Dooyeweerd: Jean-Jacques Rousseau

"Jean-Jacques ROUSSEAU" le Allan Ramsay 1766

§ 7 - AN GEUR-CHEUM SA CHÒMHSTRI EADAR IDÈAL AN T-SAIDHEINS AGUS IDÈAL NA PEARSANTACHD ANN AN ROUSSEAU.

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§ 7 - THE CRISIS IN THE CONFLICT BETWEEN THE IDEAL OF SCIENCE AND THAT OF PERSONALITY IN ROUSSEAU.

     In ROUSSEAU'S philosophical world of thought the tension between the ideal of science and that of personality reached a religious crisis. In 1750, in answer to the question posed by the Academy of Dijon, which offered a prize for the best response, the Genevan autodidact sent in his treatise entitled "Discours sur les sciences et les arts". This writing at one blow established his European renown. It signified a passionate attack upon the entire Humanistic civilization which was dominated by the rationalist science-ideal, and had trampled the rights of human personality to a natural development. From the very beginning the Humanistic ideal of science had implied a fundamental problem with respect to the relationship between scientific thought, stimulated by the Faustian passion for power, and the autonomous freedom and value of human personality. In the soul of ROUSSEAU this problem attained such a tension, that he openly proclaimed the antinomy between the two polar motives of Humanist thought. He did not eschew the consequence of disavowing the science-ideal, in order to make possible the recognition of human personality as a moral aim in itself.

     "If our sciences are vain in the object proposed to themselves, they are still more dangerous by the effects which they produce." So runs the judgment passed by ROUSSEAU on the science-ideal in his Discours sur les sciences et les arts (1).

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(1) Oeuvres complêts de J. J. Rousseau, 1855 (ed. H. Bechold) II, p. 126: "Si nos sciences sont vaines dans l'objet qu'elles se proposent, elles sont encore plus dangereuses par les effets qu'elles produisent."

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And his writing ends with the pathetic exhortation to return into ourselves in all simplicity. Freed from the burden of science, we may learn true virtues from the principles which are inscribed in the heart of everybody. "0 virtue! sublime knowledge of simple souls, should we need so much trouble and intellectual apparatus to know thee? Are not thy principles engraved in all hearts and does it not suffice for us in order to learn thy laws to return into ourselves and to hear the voice of conscience in the silence of the passions?" (2).

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(2) Ibid., p. 138: "0 vertu! science sublime des âmes simples, faut-il donc tant de peines et d'appareil pour te connaître? Tes principes ne

sont-ils pas gravés dans tous les coeurs? et ne suffit-il pas pour apprendre tes lois de rentrer en soi-même et d'écouter la voix de la conscience dans le silence des passions?"

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     This was the passionate language of the re-awakened ideal of personality that called Humanistic thought to ultimate self-reflection, to reflection upon the religious motive of the freedom and autarchy of personality, through which the ideal of science was itself called into being.

     In his Discours sur l'origine de l'inégalite parmi les hommes (Discourse on the origin of inequality among men) ROUSSEAU rejected the conception which sought the difference between man and animals primarily in thought. Only the consciousness of freedom and the feeling of moral power proves the spiritual character of the human soul: "Every animal has ideas, because it has senses; it even combines ideas up to a certain point... Consequently it is not so much the understanding which among the animals makes the specific distinction of man, but rather man's quality of a free agent. Nature commands every animal, and the beast obeys. Man experiences the same impression, but he is aware of his freedom to yield or to resist; and it is especially in the consciousness of this freedom that the spirituality of his soul manifests itself; for physics explains in some fashion the mechanism of the senses and the formation of Ideas, but in the power of willing or rather choosing, and in the feeling of that power one finds only purely spiritual acts which in no single part are to be explained in terms of mechanical laws" (3).

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(3) Oeuvres II, p. 30/1: "Tout animal a des idées, puisqu'il a des sens; il combine même des idées jusqu'à un certain point... Ce n'est donc pas tant l'entendement qui fait parmi les animaux la distinction specifique de l'homme que sa qualité d'agent libre. La nature commande à tout animal, et la bête obéit. L'homme éprouve la même impression, mais il se reconnait libre d'acquiescer ou de résister; et c'est surtout dans la conscience de cette liberté que se montre la spiritualité de son âme, car la physique explique en quelque manière le mécanisme des sens et la formation des idées; mais dans la puissance de vouloir ou plutôt de choisir, et dans le sentiment de cette puissance, on ne trouve que des actes purement spirituels, dont on n'explique rien par les lois de la mécanique."

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     Thus human thought was in a sensualistic sense degraded to a mere higher level of the animal associations of sensory Ideas, in order to permit all value of human personality to be concentrated in the feeling of freedom.

     Nevertheless, in his democratic-revolutionary political philosophy, ROUSSEAU did not abandon the mathematical pattern of thought. By means of the latter he sought to maintain the natural rights of human personality in the face of the despotism of HOBBES' Leviathan, although the latter was philosophically construed by the same means of mathematical-juridical thought, namely the social contract.

     ROUSSEAU sharply distinguishes the "volonté générale" from the "volonté de tous", because the former can only be directed towards the common good. But in this "general will", in which "each of us brings into the community his person and all his power, in order that we may receive every member as an indivisible part of the whole" (4), personal freedom is again absorbed by the principle of majority (5).

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(4) Du Contrat Social (Oeuvres II), p. 274: "chacun de nous met en commun sa personne et toute sa puissance, afin que nous recevons encore chaque membre comme partie indivisible du tout."

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(5) 3 Op. cit., p.325: "Hors ce contrat primitif, la voix du plus grand nombre oblige toujours tous les autres; c'est une suite du contrat même." [Except for this original contract, the vote of the greatest number obliges always all the rest; this is a consequence of the very contract.]

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The state-Leviathan construed both in HOBBES and in ROUSSEAU in accordance with the mathematical ideal of science which respects no limits, devours free personality in all its spheres of life. The introduction of the Idea of the "volonté générale" was actually meant in a normative sense. And in it personality was to regain its natural autonomous freedom in a higher form construed by mathematical thought. In fact, its introduction implied the absorption of free personality into a despotic construction issued from the condemned ideal of science. It was the picture of Leviathan, with its head cut off that formed the frontispiece of the first edition of The Social Contract!

     Meanwhile — and this is the point in which ROUSSEAU had decidedly outgrown the spirit of the Enlightenment — the accent in his philosophy is definitely shifted to the ideal of personality. And the latter can no longer be identified with mathematical thought.

     In HUME's philosophy the ideal of personality had already begun to revolt against the science-ideal by making moral feeling independent of the theoretical Idea. In ROUSSEAU feeling became the true seat of the Humanistic ideal of personality which had been robbed of its vitality by the hypertrophy of the science-ideal.

ROUSSEAU's religion of sentiment and his estrangement from HUME.

     ROUSSEAU's bitterest attacks were directed against the rationalistic view of religion of the "Enlightenment". In it he correctly saw an attack upon the religious kernel of the Humanistic ideal of personality.

     His proclamation of the natural religion of sentiment (6) was directed just as much against the materialism of the French Encyclopedists as against the deism of NEWTON'S natural philosophy.

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(6) See the famous fourth book of his EMILE, where ROUSSEAU expounded his dualistic conception of human nature (sensory nature versus the feeling of freedom). I suspect that this conception influenced KANT'S dualism.

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ROUSSEAU never grew weary of telling his contemporaries that religion is not seated in the head, but in the "heart". He never grew tired contending that abstract science may not encroach upon the holy contents of human feeling. He combated the rationalistic associational psychology which had excluded the "soul" from its field of investigation. And his opposition was marked by a passionateness which can only be understood in terms of an ultimate religious reaction of the Humanistic ideal of personality against the tyranny of the ideal of science. Thus not only did he necessarily become estranged from the circle of the Encyclopedists but also from his earlier friend and protector DAVID HUME. For, no matter how ROUSSEAU could feel in agreement with HUME in his emancipation of the function of feeling from theoretical thought, yet in the final analysis, in HUME's absolutizing of the deterministic viewpoint of associational psychology, the ideal of science still dominated that of the sovereign personality.

     Disillusioned, the passionate defender of the freedom of sovereign personality turned away from Western culture. The freedom of the sovereign personality ought to be recognized equally in all individuals, but Western culture was dominated in all the spheres of life by sovereign science, which was not in the first place concerned with personal freedom. ROUSSEAU sought consolation in the dream of a natural state of innocence and happiness which had been disturbed by modern culture.

Optimism and Pessimism in their new relation in ROUSSEAU.

     The state of nature is no longer painted, as in HOBBES, in the shrill colours of a "bellum omnium contra omnes". On the contrary, in his representation of the original state of mankind, ROUSSEAU revived the Stoic Idea of the "golden age". Perhaps he was influenced by such idealistic pictures of primitive society as were current at his time. But his conviction of the value of the primitive had undoubtedly deeper grounds in his anti-rationalist conception of human nature. ROUSSEAU's optimistic view of the original goodness of the latter differed radically from the optimistic life- and world-view in which the ideal of science held the supremacy.

     Science has not made good its promise to human personality, it has not brought freedom to man, but slavery, inequality, and exploitation. Optimism and pessimism are the light and shadow in ROUSSEAU's picture of the state of nature and of culture; however, their role is completely the reverse of what it had been in HOBBES. With respect to the culture of the science-ideal ROUSSEAU was a pessimist. He was an optimist only in his belief in the free personality which will break the strait-jacket into which it was clapped by the rationalistic culture. It will build a new culture in which the sovereign freedom of man will shine forth in greater brilliance than in the uncorrupted state of nature. This new culture will find its foundation only in the divine value of personality.

LOCKE and ROUSSEAU. The contrast between innate human rights and inalienable rights of the citizen.

     In the natural state all individuals were free and equal but they remained individuals. Their inalienable human rights were formulated by LOCKE in opposition to the absolutistic doctrine of HOBBES. Nevertheless, LOCKE was a genuine figure of the "Enlightenment". He held fast to the optimistic faith that the domination of mathematical thought was the best guarantee of the freedom of personality.

     Just as he resolved all complex Ideas into simple ones, so to him the free individual remained the central point of the civil state. Just as the entire preceding Humanistic doctrine of natural law, LOCKE construed the transition from the natural state to the civil state by means of the social contract. The citizens had already possessed their inalienable rights of freedom and private property in the natural state, but they needed the social contract to guarantee them by an organized power. And this was the sole intention of this contract in the system of LOCKE. The civil state is no more than a company with limited liability, designed for the continuation of the natural state under the protection of an authority. It is the constitutional state of the old liberalism, the state which has as its only goal the maintenance of the innate human rights of the individual.

     ROUSSEAU broke with this liberalistic conception. Just like the Stoics he did not consider the natural state of freedom and equality to be in itself the highest ideal. This situation is forever gone. A higher destiny calls humanity to the civil state. Only within the latter can the sovereign freedom of personality completely unfold in its divine value. Natural freedom ought to be elevated to the level of a higher, a normative Idea of freedom. The innate natural rights of men must be transformed into inalienable rights of the citizens. By means of the social contract the individual must surrender all of his natural freedom in order to get it back again in the higher form of the freedom of the citizen. To that end the social contract can no longer be conceived of in a formal sense, as HOBBES, PUFENDORF and even GROTIUS had done. For with these teachers of natural law, the original contract could in the final analysis even justify the abandonment of all freedom of personality. For them the construction of the social contract was not first and foremost orientated to the ideal of personality but to the mathematical science-ideal with its domination-motive. ROUSSEAU raises his flaming protest against this subjection of the value of personality to mathematical thought: "To give up one's liberty, that is to give up one's quality of man, the rights of humanity, even one's duties. These words slavery and right are contradictory, they exclude one another mutually" (7).

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(7)  Du Control Social I, chap. IV (Oeuvres II), p. 269: "Renoncer à sa liberté, c'est renoncer à sa qualité d'homme, aux droits de l'humanité, même à ses devoirs." Ces mots esclavage et droit sont contradictoires, ils s'excluent mutuellement."

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     Freedom, just as equality, is an inalienable human right that only can be abandoned in its natural form, in order to be regained in the higher form of citizenship. There is only a single specific form of association which secures this freedom. Therefore, this form is the only lawful one.

     Thus in ROUSSEAU the transition from the natural state to the civil state became the fundamental problem of guaranteeing the sovereign freedom of personality in the only legitimate form of association.

The ideal of personality acquires primacy in ROUSSEAU's construction of the social contract.

     This is the new motive in ROUSSEAU, and therefore he could rightly oppose his doctrine concerning the social contract to the earlier Humanistic theories of natural law: the ideal of personality has acquired primacy over the ideal of science. In his famous work Du Contrat Social ou Principes du Droit Politique he formulated the problem in question as follows: "To find a form of association which with all the common power defends and protects the person and goods of every member and by means of which each one uniting himself with all, nevertheless is only obedient to himself and remains as free as before" (8).

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(8) 1 Ibid., chap. VI (Oeuvres II), p. 273: "Trouver une forme d'association qui défende et protège de toute la force commune la personne et les biens de chaque associé, et par laquelle chacun, s'unissant à tous, n'obéisse pourtant qu'à lui même, et reste aussi libre qu'auparavant."

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     ROUSSEAU intended to solve this problem through his "social contract" which, in order to be valid, must include precisely the clause that each individual delivers himself with all his natural rights to all, collectively and thus through becoming subject to the whole by his participation in the "general will' gets back all his natural rights in a higher juridical form: "For in the first place, if every one gives himself entirely, the condition is equal for all; and if the condition is equal for all, nobody is interested in rendering it onerous for the others" (9).

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(9) "Car, premièrement, chacun se donnant tout entier, la condition est égale pour tous; et la condition étant égale pour tous, nul n'a intéret de la rendre onéreuse aux autres."

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     According to ROUSSEAU, the inalienable right of freedom maintains itself in the inalienable sovereignty of the people, which can never be transferred to a magistrate. The sovereign will of the people is the general will, which expresses itself in legislation. As such it is to be distinguished sharply from the "volonté de tous".

     For the "volonté générale" should be directed exclusively toward the general interest; it is therefore incompatible with the existence of private associations between the state and the individual, because they foster particularism. At this point ROUSSEAU appeals expressly to PLATO's "ideal state".

     Public law, formed by the general will, does not recognize any counter-poise in private spheres of association. The "social contract" is the only juridical basis for all the rights of the citizens. Thus the construction of the general will becomes the lever of an unbridled absolutism of the legislator. "Just as nature gives every man an absolute power over all his limbs, so the social contract gives the body politic an absolute power over all its members; and it is this same power which, directed by the general will, bears the name of sovereignty" (10).

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(10) "Comme la nature donne à chaque homme un pouvoir absolu sur tous ses membres, le pacte social donne au corps politique un pouvoir absolu sur tous les siens; et c'est ce même pouvoir qui, dirigé par la volonté générale, porte le nom de souverainité."

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     ROUSSEAU did observe indeed, that there was an inner tension between his doctrine of the "volonté générale" and the individual freedom of human personality.

     WOLFF'S basic law for the state: "Salus publica supremo lex esto", was to be reconciled with LOCKE's doctrine of the inalienable human rights. WOLFF had openly acknowledged that there was an insoluble antinomy between these two poles of Humanistic political theory.

     In ROUSSEAU's theory, therefore, the question as to the mutual relationship between the natural rights of man and the rights of the citizen became a problem of essential importance. "Besides the public person," so he observes, "we have to consider the private persons which compose it, and whose life and liberty are by nature independent of it. Consequently the question is that we should well distinguish the rights of the citizens and those of the sovereign, and the duties which the former have to discharge in their quality of subjects from the natural right which they ought to enjoy in their quality of men" (11).

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(11) Du Contrat Social II, IV "Des bornes du pouvoir souverain" (Oeuvres II, p. 286): "Outre la personne publique, nous avons à considerer les personnes privées qui la composent, et dont la vie et la liberté sont naturellement indépendantes d'elle. Il s'agit donc de bien distinguer les droits respectifs des citoyens et du souverain, et les devoirs qu'ont à remplir les premiers en qualité de sujets, du droit naturel dont ils doivent jouir en qualité d'hommes."

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According to him it is beyond dispute, that in the social contract every individual transfers to the state only as much of his natural power, his possessions, and freedom, as is required for "the common good" of the community.

     The "common good", and so also the "general will", do not recognize any particular individuals, but only the whole.

The antinomy between the natural rights of man and the rights of the citizen. ROUSSEAU's attempt to solve it.

     Proceeding from this principle ROUSSEAU thought he had discovered the way by which "natural human rights", as private rights, could also be maintained uncurtailed in the civil state.

     The first principle of the "general will" that follows from the fact that the latter only can aim at the general interest, is namely the absolute equality of all citizens with respect to the demands of the community.

     As soon as the sovereign lawgiver (the people) would favour certain citizens above others, so that special privileges would be accorded (recall the privileges of forum, freedom from taxation etc. of nobility and clergy under the ancient regime), the "general will" would be transmuted into a private or particular will and the sovereign would exceed the limits of its competency (12).

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(12) Op. citi III, Chap. IV (p. 286: "On voit par là que le pouvoir souverain, tout absolu, tout sacré, tout inviolable qu'il est, ne passe ni peut passer les bornes des conventions générales, et que tout homme peut disposer pleinement de ce qui lui a été laissé de ses biens et de sa liberté par des conventions; de sorte que le souverain n'est jamais en droit de charger un sujet plus qu'un autre, parce qu'alors l'affaire devenant particulière, son pouvoir n'est plus compétent." ["From this it is seen that the sovereign power, however absolute, however sacred, however inviolable it may be, does not and cannot surpass the limits of the general conventions, and that every man can completely dispose of what these latter have left him of his goods and of his liberty; so that the sovereign has never the right to charge a subject more than another, because in this case the matter becomes a particular one and his power is no longer competent"].

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     For the clause of the "social contract", upon which all sovereignty in the state is based, contains unchangeably the principle of equality of all citizens with respect to the public interest. In other words, the "general will", because of its unchangeable inner nature, can never have a particular object. This is the significance of ROUSSEAU's concept of statute law which is quite different from the formal one. And it is also different from the so-called "material concept of statute law" in the sense of a positive juridical rule touching the rights and duties of the citizens, as understood by the positivistic German school of LABAND in the XIXth century.

     According to ROUSSEAU, a real public statute (loi) can never regulate a particular interest. And it cannot issue from an individual by virtue of a seignorial right: "Besides, because the public statute unites in itself the universality of the will and that of the object, it is evident that an order issued by any individual whatsoever in virtue of his own right, is not at all a statute; even an order of the sovereign concerning a private object is no more a statute but a decree, nor an act of sovereignty but of magistracy" (13). In other words, not everything which possesses the form of a statute is a statute in a material sense.

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(13) "On voit encore que la loi réunissant l'universalité de la volonté et celle de l'objet, ce qu'un homme, quelqu'il puisse être, ordonne de son chef n'est point une loi: ce qu'ordonne même le souverain sur un objet particulier n'est pas non plus une loi, mais un décret; ni un acte de souverainité, mais de magistrature."

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     There are formal statutes which are not real ones, and consequently which are not the expression of the sovereign general will, but are only decrees, private acts of the magistrate which as such are not binding, unless they give effect to the "loi". Thus it seems that in ROUSSEAU the inalienable human rights as private subjective rights are in no way absorbed in the general will, since within the sphere of private law they cannot be assailed by arbitrary decrees or acts of a magistrate. But as we have seen, human rights in the civil state have changed their ground of validity. Now this ground lies exclusively in the social contract. In other words, the juridical source of private and public rights is, in the civil state, one and the same, and on the condition that the formal principle of equality and generality is respected, the general will is omnipotent. Consequently, in the civil state private human rights can only exist by the grace of the general will.

     All limits of competency must yield to the general will of the sovereign. ROUSSEAU himself wrote that the judgment concerning what the public interest demands belongs exclusively to the sovereign people. Moreover, he accepted the well-known construction, adhered to by the nominalistic doctrine of natural law since MARSILIUS OF PADUA up until and inclusive of KANT, according to which the general will, in which every citizen encounters his own will, cannot do any injustice to any one: volenti non fit injuria!

     The limits of the competency of the legislator which ROUSSEAU constructed are not real ones, since they are neither grounded on the inner nature and structure of the different social relationships, nor on the modal structure of the juridical aspect, but have been deduced from the abstract principle of equality and generality which neglects all structural differences in social reality.

The origin of this antinomy is again to be found in the tension between the ideal of science and that of personality.

     In his undoubtedly ingenious construction of the relation between public and private interest, it is once again the mathematical ideal of science that pretends to guarantee the value of personality. And in the final analysis the "sovereign personality" is again sacrificed to this science-ideal. ROUSSEAU's famous expression: "On les forcera d'être libre" (they must be forced to be free) soon would become the watchword under which the legions of the French revolution were to bring to the nations revolutionary freedom and equality, although ROUSSEAU himself was impatient of every revolution. But it was the expression of the unsoluble antinomy between the ideal of science and that of personality which in ROUSSEAU's doctrine of the social contract had reached its highest tension.

     The reawakened ideal of personality had in ROUSSEAU's religion of sentiment reacted spontaneously against the science-ideal. Yet, finally it submitted again to the mathematical construction of the latter. The fulminant protest, however, that out of the religious depth of ROUSSEAU's contradictory personality sounded against the supremacy of scientific thought, was to summon mightier spirits than he to fight for the supremacy of the ideal of personality.

(Herman Dooyeweerd, New Critique of Theoretical Thought, Vol I/ Part 2/ Chapt 3/§7 pp 313-324)

Dooyeweerd: Hume agus Idèal na Pearsantachd

"Mundus Subterraneous" le Calum Colvin 1993

§ 6 - PRÌOLUD DO CHARACHADH A' PHRÌOMHACHAIS GU IDÈAL NA PEARSANTACHD.

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§ 6 - THE PRELUDE TO THE SHIFTING OF PRIMACY TO THE IDEAL OF PERSONALITY.

The extension of the psychologized science-ideal over the modal boundaries of the aesthetic, juridical, moral and faith-aspects.

     Even though HUME accepts psychological "feeling", in its modal subject-object-relation (emotion-sensation), as the basic denominator for all modal aspects of reality, yet he recognizes a relative modal diversity of meaning in the cosmos. Within the absolutized psychical law-sphere, the aesthetic, juridical, moral and faith aspects of experience were distinguished by him from the logical one (which he had also psychologized). Nevertheless, the science-ideal, with its psychologically conceived law of causality, arbitrarily exceeds these modal boundaries.

     In LEIBNIZ all modal aspects of meaning are made to be modi of mathematical thought. In HUME they become modi of his psychological basic denominator. So the aesthetic aspect, too, becomes a modus of psychical feeling: "Pleasure and pain... are not only necessary attendants of beauty and deformity, but constitute their very essence" (1).

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(1) Treatise II, Part. I, Sect. VIII (p. 96).

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The same can be stated in respect to the remaining normative modal aspects of experience. HUME presented a mechanistic theory of human emotions, entirely in accord with the tradition handed down by DESCARTES, HOBBES and SPINOZA, and directly connected with LOCKE. On this point the latter had reproduced HOBBES' theory in the form in which it acquired its great influence in the English, French, and Scottish philosophy of the Enlightenment. For HUME — as it had been for HOBBES — this theory was the foundation of his ethical philosophy and of his theoretical view of faith: "in the production and conduct of the passions, there is a certain regular mechanism, which is susceptible of as accurate a disquisition, as the laws of motion, optics, hydrostatics, or any part of physical nature" (2).

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(2) Diss. on the Passions, Sect. VI .

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     The laws of association are the sole explanatory principles which HUME will here employ. They are grounded on the principle of the uniformity of human nature at all times.

    The psychologically comprehended science-ideal that lies at the foundation of this entire explanatory method, is clearly formulated by HUME in the following statement: "We find in the course of nature that though the effects be many, the principles from which they arise are commonly but few and simple, and that it is the sign of an unskilful naturalist to have recourse to a different quality, in order to explain every different operation. How much more must this be true with regard to the human mind" (3).

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(3) Treatise II, Part. I, Sect. I (p. 81).

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     We saw that the emotions form a second class of impressions next to those which belong to the sensory function of perception and to the corporeal feelings of pleasure and pain (4).

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(4) Ibid. (p. 75).

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HUME designated the first mentioned impressions as "reflective" and deemed them to be derived from the original sensual impressions either directly or indirectly through the intermediary of an Idea of a sensory impression. He therefore called the emotions "secondary" impressions, in contradistinction to the "original" ones of "sensation".

     He divided the "secondary impressions" into two classes, the calm and the vehement ones. He considered the emotions of beauty and ugliness as "calm" impressions. Under the " vehement" he subsumed all such passions as love and hate, sorrow and joy, pride and humility.

     The "passions" themselves were further divided into "direct" and "indirect". Under the former he understood all such which arise directly out of the elementary feelings of pleasure or pain, such as desire, aversion, sorrow, joy, hope, fear and despair; under the latter, all such which, although originating from the same source, nevertheless, do so only by combining other qualities. Pride and humility, ambition, vanity, love, hate, jealousy, compassion, generosity, malice, and so on, are considered to be "indirect" passions.

     All these emotions appear in human nature in connection with certain Ideas and objects; moreover, they do so in a regular conformity to natural laws. HUME sharply distinguishes the causes of emotions from their objects. The selfhood can never be the cause, but can only be the object of a passion (5).

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(5) Treatise II, Par. I, Sect. II (p. 77).

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For in HUME'S criticism of the concept of substance the selfhood was resolved into a collective concept of the associational series of ideas. In the case of pride and humility, one's own selfhood is the object of the emotions, whereas in the case of hate and love, the emotion has other selves for its object.

The cooperation between the associations of Ideas and those of passions.

     All the various causes of the "passions" are now reduced to the simple natural principles of association.

     The impressions are as much associated as the Ideas, but with the fundamental difference that the former in the temporal sequence combine only in accordance with the natural associational law of resemblance, whereas the Ideas are, in addition, connected according to the associational laws of contiguity and causality (6).

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(6) Treatise II, Part. I, Sect. IV, p. 82: "'Tis evident, then, there is an attraction or association among impressions, as well as among Ideas; tho' with this remarkable difference, that Ideas are associated by resemblance, contiguity, and causation; and impressions only by resemblance."

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     Because the emotions are always accompanied in a natural way by certain Ideas, also the associations of the Ideas and the associations of the passions combine in the same object: "Thus a man, who, by any injury from another, is very much discompos'd and ruffled in his temper, is apt to find a hundred subjects of discontent, impatience, fear, and other uneasy passions; especially, if he can discover these subjects in or near the person, who was the cause of his first passion. Those principles, which forward the transition of Ideas, here concur with those which operate on the passions; and both uniting in one action, bestow on the mind a double impulse. The new passion, therefore, must arise with so much greater violence, and the transition to it must be rendered so much easy and natural" (7).

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(7) Ibid., p. 83.

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A mere association of Ideas is consequently not sufficient to originate passions. In the sphere of the emotional or secondary impressions, the laws of association are only valid on the basis of a natural and original connection between an Idea and a passion (8).

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(8) Ibid., Sect. IX (p. 101) : "From this reasoning, as well as from undoubted experience, we may conclude, that an association of Ideas, however necessary, is not alone sufficient to give rise to any passion.

     'Tis evident, then, that when the mind feels the passion either of pride or humility upon the appearance of a related object, there is, beside the relation or transition of thought, an emotion or original impression produc'd by some other principle."

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The way in which HUME'S psychologized ideal of science destroys the conception of the freedom of the will in the sense of the mathematical ideal of science.

     In this entire psychological mechanism of "human nature" there remains no room for the freedom of the will. HUME'S standpoint in this respect is quite different from that of LOCKE and LEIBNIZ.

     LOCKE could leave some room to the freedom of the will in the indeterministic sense of a "liberum arbitrium indifferentiae" or "liberum arbitrium equilibrii", since he did not dissolve human self-hood and personality into a mechanism of psychical associations, and held to the dualism of reflection and sensation (9).

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(9) In his Essay concerning Human Understanding II, 2. Sect. 51, LOCKE found a place for the moral freedom and responsibility of personality in the "power a man has to suspend his desires and stop them from determining his will to any action, till he has examined, whether it be really of a nature in itself and consequences to make him happy or no." And he taught: "The care of ourselves that we mistake not imaginary for real happiness, is the necessary foundation of our liberty." In his Introduction (p. 16) to book II of HUME'S Treatise, GREEN correctly observes, that this concession to the ideal of personality again evokes an intrinsic antinomy with LOCKE'S ideal of science.

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In HUME'S psychologized system, such an Idea of freedom must be discarded equally with the conception, according to the mathematical science-ideal, that the freedom of the will consists in the fact that it is determined by clear and distinct thought.

     The metaphysical bulwark of the rationalistic Humanist ideal of personality, i.e. the selfhood, concentrated in its mathematical thought, as a substance, as "res cogitans", had been destroyed by HUME'S psychological criticism. And with equal force, the content of this ideal of personality (autonomous freedom) had to be sacrified to the psychologized science-ideal. The "will" is therefore conceived of as a mere inner impression which we feel, when we consciously execute a new corporeal motion or produce a new Idea in our mind (10).

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(10) Treatise II, Part. III, Sect. I (p. 181).

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     This psychical impression which we call "will" is as necessarily determined as are the movements of psychical phenomena. There is a necessary causal connection between human actions and their motives and the circumstances in which they arise. This necessity, however, is only comprehended in the sense of the natural laws of association, in the sense of constant sequences of similar motives and actions. It is not thought of in the sense of any hidden mechanical force or compulsion which proceeds from the impulses.

     HUME was of the opinion that his psychological determinism could in no way be called materialistic, nor could be at all in conflict with religion. Rather he deemed his doctrine of the psychological necessity of human actions to be essential both for morality and religion (11). Every other conception altogether destroys the Idea of law, not only of human laws, but of the divine as well.

     It must be granted that on the basis of HUME'S psychologized cosmonomic Idea no other solution is possible!

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(11) Treatise II, Part III, Sect. II (p. 189 ff.).

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The prelude to the shift of primacy to the ideal of personality.

     We have seen that HUME'S psychologized epistemology dissolved the very foundations of the ideal of science and that of personality. Nevertheless, the fact that HUME subordinated theoretical mathematical thought to the absolutized psychical function of feeling and sensation can be considered as the prelude to the shift of primacy from the nature-motive to the freedom-motive.

     In the beginning of his exposition concerning the motives of the will, HUME states in the clearest possible manner the contradiction which exists between his own ethical standpoint and that of the mathematical science-ideal: "Nothing is more usual in philosophy, and even in common life, than to talk of the combat of passion and reason, to give the preference to reason, and assert, that men are only so far virtuous as they conform themselves to its dictates. Every rational creature, 'tis said, is oblig'd to regulate his actions by reason; and if any other motive or principle challenge the direction of his conduct, he ought to oppose it, 'till it be entirely subdu'd, or at least brought to a conformity with that superior principle... In order to show the fallacy of all this philosophy, I shall endeavour to prove first, that reason alone can never be a motive to any action of the will; and secondly, that it can never oppose passion in the direction of the will" (12).

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(12) Treatise II, Part III, Sect. III, p. 193.

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     Reason, in the sense of the mathematical ideal of science of DESCARTES and LEIBNIZ, is expelled completely from its sovereign position as the ultimate rule of human actions: "reason is and ought to be, the slave of the passions, and can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them" (13).

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(13) Ibid., p. 195.

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     Mathematics is of course useful in all mechanical technique, and arithmetic is utilized in nearly every art and in every occupation: "But 'tis not of themselves they have any influence...

     A merchant is desirous of knowing the sum total of his accounts with any person: Why? but that he may learn what sum will have the same effects, in paying his debt, and going to market, as all the particular articles taken together. Abstract or demonstrative reasoning, therefore, never influences any of our actions but only as it directs our judgment concerning causes and effects" (14).

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(14) Ibid., p. 193/4.

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     Even the causal natural scientific thought in which the mathematical ideal of science found the method to extend its postulate of continuity over the entire reality of experience cannot in itself influence nor activate the will. Reason only discovers the causal relations between the phenomena, but "where the objects themselves do not affect us, their connexions can never give them any influence; and 'tis plain, that as reason is nothing but the discovery of this connection, it cannot be by its means that the objects are able to affect us" (15).

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(15) Ibid., p. 194.

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Reason cannot motivate an action, because experience demonstrates, that action only arises from an emotion: "nothing can oppose or retard the impulse of passion but a contrary impulse."

     Thus the rationalist prejudice is abandoned that the decisions of the will are determined by theoretical Ideas (whether clearly distinguished or confused).

HUME withdraws morality from the science-ideal. Primacy of the moral feeling.

     Now it is this which paves the way to HUME'S own moral philosophy. It is not correct to say that HUME denied the normative sense of ethics. On the contrary, no other Humanist philosopher before KANT (16) had pointed out so sharply the necessity of the distinction between that which "is" and that which "ought to be". 

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(16) To be sure, LEIBNIZ, too, makes a sharp distinction between what "is" and what "ought to be". Cf. his Méditation sur la notion commune de la justice [Meditation concerning the common notion of justice] in jur. vol. IIIa, Fol. 72-87; here he remarks against HOBBES: "Car autre chose est, ce qui se peut, autre chose ce qui se doit." [For what is possible is quite different from what ought to be].

     However, in LEIBNIZ this does not mean that ethical action would be independent of clear and distinct thought. On the contrary, as we have seen, he agrees in principle with DESCARTES' rationalist view of ethics, although in him this rationalism is mitigated by a mystical motive due to his conception of a "supra-natural" participation of human reason in the creative thought of God, which produces "love" and "piety". See KURT HILDEBRANDT, Leibniz und das Reich der Gnade [Leibniz and the kingdom of grace] (The Hague, Nijhoff, 1953), especially p. 299 ff.

     I fear, however, HILDEBRANDT has exaggerated this mystical motive at the cost of a just valuation of LEIBNIZ' mathematical rationalism.
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And, even in HUME, this distinction implies the contrast between scientific thought and ethical action (17).
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(17) Treatise III, Part. I, Sect. I (p. 245): "In every system of morality which I have hitherto met with, I have always remarked, that the author proceeds for some time in the ordinary way of reasoning, and establishes the being of a God, or makes observations concerning human affairs; when of a sudden I am surprised to find, that instead of the usual copulations of propositions, is, and is not, I meet no proposition, that is not connected with an ought, or an ought not. This change is imperceptible; but is, however, of the last consequence. For as this ought, or ought not, expresses some new relation or affirmation, it is necessary that it should be observed and explained;" cf. LAING on this point, op. cit. pp. 189 ff.

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     From this very distinction HUME drew the consequence that ethics is not capable of being proven logically-mathematically, thereby dealing a new blow to the mathematical ideal of science. His argument in support of this view is extremely interesting, since in his own way HUME laid bare the antinomy existing between the mathematical ideal of science and that of personality.

     If logical mathematical thought is to be in a position to establish the norms of good and evil, then, according to HUME, either the character of virtue and vice must lie in certain relations between the objects, or they would have to be "matters of fact" which we would be able to discover by our scientific reasoning.

     According to the dominant (Lockian) conception, the necessary relations between the Ideas must be sharply distinguished from "matters of fact".

     Thus, if it were true that virtue is discoverable through thought, it would have to be an object either of mathematical science which examines the relations between Ideas, or of empirical natural science. There is, according to HUME, no third activity of thought.

     According to the dominating rationalist conception, however, only the first possibility can receive consideration. For it pretends that the norms of ethics are capable of being proven apriori, "more geometrico". And a mere "matter of fact" is not susceptible of such proof. When it is conceded, however, that virtue and vice consist in relations concerning which certainty can be attained or for which mathematical proof can be given, then only the four invariable philosophical relations of resemblance and contrast, and the grades in quantity and quality can be taken into consideration. Now, in this case one is immediately involved in inescapable absurdities. For since there is not a single one among the four relations just mentioned which could not just as well be applied to animals and plants, or even to lifeless objects, the consequence would be inescapable that even such things would have to be capable of being judged as moral subjects: "Resemblance, contrariety, degrees in quality, and proportions in quantity and number; all these relations belong as properly to matter, as to our actions, passions and volitions. 'Tis unquestionable, therefore, that morality lies not in any of these relations, nor the sense of it in their discovery" (18).

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(18) Treatise III, Part. I, Sect. I (p. 241).

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     Hume was too keen a thinker to be blind to the fact that with the same sort of reasoning one could also indicate the intrinsic antinomy in his own psychologized view of morality.

     In his system virtue and vice are derived from feelings of pleasure and pain, which have nothing to do with normative properties. He attempts to rescue himself from this antinomy by pointing out that the feeling of pleasure is only a general term which signifies very different "feelings". So the aesthetic feeling and the sensory feeling of taste are not mutually reducible the one to the other (19).

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(19) Ibid., p. 248.

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Nevertheless, HUME forgets that his theory of the mechanism of human nature destroys the foundation for all normative imputation. If the normative ethical distinctions are not to be derived from mathematical reason, the question arises, in what must their basis be sought? HUME answers: in the moral sense, an explanation which clearly betrays the influence of HUTCHESON. In HUME'S system moral Ideas, just like other ideas, must be derived from "impressions". Each feeling has its particular impressions. If a particular moral feeling exists, there must also exist moral impressions which cannot be reduced to other sorts of impressions. What is the character of these moral impressions? "To have the sense of virtue is nothing but to feel a satisfaction of a particular kind from the contemplation of a character. The very feeling constitutes our praise or admiration. We go no further; nor do we inquire into the cause of the satisfaction. We do not infer a character to be virtuous, because it pleases; but in feeling, that it pleases after such a particular manner, we in effect feel that it is virtuous" (20).

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(20) Treatise III, Part. I, Sect. II (p. 247).

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     Good and evil, therefore, are nothing but feelings of pleasure and pain of a particular moral character. This special character lies in the feeling of approval or disapproval that an act provokes in ourselves or others. However, in the final analysis, the motives of acts, even of moral acts, in HUME still remain a-normative. Acts are not performed on the ground of their morally good or bad character; they are hedonistically determined. But the contemplation of the act creates a particular satisfaction or feeling of pleasure, which is approbation or the feeling of virtue, from which the Idea of virtue is the copy. In consequence, it may be that the psychologized ideal of science still absorbs the personal moral freedom; but the ratio, in the sense of mathematical thought, is in any case rejected as the foundation of ethics and as the basis for the ideal of personality. The tendency to withdraw the ideal of personality from the stiffening grasp of the Humanistic science-ideal is clearly perceptible. Yet KANT was to be the first to undertake the actio finium regundorum.

HUME'S attack upon the rationalistic theory of Humanist natural law and upon its construction of the social contract. VICO and MONTESQUIEU.

     HUME'S break with the mathematical ideal of science of his rationalist predecessors is also evident from his noteworthy criticism of the entire rationalistic-Humanist doctrine of natural law, and in particular from his criticism of its conception that the state was to be construed by means of one or more contracts between pre-social individuals. From the very beginning the nominalistic trait of the Humanistic ideal of science in its mathematical form manifested itself very clearly in this construction. According to its adherents, the political community is not to be founded on the substantial form of human nature, as the Aristotelian-Thomistic doctrine of natural law had done. Nominalist natural law can no longer ascribe ontological reality to the state, not even in an accidental sense. Even in HUGO GROTIUS, who externally follows the Aristotelian-Thomistic doctrine of the appetitus socialis, authority and obedience have no natural foundation. Both must be construed "more geometrico" out of the simplest elements, the free and autonomous individuals.

     The construction of the social contract seemed to be the sole method to reconcile the postulate of the mathematical ideal of science and that of the Humanistic ideal of personality. For, whereas the former must lead to a construction of the state as an instrument of sovereign domination, the latter must require a justification of the modern concept of sovereignty, introduced by JEAN BODIN, in the face of the autonomous freedom of human personality. And the construction of the social contract seemed to satisfy both postulates. While for the rest HUME took a radical nominalistic standpoint, he nevertheless exercised a sharp criticism of this construction, because he correctly thought that by so doing he was able to strike a blow at the mathematical ideal of science. Thereby, in contradistinction to Cartesianism, HUME, by virtue of his historical-psychological method, came to stand on the side of VICO and MONTESQUIEU. And since the Whigs based their political views upon the mathematical doctrine of natural law, HUME'S political affinity with the Tory party is also noteworthy in this connection. Over against the contract-theory HUME appealed to the psychical condition of primitive people. The latter certainly cannot comprehend obedience to political authority in terms of an abstract contract of individuals. Moreover, it bears witness to HUME's deeply penetrating insight into the weak side of the contract theories, when repeatedly he pointed out, that the obligation which arises out of an agreement is not of a natural but of a conventional character (21). The contract, therefore, cannot precede the establishment of an ordered community and the institutions of the state.

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(21) As I indicated in my series of treatises "In the Struggle for a Christian Politics", the contract theory was the very seed of dissolution within the rationalist doctrine of natural law. The conflict between the absolutist concept of state-sovereignty and the principles of natural law concerning freedom and equality of all men as such, was a document to the inner antinomy between the ideal of science and the ideal of personality within the Humanist theory of natural law. See also my The Contest about the Concept of Sovereignty in Modern Jurisprudence and Political Science (publ. by H. J. Paris, Amsterdam 1950).

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     The historical side of HUME'S criticism as he developed it in his The Original Contract and in his An Enquiry concerning the Principles of Morals, naturally did not strike at the heart of the contract theory. The latter — at least in its general tendencies — always wished to construe the justification for the state along the mathematical logical path. HUME, however, had repudiated the mathematical ideal of science. In keeping with his psychological ideal of science, the mathematical conception of the natural state is replaced by a psychological one corresponding to his theory of "human nature". In his treatise The Original Contract (in sharp contradistinction to his conception in the Enquiry (22)) HUME assumed, to be sure, an original equality of men, from which he concluded that there was an original consent of individuals by which they subjected themselves to authority.

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(22) Enquiry concerning the principles of Morals, Sect. III, Part. II.

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But this agreement is not to be understood — in the sense of the mathematical science-ideal — as a universal continuous basis for the authority of the rulers. According to HUME'S psychologized conception of mathematics, exact concepts which go beyond sensory impressions (e.g. the concept of an exact measure of equality, the concept of the infinitesimal, the mathematical point etc.) are ungrounded. The same conclusion must be drawn with respect to the search for mathematically exact foundations for the state and the legal order. In HUME'S psychologized theory of state and law the original agreement can only be understood psychologically and intermittently in terms of the impressions of necessity and utility which arise in a given situation for the sake of subjecting oneself to someone of eminent qualities. Such situations occur again and again, and, in direct proportion to the frequency of their re-occurrence, a custom of obedience is born out of the impression. In the further development of the state, however, the psychologically comprehended agreement of the subjects is of no use as an explanatory principle. The factual basis of authority is only to be found in continually exercised force.

     In answer to the question concerning the right of authority HUME points to the influence of time upon the human soul. From the feeling of utility arises the first psychical impulse to obey. When, however, a government has retained its power long enough to create constancy and stability in political life, there arises in the human soul an impression or custom which forms the foundation for the Idea of the right of the government, and personal interest and advantage are reduced to a subordinate value (23).

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(23) Treatise III, Part. II, Sect. X (p. 319) : "Time alone gives solidity to their right" (viz, of the usurpers) "and operating gradually on the minds of men, reconciles them to any authority, and makes it seem just and reasonable... When we have been long accustom'd to obey any set of men, that general instinct or tendency, which we have to suppose a moral obligation attending loyalty, takes easily this direction... 'T is interest which gives the general instinct; but 't is custom which gives the particular direction."

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     Thus HUME'S psychologism conquered the strongest position in which the mathematical ideal of science had hitherto thought it could defend the freedom of the individual in the sense of the ideal of personality. Even the Humanistic doctrine of natural law caves in under his critique.

(Herman Dooyeweerd, New Critique of Theoretical Thought, Vol I/ Part 2/ Chapt 3/§6 pp 302-313)