Encyclopedia Of Philosophy (10 Volume Set)

765 Pages·2005·5.78 MB·english

by  Donald M. Borchert

2 n d e d i t i o n
Encyclopedia of
Philosophy
2
CABANIS – DESTUTT DE TRACY
e
m
u
l
o
v
2 n d e d i t i o n
Encyclopedia of
Philosophy
DONALD M. BORCHERT
Editor in Chief
Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Second Edition
Donald M. Borchert, Editor in Chief
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Encyclopedia of philosophy / Donald M. Borchert, editor in chief.—2nd ed.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
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1. Philosophy–Encyclopedias. I. Borchert, Donald M., 1934-
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Printed in the United States of America
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
c o n t e n t s
volume 1
PREFACE TO 2ND EDITION
INTRODUCTION TO 1ST EDITION
LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS
LIST OF ARTICLES
ENCYCLOPEDIA OF
PHILOSOPHY
2nd edition
Abbagnano–Byzantine Philosophy
volume 2
Cabanis–Destutt de Tracy
volume 3
Determinables–Fuzzy Logic
volume 4
Gadamer–Just War Theory
volume 5
Kabbalah–Marxist Philosophy
volume 6
Masaryk–Nussbaum
volume 7
Oakeshott–Presupposition
volume 8
Price–Sextus Empiricus
volume 9
Shaftesbury–Zubiri
volume 10
APPENDIX: ADDITIONAL ARTICLES
THEMATIC OUTLINE
BIBLIOGRAPHIES
INDEX
ENCYCLOPEDIA OF PHILOSOPHY
2nd edition
C
cabala teaching, but his fame and influence derive from one
book, Rapports du physique et du moral de l’homme (12
See Kabbalah
memoirs written between 1796 and 1802, published in
1802).
The Idéologues (who also included Constantin Vol-
cabanis, pierre-jean ney,Condorcet,Antoine Lavoisier,and Pierre de Laplace)
georges were often scorned in their time, and later, as belated
philosophes and purveyors of visionary speculations. In
(1757–1808)
the rising tide of metaphysical idealism,their positivistic
approach was held in disfavor. They suffered from the
Pierre-Jean Georges Cabanis was, with Comte Antoine
influence ofthe religious revival and the spell exercised by
Louis Claude Destutt de Tracy, the leader of the Idéo-
François René de Chateaubriand’s Le génie du Christian-
logues. A precocious student of philosophy and of the
isme, as well as from the popularity of “Illuminist”fads
classics,he chose medicine as a career,but he never prac-
derived from Masonic practices. Their political activity
ticed.As a protégé of Claude-Adrien Helvétius’s widow,
during the Revolution also worked against them, and
he frequented the company ofÉtienne Bonnot de Condil-
Napoleon’s suppression of their movement left them
lac, Baron d’Holbach, Benjamin Franklin, and Thomas
without an outlet for publication.
Jefferson. When Voltaire disparaged his poetry in 1778,
Cabanis turned to physiology and philosophy.During the Cabanis,like the others,sought a mechanistic expla-
Revolution, he collaborated with Mirabeau on public nation ofthe universe,nature,and human behavior—an
education and was an intimate ofMarquis de Condorcet. approach later continued by Auguste Comte and
Later,he backed the Directory and Napoleon Bonaparte’s Hippolyte-Adolphe Taine.Matter alone is real and eternal
coup d’état of 18 Brumaire. Although Napoleon made in its many transitory forms. As Lavoisier had applied
him a senator, Cabanis opposed his tyrannical policies. analysis to chemistry,so—Cabanis declared—it could be
Bitter and scornful, Napoleon dubbed Cabanis’s group applied to ideas,which could thereby be reduced to the
“Idéologues.” Cabanis wrote on medical practice and original sensations whence they spring.Self-interest,the
ENCYCLOPEDIA OF PHILOSOPHY
2nd edition • 1
CABANIS,PIERRE-JEAN GEORGES
pursuit of happiness and pleasure,and self-preservation tions.Involuntary movements are caused by the organs’
are the only motives of action. These notions, already sensitivity,which produces the unconscious (autonomic)
advanced by the eighteenth-century materialists, were impressions that determine many of our ideas and deci-
systematically developed by Cabanis and Destutt de sions.The action ofthe nervous system,moreover,is only
Tracy.The study of man,they held,must be reduced to a specialized application of the laws of physical motion,
physics and physiology.Man must be observed and ana- which are the source of all phenomena. The third
lyzed like any mineral or vegetable.The medical expert, “Mémoire” develops a theory of the unconscious. The
said Cabanis,should play the part formerly taken by the nervous system is affected by internal changes,that is,by
moralist (an idea that harks back to René Descartes and memory and imagination; thus within man exists
Julien Offray de La Mettrie). “Physiology, analysis of “another internal man”in constant action,the effects of
ideas,and morals are three branches ofone science which which are noticeable in dreams. The fourth “Mémoire”
may be called the science ofman.”Consequently,Cabanis explores the influence of age on ideas and “moral affec-
and his fellow theorists refused to recognize notions not tions.”The organs,like all else in nature,are in constant
based on phenomena or sensations,that is,not suscepti- motion,and are therefore involved in decomposition and
ble ofexact knowledge and (ultimately,at least) ofmath- recomposition. Consequently, variations in the cellular
ematical notation.An understanding of the “mechanism tissue produce physical and psychic changes due to chem-
of language”was considered essential to the understand- ical action. The fifth “Mémoire” takes up sexual differ-
ing ofthe “mechanism ofthe intellect”and to the mean- ences.The generative organs are essentially glandular,and
ing ofideas.Language itself,however,had to be illumined their secretions influence the brain and the whole body.
by analysis of the sensations which constitute an idea an Unknown primitive “dispositions” (structures), which
by the functioning ofthe intellect. cause the embryo to be male or female,are also the cause
of sexual differences,both physical and psychic.The fact
In his preface to the Rapports du physique et du moral
that women can be forced to reproduction and men only
de l’homme, Cabanis insisted that both the moralist and
excited to it produces vast differences in habits and men-
the physician are interested in the whole man;that is,in
tal outlook.What the sexes have in common constitutes
the physical and the moral, which are inseparable, and
human nature.
incomprehensible taken separately. The moral sciences
must be placed on a physical basis. The union of mind The sixth “Mémoire” treats the influence of “tem-
and body is the theme ofthe first “Mémoire.”Sensation is perament,”that is, the determining effects of the inher-
the necessary cause ofour ideas,feelings,needs,and will. ited physical constitution. Thus a large heart and lungs
Since sensitivity is the connection between biological life produce an energetic character,small ones an intellectual
and mind, the mental is only the physical considered character.Because of heredity,the human race could be
from a certain point of view. Cabanis makes a famous improved by hygienic methods. Believing in the inheri-
comparison between the brain and the stomach: As the tance of acquired characteristics and in improvement of
latter is a machine for digesting food,so the former is a species through crossbreeding,Cabanis pleads for a pro-
machine for digesting impressions, by “the secretion of gram ofeugenics that will do for the human species what
thought.” He then develops a genetic analysis of sensa- human beings have done for dogs and horses.In the sev-
tions and ideas.There are no causes except those which enth “Mémoire”Cabanis explores emotional and mental
can act on our senses,no truths except in relation to “the perturbations caused by diseases.For instance,weakness
general way of feeling” of human nature, which varies and irritability ofthe stomach produce muscular enerva-
with such positive factors as age,sex,disposition,health, tion and rapid alternations between excitement and
climate,and so on.Thus the state of the abdominal vis- depression.The eighth “Mémoire”discusses such effects
cera may influence the formation ofideas. ofdiet,air pressure,humidity and temperature,as excita-
tion and sedation.Cabanis analyzes the effects of differ-
The second “Mémoire”is a “physiological history of
ent foods and drinks, but his information and
sensations.”Cabanis defines life as feeling and,following
conclusions are rather fantastic.
the work ofAlbrecht von Haller and La Mettrie,discusses
the difference between sensitivity and irritability.The lat- Climate is the subject of the ninth “Mémoire.”Man,
ter,he maintains,is only a result of the former,which is the most modifiable animal, responds to heat and cold
the basic biological phenomenon;since both depend on with differences in sexual and physical activity,and con-
the nerves,they are essentially the same.Voluntary move- sequently in mental and moral habits. The tenth
ments come from perceptions, which arise from sensa- “Mémoire”is the longest.It explores the phenomena of
ENCYCLOPEDIA OF PHILOSOPHY
2 • 2nd edition
CAIRD,EDWARD
animal life,including sensitivity,instinct,sympathy,sleep, Bibliography
dreams, and delirium. The forces that cause matter to
WORKS BY CABANIS
organize (a natural tendency) are unknown, and will The Oeuvres complètes(Paris,1823–1825) ofCabanis was
always remain so.Nevertheless these forces are only phys- edited by P.J.G.Thurot.
Cabanis,Pierre-Jean Georges.On the Relations between the
ical, and life is only organization. Cabanis believed in
Physical and Moral Aspects ofMan,edited by George Mora.
spontaneous generation. Species have evolved through
Translated by Margaret Duggan Saidi.Baltimore:Johns
chance mutations (“fortuitous changes”) and planned Hopkins Press,1981.
mutation (“man’s experimental attempts”),which change
WORKS ON CABANIS
the structures of heredity. Cabanis does not, however, The best study ofthe Idéologues (although it ignores Cabanis’s
develop a general theory of evolution. The eleventh connection with La Mettrie and the man-machine outlook)
is Emile Cailliet,La tradition littéraire des Idéologues
“Mémoire”concerns the influence of the “moral”(men-
(Philadelphia:American Philosophical Society,1943).See
tal) on the physical, which is merely the action of the also Charles H.Van Duzer,The Contribution ofthe
brain on the body.The last “Mémoire,”on “acquired dis- Idéologues to French Revolutionary Thought(Baltimore:
Johns Hopkins Press,1935),and the more apologetic F.
positions,”treats the influence ofhabituation and experi-
Picavet,Les idéologues(Paris:Alcan,1891).
ence in general. Moravia,Sergio.“From ‘Homme Machine’to ‘Homme
Sensible’:Changing Eighteenth-Century Models ofMan’s
As a positivist,Cabanis was willing to renounce ulti-
Image.”Journal ofthe History ofIdeas39 (1978):45–60.
mate explanations. He was interested only in cause and
Other Recommended Titles
effect on the level of phenomena.Unlike the other Idéo-
Richards,Robert J.“Influence ofSensationalist Tradition on
logues, he was much influenced by La Mettrie and the Early Theories ofthe Evolution ofBehavior.”Journal ofthe
man-machine school. He opposed the psychological History ofIdeas40 (1979):85–105.
Staum,Martin S.Cabanis: Enlightenment and Medical
method of Condillac and the sensationists, which was
Philosophy in the French Revolution.Princeton,NJ:
limited to external sensations. He preferred the physio- Princeton University Press,1980.
logical approach, which emphasized hereditary disposi- Wright,John P.,and Paul Potter,eds.Psyche and Soma:
Physicians and Metaphysicians on the Mind Body Problem
tions, the state of the organs, dreams, and automatic or
from Antiquity to Enlightenment.Oxford:Clarendon Press,
unconscious impulses. These factors were more signifi-
2000.
cant for him than experience (sensation) in determining
L.G.Crocker (1967)
the individual’s behavior; for the tabula rasa concept
Bibliography updated by Tamra Frei (2005)
ignored what the child or adult brings to experience.For
the same reason, Condillac’s statue is only an unreal
abstraction from the reality of the unified, total, active
caird, edward
organism.Cabanis was interested in the moral and social
(1835–1908)
improvement ofhumankind,which he considered possi-
ble through an understanding of physiology—a science Edward Caird, a leading Scottish Hegelian, was born in
that he thought would eventually influence even positive Greenock,the fifth ofseven boys.His eldest brother,John
law. Caird,became well known as a preacher and theologian,
and exercised considerable influence on the young
Cabanis and the Idéologues were one moment of a
Edward. Educated at Greenock Academy and Glasgow
tradition that extends from Epicurus to the contempo-
University (with a briefinterlude at St.Andrews),Edward
rary logical positivists (whose interest in linguistic analy-
Caird went to Balliol College,Oxford,gaining first-class
sis was prefigured by the Idéologues). Cabanis, like the
honors in Classical Moderations and in “Greats.” From
others, has frequently been accused of impoverishing
1864 to 1866 he was a fellow and tutor ofMerton,leaving
human experience by reducing it to the physical and to take the chair of moral philosophy at Glasgow,which
mechanical level,and by denying the possibility of tran- he held until 1893.He then returned to Oxford to succeed
scending internal and external sensations. On the other Benjamin Jowett as master ofBalliol.He resigned because
hand,the Idéologues considered man to be his own justi- ofill health in 1907,and died the year after.
fication and the master ofhis own destiny.They had faith Caird had a profound influence on his students,who
in his capacity to progress indefinitely by means of his regarded themselves as his disciples and included such
own resources. distinguished philosophers as Henry Jones, J. H. Muir-
ENCYCLOPEDIA OF PHILOSOPHY
2nd edition • 3
CAIRNS,DORION
head, J. S. Mackenzie, and John Watson. “The greatest The principle of evolution,Caird recognized,was of
theme of modern philosophy,”Caird held,“is the prob- great value in reconciling differences,and in his Gifford
lem ofthe relation ofthe human to the divine”(The Evo- Lectures,The Evolution ofReligion(1891–1892),he traced
lution ofTheology in the Greek Philosophers,1904).Many the development of a single religious principle through
ofhis Glasgow students were destined for the church,and its varied manifestations in the main religions of the
his liberalizing influence on religion was widely transmit- world.
ted through them beyond the classroom.
See also Green, Thomas Hill; Hegel, Georg Wilhelm
Caird’s philosophy was a form of speculative ideal-
Friedrich;Hegelianism;Kant,Immanuel;.
ism,based on Immanuel Kant but going beyond him.It
was essentially a philosophy of reconciliation. The need
for philosophy,he held,arises from the apparently irrec- Bibliography
oncilable opposition between different elements in our
WORKS BY CAIRD
spiritual life—between subject and object, religion and
A Critical Account ofthe Philosophy ofKant.Glasgow:J.
science, freedom and determination, reason and desire. Maclehose,1877.
Unless we reconcile these antagonisms in a higher unity, Hegel.Edinburgh:Blackwood,1883.
we cannot achieve the spiritual harmony without which The Social Philosophy and Religion ofComte.New York:
Macmillan,1885.
the highest achievements ofhumanity are impossible.
The Critical Philosophy ofImmanuel Kant.Glasgow:J.
Kant, he was convinced, had found the key to the Maclehose,1889.
problem,but had failed to grasp the implications of his Essays on Literature and Philosophy.Glasgow:J.Maclehose,
own doctrine. Caird had first to clear away what he 1892.
The Evolution ofReligion.Glasgow,1893:J.Moclehose.
thought was a common misinterpretation of Kant and
The Evolution ofTheology in the Greek Philosophers.Glasgow:J.
then to go further along the Kantian road,with G.W.F.
Maclehose,1904.
Hegel as his guide. Kant had been held, according to
Caird,to teach that the material ofknowledge is given in WORKS ON CAIRD
Jones,Sir Henry,and J.H.Muirhead.The Life and Philosophy
sense perception and that the mind then goes to work on
ofEdward Caird.Glasgow:Maclehose,Jackson,1921.
it,ordering it by concepts supplied by itself.But,in fact,
Mackenzie,J.S.“Edward Caird as a Philosophical Teacher.”
for Kant there are no objects until thought has done its Mind18 (1909):509–537.
work.Thought enters into the very constitution ofexpe- Watson,John.“The Idealism ofEdward Caird.”Philosophical
rience.And further,the process ofknowing is dominated Review18 (1909):147–163,259–280.
by an “idea ofthe Reason,”which drives the mind to seek
A.K.Stout (1967)
a form of experience in which all differences are seen as
elements in a single system.
But instead ofinsisting that the larger the part played
cairns, dorion
in knowledge by the mind’s synthetic activity, the more
(1901–1973)
adequate that knowledge is,Kant took the view that this
activity confines us to appearances and bars us from
Thomas Dorion Cairns was born on July 4, 1901. His
things-in-themselves. He should have shown, Caird
father was a Methodist pastor.Cairns studied phenome-
argued, that our knowledge of objects will be imperfect
nological theory of value with Winthrop Bell at Harvard
insofar as we fail to recognize that they are only partial
in 1923 and 1924, used a traveling fellowship to study
aspects ofthe ideal whole toward which reason points.
with Edmund Husserl for two years, returned later for
Caird’s ethical theory had close affiliations with that over another year, and received his doctorate with The
ofhis lifelong friend,T.H.Green.His main problem cen- Philosophy of Edmund Husserl in 1933. After temporary
tered on the opposition of inclination and duty,and his positions in New York,Cairns taught psychology as well
solution lay in establishing the power ofhuman beings to as philosophy at Rockford College from 1938 to 1950.
determine their conduct by reference to the self,as a per- During World War II,he won a Bronze Star as a prisoner
manent center, as distinct from its relatively isolated ofwar interrogator in the Air Corps.He was invited to the
and transient desires. A self-conscious being seeks self- New School for Social Research in 1954 by Alfred Schutz,
satisfaction,not just the satisfaction ofthis or that desire. taught there with Aron Gurwitsch during the 1960s,
And in this power ofdetermining conduct by reference to retired in 1969, and died on January 4, 1973. All who
the selflies human freedom. heard him considered him a brilliant teacher,but he pub-
ENCYCLOPEDIA OF PHILOSOPHY
4 • 2nd edition
CAIRNS,DORION
lished little.However,his translations of Husserl’s Carte- (4) Husserl held that there were sensuous hyletic data
sian Meditations (1960) and Formal and Transcendental immanent in the stream of consciousness. These
Logic(1969) played an important role.His Conversations moments are themselves not intentive and no distinction
with Husserl and Fink (1976), Guide for Translating was needed between sensing and sensa for Husserl, but
Husserl(1973),and a dozen essays from his Nachlass have for Cairns that distinction must be carefully maintained
appeared posthumously.The editing of the manuscripts and sensa are transcendent ofconsciousness.
ofhis New School lecture courses began in 2003.
(5) Cairns held that Husserl left much to be done on
the emotions and advanced the account by showing
some results of cairns’s above all how emotion can be critically justified by the
investigations evidencing ofobjects valued in it.By contrast,rationality
for most philosophers is wholly a matter of propositions
Cairns’s original project was to bring Husserl’s earlier
conforming to the norms oflogic.
work up to the level of Cartesianische Meditationen
(1931),but from attempting to repeat the investigations, (6) Cairns went beyond Husserl in developing the
he came to propose at least seven major revisions. idea ofethics as a theory ofcritically justified willing (i.e.,
a theory ofpractical reason).
(1) Like many in modern philosophy, Husserl pur-
sued a first philosophy that seeks grounds in conscious- (7) Cairns’s most radical revision of Husserl con-
ness for everything else.Hence,the positive sciences are cerns the theory of the other.He objected to the reduc-
grounded in a primal science called transcendental phe- tion of the sphere of ownness introduced in the latter’s
nomenology. This first philosophy is transcendental Fifth Cartesian Meditation because the procedure
because it refrains from accepting the intramundane sta- described as a suspending acceptance ofa noema without
tus of consciousness in order to avoid trying to ground a suspending acceptance of the noesis is impossible to
the world in part of itself. Cairns always accepted the perform.Instead,Cairns asserted that a series ofnoetico-
transcendental epocheand agreed with his master that it noematic strata oftranscendental consciousness must be
was Husserl’s chiefcontribution. reflectively suspended through “unbuilding” (Abbau).
Fields ofsensa are ultimately reached.Through “building
Husserl’s publications emphasize the theory of sci-
up”(Aufbau),one allows founded strata to be motivated
ence (Wissenschaftstheorie),especially the theory oflogic,
once again,and thereby can reflectively observe how the
although there are remarks about valuation and action.
intersubjective world is constituted.
Cairns revised Husserl so that the goal ofphenomenolog-
ical philosophy became not merely knowledge, but the A fundamental distinction for most European and
integration of critically justified willing, valuing, and North American philosophers holds between inanimate
believing. physical nature and the stratum of animate nature. A
course in Indian philosophy with James Houghton
(2) There is a considerable shift in emphasis when
Woods at Harvard in 1923 prepared Cairns to recognize
Cairns follows his revision of Husserl’s goal by affording
that when the sense “animate body”is transferred from
value theory and theoretical ethics as much attention as
one’s own body it transfers not to some but to all sensu-
epistemology within his presentation phenomenological
ous objects—rocks, trees, and sky included—and that
first philosophy.
animism follows.In class,Professor Cairns would say that
(3) Although many stop after defining intentionality chairs were rather stupid animals who stood in one place
(which Cairns came to call “intentiveness”) as directed- unless moved by somebody else.The distinction between
ness toward objects,Cairns followed Husserl in using the inanimate and animate is then secondary, and may be
concept of synthesis to make this insight fruitful—for recast as a distinction between animals with evident
example,a synthesis ofintentive processes constituting an organs of sensation and locomotion and those without
object as self-identical and different from other objects. them. And phenomenology is clearly not merely about
human consciousness.
Although Husserl saw intentiveness more clearly
than anybody previously, Cairns believed that Husserl In an era when practically all soi-disant phenome-
still tended to reify the noema (i.e., the thing-as- nologists devote themselves entirely to the interpretation
intended-to in an intentive process),which is easy to do if of texts, Dorion Cairns is among the few who made a
one conceives of intentionality as a relation, whereas strict distinction between what may be called scholarship,
intentiveness is actually a property. which includes translation as well as interpretation of
ENCYCLOPEDIA OF PHILOSOPHY
2nd edition • 5