In England, philosophers who followed Locke showed little interest in his political theories up until the French Revolution. Berkeley, a bishop, was not particularly concerned with politics, and Hume, a Tory, aligned with Bolingbroke. During their time, political tranquility reigned in England, allowing philosophers to content themselves with theorizing without worrying about the state of the world. The French Revolution altered this landscape, compelling the finest minds to oppose the prevailing order. Nevertheless, the traditions of pure philosophy remained unchanged. Shelley’s book, "The Necessity of Atheism," for which he was expelled from Oxford, is permeated by Locke’s influence.

Before the publication of Kant's "Critique of Pure Reason" in 1781, it might have appeared that the older philosophical traditions of Descartes, Spinoza, and Leibniz had been decisively overcome by the newer empirical method. However, this newer method never predominated in the universities of Germany, and after 1792, it was viewed as culpable for the horrors of the revolution. Those who renounced the revolution, such as Coleridge, found in Kant an intellectual foundation for their animosity towards French atheism. The Germans, in their resistance to the French, were content to be supported by German philosophy. Even the French, after Napoleon's fall, welcomed any weapon against the Jacobins. All these factors favored Kant.

Kant, much like Darwin, became the progenitor of a movement he would have despised. He was a liberal, a democrat, a pacifist, yet those who claimed to develop his philosophy lacked any of these attributes. If they still labeled themselves as liberals, they were of a new kind. Since Rousseau and Kant, two schools of liberalism have emerged, which may be roughly characterized as hard-headed and soft-hearted. The hard-headed stream logically led, through Bentham, Ricardo, and Marx, to Stalin, while the soft-hearted stream traversed through other logical stages, passing through Fichte, Byron, Carlyle, and Nietzsche, to Hitler. Admittedly, this outline is overly schematic to be entirely accurate, yet it can serve as a guide. The stages in the evolution of ideas exhibited nearly Hegelian dialectical properties: theories transitioned into their opposites through stages, each appearing natural. However, development was not solely contingent on the internal evolution of ideas; external conditions and their reflections in human emotions invariably influenced ideas. This is vividly demonstrated by the fact that the ideas of liberalism in America have not undergone this evolution and remain, to this day, as they were in Locke's time.

Let us set aside politics and examine the distinction between the two philosophical schools, which can be crudely divided into continental and British.

First and foremost, there exists a difference in method. British philosophy tends to be more detailed and inclined to address specific questions than its continental counterpart; when it does entertain general principles, it does so inductively, through the examination of their various applications. For instance, Hume, after asserting that there are no ideas without prior perception, promptly addresses the following objection: suppose you see two similar but non-identical shades of color, and suppose you have never seen a shade that lies between these two; can you nevertheless conceive of such a shade? He refrains from resolving this question, believing that a solution contrary to his general principle would not be fatal to him because his principle is not logical but empirical. In contrast, when Leibniz seeks to justify his monadology, he broadly asserts the following: all that is complex must consist of simple parts, and the simple cannot be extended; therefore, everything is composed of parts that lack extension. However, that which is unextended is not matter. Consequently, the ultimate composite parts of things are immaterial; if they are immaterial, they must be ideal. Thus, a table is indeed a collection of souls.

This distinction in method can be characterized as follows: for Locke and Hume, a relatively modest conclusion is drawn from a broad overview of many facts, whereas Leibniz's extensive deductive structure rests upon a logical principle, like an inverted pyramid balanced on its apex. In Leibniz's case, if the principle is absolutely correct and the conclusions wholly true, all is well; yet the structure remains unstable, and the slightest gust of wind from any direction will reduce it to ruins. In contrast, with Locke or Hume, the foundation of the pyramid rests on the solid ground of observable facts, with its apex not at the bottom but at the top; thus, equilibrium is stable, and damage inflicted by the wind in any area will not lead to complete collapse. This methodological distinction has persisted despite Kant’s attempts to incorporate elements of empirical philosophy into his own: from Descartes to Hegel on one side, and from Locke to John Stuart Mill on the other, it remains unchanged.

This distinction in method is linked to a myriad of other differences. Let us first consider metaphysics.

Descartes entertained metaphysical proofs of God's existence, the most notable of which was conceived in the eleventh century by Anselm, the Archbishop of Canterbury. For Spinoza, there existed a pantheistic God, which to the orthodox seemed not to be God at all; however, perhaps Spinoza’s arguments were primarily metaphysical in nature, and their roots might be traced (though he may not have understood this) to the theory that every proposition must have a subject and a predicate. The metaphysics of Leibniz stemmed from the same source.

Locke’s philosophical direction, of which he was the progenitor, had yet to be fully developed; he acknowledged the value of Descartes' arguments regarding the existence of God. Berkeley introduced a completely novel argument, while Hume, who culminated this new philosophy, entirely rejected metaphysics and maintained that nothing could be revealed through reasoning about the subjects with which metaphysics deals. This perspective dominated the empirical school, while its opposite, in a somewhat modified form, can be found in Kant and his followers.

A similar division between two schools exists in ethics. Locke, as we have seen, believed that pleasure is the good, a view that prevailed among empiricists in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Their opponents, conversely, scorned pleasure as something base and gravitated towards a different ethical system that appeared to them more elevated. Hobbes valued power; incidentally, Spinoza concurred with Hobbes in this regard. Spinoza harbored two contradictory views on ethics: one aligned with Hobbes, and the other positing that the good is mystical union with God. Leibniz did not make a significant contribution to ethics, while Kant elevated ethics to prominence, deriving his metaphysics from ethical premises. Kant’s ethics are significant because they are anti-utilitarian, a priori, and, as it is often said, “noble.”

Kant asserts that if you are kind to your brother because you love him, you lack moral merit: an action possesses moral merit only when it is performed out of adherence to the law of morality. Although pleasure is not the good, Kant argues that it is unjust for virtue to suffer. Since this often occurs in our world, there must exist another realm where virtue is rewarded after death, and there must be a God to ensure justice in the life to come. He dismisses all the old metaphysical arguments for God’s existence and immortality, yet he regards his new ethical argument as irrefutable.

Kant himself was a man whose views on practical actions were kind and humane, which cannot be said for most who rejected happiness as the good. The variety of ethics termed “noble” is less connected with attempts to improve the world than with a more earthly perspective that we ought to try to make humanity happier. This is not surprising; it is easier to despise happiness when it pertains to the happiness of others rather than one’s own. Typically, some forms of heroism serve as a substitute for happiness. This provides an unconscious outlet for the desire for power and yields numerous justifications for cruelty. Alternatively, that which possesses intense emotions is often valued: such was the case with the romantics. This led to a tolerance of passions like hatred and vengeance; in this respect, the heroes of Byron are typical, never embodying the qualities of exemplary behavior. Those who have contributed significantly to human happiness belonged, as one might expect, to the camp that considered happiness important, not to those who despised it, dismissing it in favor of something more “elevated.” Moreover, a person’s ethics typically reflect their character, thus benevolence leads to a desire for universal happiness. Hence, individuals who believe happiness is the goal of life tend to be more benevolent, while those who preach alternative views often unconsciously succumb to cruelty or a thirst for power.

These ethical distinctions are related, though not necessarily, to differences in politics. Locke, as we have seen, grounds his assertions in experience rather than in deference to authorities, and he willingly submits every question to free discussion. The outcome of this, both in relation to himself and his followers, was a belief in reform, albeit gradual reform. Since their systems of thought presupposed gradualism as the result of separate inquiries into many diverse questions, their political views naturally bore the same character. They opposed grand, cohesive programs, preferring to consider each issue separately. In politics, as in philosophy, they based their positions on experience and experimentation. On the other hand, their opponents, who believed they could “fully understand this miserable scheme of things,” were more inclined to “break it into pieces and then remelt them to their liking.” They might do this either as revolutionaries or as individuals seeking to elevate the authority of existing powers; in any case, they would not hesitate to apply violence in pursuit of grand goals, condemning love for the world as a base sentiment.

A significant political defect in Locke’s teaching and that of his followers, from a contemporary perspective, was their deference to property. Yet those who criticized them for this often did so in the interests of classes that were more harmful than capitalists, such as monarchs, aristocrats, and militarists. The aristocratic landowner, who reaped income without lifting a finger in accordance with ancient custom, did not consider himself a grasping individual, nor did those who lacked insight into the façade that concealed his reality. The entrepreneur, in contrast, engaged in a conscious pursuit of wealth, and while his endeavors were more or less novel, they provoked outrage that was absent in response to the genteel extortion of landowners. This was true for middle-class writers and their readers; however, it was not so for the peasantry, as became evident during the French and Russian revolutions. Yet the peasantry remained silent.

Much of the opposition to the Lockean school admired war as a heroic phenomenon that implies contempt for comfort and tranquility. Those who embraced utilitarian ethics, conversely, tended to regard most wars as madness. This, once again, at least in the nineteenth century, led them to ally with capitalists, who disliked wars as they disrupted trade. The motives of capitalists were, of course, purely selfish, yet they resulted in perspectives more consonant with common interests than those of militarists and their ideologues. Indeed, the capitalists’ attitude towards war was mutable. The English wars of the eighteenth century, save for the American war, were generally profitable, and entrepreneurs supported them; yet throughout the nineteenth century, up until recent times, entrepreneurs advocated for peace. In the present day, the interests of major merchants have become so intertwined with those of nation-states that the situation has fundamentally changed. Even now, however, both in England and America, large entrepreneurs are generally against war.

Enlightened self-interest, while not the most noble of motivations, often finds itself critiqued by those who, either inadvertently or deliberately, substitute it with far worse sentiments, such as hatred, envy, and a lust for power. Overall, the school of thought stemming from Locke, which advocates enlightened self-interest, has contributed more to the enhancement of human happiness and less to the proliferation of human misery than the schools that disdain it in favor of heroism and self-sacrifice. I recall the horrors of early industrialization, yet in the end, these were tempered by the very system itself. In contrast, I juxtapose them with the serfdom of Russia, the atrocities of war, and its aftermath—fear and hatred, alongside the inevitable obscurantism of those who sought to preserve obsolete systems long after they had outlived their purpose.