History, Man, & Reason: A Study in Nineteenth-Century Though

567 Pages·1971·33.206 MB·English

by  Maurice Mandelbaum

HISTORY, MAN, AND REASON

MAURICE MANDELBAUM
HISTORY,
MAN, &
REASON
A STUDY IN NINETEENTH-CENTURY THOUGHT
THE JOHNS HOPKINS PRESS: BALTIMORE AND LONDON
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Copyright© 1971 by The Johns Hopkins Press
All rights reserved
Manufactured in the United States of America
The Johns Hopkins Press, Baltimore, Maryland 21218
The Johns Hopkins Press Ltd., London
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 75-150042
isbn 0-8018-1236-4
For Ann and for John
175351
CONTENTS
Preface ix
Part I: PHILOSOPHIC BACKGROUND
Chapter 1: Philosophic Movements in the Nineteenth Century 3
1. Introduction 4
2. Metaphysical Idealism 6
3. Positivism 10
4. Materialism 20 •
5. Variant Views of Religion 28
Part II: HISTORICISM
Chapter 2: The Nature and Scope of Historicism 41
1. The Meaning of “Historicism” 4/
2. The Concept of Development 44
3. Two Sources of the Developmental View 47
Chapter 3: The First Phase of Historicism:
From the Enlightenment through Hegel 51
Chapter The Search for a Science of Society:
From Saint-Simon to Marx and Engels 63
Chapter 5 Evolution and Progress 77
Chapter 6 Social Evolutionism 93
Chapter 7 Historicism: A Critical Appraisal 113
1. The Problem of Directional Laws in History 7/4
2. Problems Concerning Patterns of Change in History 727
Part III: THE MALLEABILITY OF MAN
Chapter 8: Challenges to Constancy 141
1. Geneticism, Organicism, and Man as a Progressive
Being 142
2. Historicism and Man’s Malleability 745
Chapter 9: Geneticism: The Associationist Tradition 147
Chapter 10: Organicism: Culture and Human Nature 163
1. Mill and Comte: Two Views of a “Spirit of the Age” 164
2. Comte’s Organicism 77/
3- Hegel 174
/pjMarx 186
Chapter 11: Man as a Progressive Being *93
1. Ideals of a Better Self: Mill, Arnold, Huxley 194
2. Idealism and its Doctrine of Self-Realization 214
3. Evolution and the Malleability of Human Nature 224
Chapter 12: Constancy and Change in Human Nature:
A Critical Account 237
1. The Concept of Social Conditioning 238
2. The Limits of Organicism 250
3. Self-Realization and the Illusions of Progress 262
Part IV: THE LIMITS OF REASON
Chapter 13: Critiques of the Intellectual Powers of Man:
The Idealist Strand 273
1. Jacobi and Fichte: The Suprasensible 234
2. Hegel: The Intellect vs. Reason 239
3. Maine de Biran: Le sens intime 283
Chapter 14: Ignoramus, Ignorabimus: The Positivist Strand 289
1. Helmholtz: Science and Epistemology 292
2. Spencer: The Limits of the Knowable 298
3. Mach and the Economy of Thought 304
Chapter 15: The Rebellion against Reason 311
1. Schopenhauer: The Will and the Intellect 312
2. Kierkegaard: The Subjective Thinker 323
3. Nietzsche: Value and Truth 338
Chapter 16: The Limits Reappraised 349
1. In Defense of Abstractions 330
2. A Critique of Voluntarism 364
3. Conclusion:
The Nineteenth Century and the Present 369
Notes 373
Bibliography 521
Index 535
PREFACE
It is the purpose of this book to cast light on some highly important aspects of
the thought of the nineteenth century. Its scope is not all-embracing, but it
ranges more widely than is perhaps prudent: while its central concerns lie
within the philosophic tradition, materials drawn from the social sciences, and
elsewhere, provide important illustrations of the movements which it has been
my aim to trace.
This inclusiveness is not accidental, for what is here at issue is not simply an
examination of philosophic modes of thought, but a sifting of presuppositions
which were held in common by a diverse group of thinkers whose antecedents
and whose aims often had little in common. Thus, after a preliminary tracing
of the main strands of continuity within philosophy itself, attention will be
concentrated on how, out of diverse and disparate sources, certain common be¬
liefs and attitudes regarding history, man, and reason, came to pervade a great
deal of nineteenth-century thought.
In such an enterprise, it is important not to overemphasize the degree of unity
which is to be found in the thought of a period. Every intellectual discipline has
its own traditions, and in each generation the problems which appear to be most
crucial will be likely to stand in some direct relation to that ongoing tradition.
In addition, however, any period may be marked by some assumptions or modes
of thought which are not confined within the limits of specific disciplines, but
tend to spread through the intellectual life of the times. When these are im¬
portant and relatively novel, and when they are not only pervasive but persist
for an appreciable length of time, they may justify us in viewing them as defini¬
tive of a particular period, or age, in the history of thought. It is of course difficult
to sort out these unifying strands without overlooking the diversity which varia¬
tions in interests, traditions, vocations, and temperaments introduce into the
thought of those who are taken to be representative of the period. Yet, in
principle, both the unity and the diversity are there to be discovered, and I
IX
X PREFACE
know of no more suggestive way of referring to this fact than through a simile
suggested in a recent book dealing with the age of the Enlightenment:
The Enlightenment as we can now envisage it is more like a language than a single
idea, imposing by its very nature certain modes of thought on those who use it, while
remaining always at the same time an expression, in any actual usage, of particular
desires and meanings and a response to particular conditions.1
If this simile is accepted, it suggests that within the history of ideas there can
be methods which avoid postulating an overriding “spirit of the age” as an ex¬
planatory principle, but which may nonetheless lead to the discovery of a greater
degree of unity within a period than, say, the assumptions of A. O. Lovejoy
would lead one to expect there might be.2 To be sure, such a simile can be used
to suggest a variety of different procedures for dealing with the unity and the
diversity which are present in an age. In this book—for better or for worse—I
have attempted to show how each of a group of otherwise divergent or opposed
thinkers held similar or almost identical beliefs and attitudes concerning the
issues with which I have sought to deal. Since the thought of the same person is
frequently relevant to a variety of issues, the reader will find that certain indi¬
viduals reappear in several discussions, their thought being examined from
different points of view. While I have made no effort to deal with all aspects of
any individual’s thought, I have tried to avoid the distortions which arise if one
merely picks out bits and pieces for illustrative purposes. How well I may have
succeeded, or wherein I have failed, only the reader will be in a position to say.
It should be pointed out, however, that I am here dealing with intellectual
history in a rather confining sense. Almost no mention is made of the major
political and social movements of the age, and of their effects on moral and
political theory. The fact that this is the case should not be taken as signifying
that I believe intellectual changes to be isolated from all other changes which
take place within a society. However, when one is not specifically dealing with
the history of normative political theory, it is perhaps true that sociological fac¬
tors exert greater influence on the dissemination of philosophic and scientific
views than upon their original formulation and development.
There is, however, one area of intellectual history, the history of economic
thought, which would have been relevant to my task, but which I have had to
avoid because of a lack of competence. Had I invaded that field, or had I sought
to trace the history of legal and political theory, it is more than likely that I
would have had to deal with the social and political scene in a manner which
I have otherwise been able to eschew. Finally, it should be said that, in order to
limit the field of those with whom I have been concerned, I have in general
restricted myself to English, French, and German thought, with almost no
reference to the United States, and none to the rest of the Continent.
1 Lionel Gossman, Medievalism and the Ideologies of the Enlightenment, p. viii.
2 I have discussed some aspects of Professor Lovejoy’s method in an essay entitled “The
History of Ideas, Intellectual History, and the History of Philosophy,” in History and
Theory, Beiheft v (1964), 33-66.
PREFACE XI
Because I believe that the views regarding history and man and reason with
which I have dealt are philosophically important, and raise pertinent problems
for philosophy today, I offer critical discussions of some of these problems, in
concluding Parts n, in, and iv.
This book was originally begun during the fall semester of the academic year
1953-54, when I was granted a sabbatical leave from Dartmouth College—for
which I remain grateful. Much of Parts 1 and 11 were originally drafted then and
completed some time ago; had this not been the case, Part 11 would have taken
into account the parallel work of Robert A. Nisbet in his latest book, Social
Change and History (1969). A recent research grant from The Johns Hopkins
University has been of substantial aid in the final stages of preparing this book.
However, my chief debt is to the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral
Sciences, of which I was a Fellow in 1967-68, and which permitted me to return
as a visitor in the summer of 1969. Without the time and the freedom provided
by the Center, this book could not have been completed now or possibly at all.