Posted on 07/25/2010 1:37:12 PM PDT by betty boop
TWO REVOLUTIONS, TWO VIEWS OF MAN
By Jean F. Drew
As every American schoolchild has been taught, in Western history there were two great sociopolitical revolutions that took place near the end of the eighteenth century: The American Revolution of 1775; and the French, of 1789. Children are taught that both revolutions were fought because of human rights in some way; thus bloody warfare possibly could be justified, condoned so long as the blood and treasure were shed to protect the “rights of man.” The American schoolchild is assured that the American and French revolutions were both devoted to the expansion of human rights and thus were equally noble revolutions. Moreover, it is widely believed that the French Revolution was an evolution from the American one.
Rather than simply accept these ideas uncritically, comparison and contrast of the two revolutions can shed some light on what turns out to be their stark differences — as to inceptions, ostensible goals, foundational ideology, and respective outcomes.
Inceptions
There is a famous Pythagorean maxim (c. sixth century B.C.): “The beginning is the half of the whole.” That is to say, inception events have a way of profoundly influencing the course of events that follow from them; and so their analysis can give insight into the character of their development in time, and even of the motivations they configure. Less obviously, an inception event is itself the culmination of a train of social, political, and cultural development that finally “erupts,” or takes evident shape, as a concrete beginning, or precipitating event of what follows. At that point, a situation of no return has been reached: “The fat is in the fire.” There is no turning back….
And so, let us take a look at the beginnings of two revolutions:
The American:
“In London George III and his cabinet, their confidence bolstered by their huge majority in Parliament, moved toward a confrontation with the Americans. On February 2, 1775, [Prime Minister Frederick, Lord] North introduced a motion to declare the province of Massachusetts in a state of rebellion and asked the King to take steps to support the sovereignty of England. The opposition, led by Edmund Burke, decried this move as a declaration of war. But the measure passed by a majority of three to one. George III was immensely pleased….”
The King decided to send some 1,000 reinforcements to Boston, far short of the number that Governor General Thomas Gage had wanted.
“…The King and his ministers still refused to believe Gage’s assessment of the odds he faced…. Colonel James Grant — who had served in America, at one point in the same army with George Washington [in the French and Indian Wars] — declared he was certain the Americans ‘would never dare to face an English army.’… In this spirit the King … ordered Lord Dartmouth to draft a letter telling Gage that it was time to act.”
Gage promptly acted. Thanks to his spies, he knew that the Colonials were accumulating military stores at Concord, including large quantities of gunpowder. So Gage decided that a swift march on Concord to seize the powder as well as the fourteen cannon said to be in the town “would have a crippling, even demoralizing impact on the Provincial Congress’s plans to form an Army of Observation to pen the British inside Boston.”
From this decision ensued, on April 19, 1775, the opening shot — “the shot heard ’round the world” — of the American Revolutionary War, at North Bridge, Concord, Massachusetts at about 8 o’clock in the morning.
Although the Colonials already knew the British were coming to Concord and Lexington sooner or later, and for what purpose, and that the incursion would come by a night march (rare in that day) — the Americans proved early to be remarkably effective spies — what they did not know was the specific date, or whether the British forces would be moving by land — over Boston Neck — or by sea — in longboats across the Back Bay. Hence the famous signal of “one if by land, two if by sea” posted at the Old North Church, wherein observers were keeping an eye on British troop movements.
It turned out to be “two”: The British forces, under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Francis Smith, were subsequently debarked at Cambridge across the Charles River, from longboats attached to H.M.S. Somerset then standing guard over the Boston Harbor ferryway. This was a force of some 700 men composed of light infantrymen and “fearsome” grenadiers. From thence the body proceeded overland, on a much shorter march than would have been the case had they approached Concord via Boston Neck. The route from Cambridge to Concord led straight through the heart of the neighboring town of Lexington.
As soon as the news came that the British were moving, Paul Revere set upon his famous midnight ride “on a fast mare,” traveling west at high speed to warn the people of Concord and the surrounding towns that the British were coming. Samuel Prescott and William Dawes likewise fanned out on horseback, spreading the alert to all within earshot.
The folks at Concord, having thus been warned, working feverishly overnight, managed to remove all the military stores to safe locations. The locals felt confident they could handle the threat: After all, the town had 600 drilled and trained Minutemen on spot, and there were some 6,000 other Minutemen and Militia — a body composed of all able-bodied men between the ages of 15 and 60 — within fairly easy reach of Concord town who were already pledged to come to her aid in the event of the outbreak of actual hostilities.
The people of Concord evidently figured a show of force would suffice to deter the British officers from doing anything rash. But really what they were relying on was their expectation — based on their understanding of the so-far prevailing rules of engagement, frequently tested — that British troops would never open fire on their fellow citizens — i.e., the Colonials themselves, who were British subjects also — unless they were fired upon first. And the Americans did not intend to fire first.
In this assessment of the situation on the ground, they were sadly mistaken. In the approach to Concord, the Brits had provoked a bloody engagement at Lexington Green in which “the British light infantry unquestionably fired the first volleys, killing eight men and wounding ten.” Then the British forces continued their march into Concord, to secure the bridges of the town: The British commander Smith had detached four squadrons to visit a prominent local farm to see whether contraband might be stashed there; and feared his troops could not safely return if the North Bridge were under the control of the Colonials. In defense of the bridge, the Brits again fired first. For a moment, the Americans could not believe this was happening. “‘Goddamn it,’ one man shouted, ‘They are firing ball!’” Then their commander, Major Buttrick, “whirled and shouted, ‘Fire fellow soldiers, for God’s sake fire.’” The Americans sustained six casualties at North Bridge, all fatal. On the British side, “Two privates were killed and a sergeant, four privates and four officers were wounded.”
Then the Brits cut their losses and in disorderly retreat high-tailed it back to the security of their barracks in Boston — empty-handed. Their mission was a failure: They had not found, let alone confiscated, any military stores.
But the American Revolutionary War was officially ON….
* * * * * * *
The French:
“History will record, that on the morning of the 6th of October 1789, the king and queen of France, after a day of confusion, alarm, dismay, and slaughter, lay down, under the pledged security of public faith, to indulge nature in a few hours of respite, and troubled melancholy repose. From this sleep the queen was first startled by the voice of the sentinel at her door, who cried out to her, to save herself by flight — that this was the last proof of fidelity he could give — that they were upon him, and he was dead. Instantly he was cut down. A band of cruel ruffians and assassins, reeking with his blood, rushed into the chamber of the queen, and pierced with an hundred strokes of bayonets and poniards the bed, from whence this persecuted woman had just time to fly almost half naked, and through ways unknown to the murderers had escaped to seek refuge at the feet of a king and husband, not secure of his own life for a moment.
“This king … and this queen, and their infant children (who once would have been the pride and hope of a great and generous people) were then forced to abandon the sanctuary of the most splendid palace in the world, which they left swimming in blood, polluted by massacre, and strewed with scattered limbs and mutilated carcasses. Thence they were conducted into the capital of their kingdom. Two had been selected from the unprovoked, unresisted, promiscuous slaughter which was made of the gentlemen of birth and family who composed the king’s bodyguard. These two gentlemen, with all the parade of an execution of justice, were cruelly and publicly dragged to the block, and beheaded…. Their heads were stuck upon spears, and led the procession; whilst the royal captives who followed in the train were slowly moved along, amidst the horrid yells, and shrilling screams, and frantic dances, and infamous contumelies, and all the unutterable abominations of the furies of hell…. After they had been made to taste, drop by drop, more than the bitterness of death, in the slow torture of a journey of twelve miles protracted to six hours, they were, under a guard composed of those very soldiers who had thus conducted them through this famous triumph, lodged in one of the old palaces of Paris, now converted into a Bastile for kings….”
And thus, the French Revolutionary War was officially ON….
On the question of origins — beginnings, inceptions, precipitating events — it would appear that the American and French Revolutions do not seem to resemble one another very much. It’s difficult to draw a common understanding of what human rights might be on the basis of such disparate evidence.
On the one hand, it’s possible to see that perhaps human rights had something to do with the defense of Concord: People coming together to protect and defend their lives, liberty, and property against the tyranny of George III, who then was most corruptly usurping the ancient “rights of Englishmen” not only in America, but also back in the home isles — as the Colonials were very well aware.
People today do not appreciate how close was the tie with the “mother country” at the time, through the printed word: In that day, the London presses were offloading their publications directly onto American ships bound for Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and Charleston, as soon as the ink was dry. It was from the London press that the Colonials learned of the usurpations of individual liberty that good King George was perpetrating at home, not to mention in their own backyard. They wanted no part of it.
On the other hand, it’s difficult to see what human right is implicated in the inception event of the French Revolution — unless it be the right to commit regicide. Or maybe the right to agitate and deploy mobs as instruments of social and political change….
In the end, “Citizen Louis Capet,” formerly known as King Louis XVI of France, was tried and convicted of treason by the National Convention and was guillotined on 21 January 1793 — the only French king in history to fall victim to regicide. His queen, Marie Antoinette, was also tried and convicted of treason: She was executed by guillotine on 16 October 1793, nine months after her husband.
Ostensible Goals
It seems clear that the Americans were not seeking to kill the king, or to overthrow the traditions of the British constitutional monarchy. Rather, they were seeking a complete, formal separation from it — because they were motivated by the conviction that their historic liberties were being systematically violated by George III.
By 1775, the Americans already had a tradition of local or self-government going back some 150 years. When the king sent in his governors, who ruled autocratically as directed by himself and his council, the Americans were outraged. The maxim “no taxation without representation” was but one expression of their revulsion for what they perceived as the wholesale destruction of the historic liberties of British subjects in America. The Sons of Liberty at Boston, notably including Samuel Adams, Paul Revere, and John Hancock, eloquently argued for total separation from the British Crown — not the most popular idea at first. But the events at Lexington Green and Concord Bridge caused many to reappraise their position on this matter. In the end, complete separation was the idea that prevailed, and which was finally achieved….
So what was this notion of liberty that had the Americans so exercised? John Trenchard and Robert Gordon, writing in Cato’s Letters — serially published in The London Journal in 1721 and after, which was avidly read in America at the time — describe human liberty as follows:
All men are born free; Liberty is a Gift which they receive from God; nor can they alienate the same by Consent, though possibly they may forfeit it by crimes....
Liberty is the power which every man has over his own Actions, and the Right to enjoy the Fruit of his Labor, Art, and Industry, as far as by it he hurts not the Society, or any Member of it, by taking from any Member, or by hindering him from enjoying what he himself enjoys.
The fruits of a Man’s honest Industry are the just rewards of it, ascertained to him by natural and eternal Equity, as is his Title to use them in the Manner which he thinks fit: And thus, with the above Limitations, every Man is sole Lord and Arbiter of his own private Actions and Property....
These were the ideas that had earlier inspired the Glorious Revolution of 1688, of which the great British philosopher and political activist, John Locke (1632–1704) — a thinker enormously respected in America — was the intellectual father. Above all, Locke’s ideas constitute a theory of the individual human being. This is the same theory that inspired the American Revolution of 1775: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed….” Indeed, it appears the author of the Declaration of Independence (July 4, 1776) was strongly resonating to Locke’s essential political ideas in these passages.
Edmund Burke (1729–1797) — the great Anglo-Irish statesman, political theorist, and philosopher (who as already noted was sympathetic to the American cause) — also articulated the historic rights of Englishmen, and of all free peoples universally, as follows:
“…If civil society be made for the advantage of man, all the advantages for which it is made become his right. It is an institution of beneficence; the law itself is only beneficence acting by a rule. Men have a right to live by that rule; they have a right to justice; as between their fellows, whether their fellows are in political function or in ordinary occupation. They have a right to the fruits of their industry; and to the means of making their industry fruitful. They have a right to the acquisitions of their parents; to the nourishment and improvement of their offspring; to instruction in life, and to consolation in death. Whatever each man can separately do, without trespassing on others, he has a right to do for himself; and he has a right to a fair portion of all which society, with all its combinations of skill and force, can do in his favor. But as to the share of power, authority and direction which each individual ought to have in the management of the state, that I must deny to be amongst the direct original rights of man in civil society; for I have in my contemplation the civil social man, and no other. It is a thing to be settled by convention.
“If civil society be the offspring of convention, that convention must be its law. That convention must limit and modify all the descriptions of constitution which are formed under it. Every sort of legislative, judicial, or executory power are its creatures. They can have no being in any other state of things; and how can a man claim, under the conventions of civil society, rights which do not so much as suppose its existence?”
This last point draws attention to Burke’s understanding that the foundational rights of man declared by the French philosophes — Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité — are purely abstract rights indicating no sign of understanding of, or connection with, the actual development and maintenance of a just civil society. In other words, the philosophes envisioned man abstractly, or to put it another way, as abstracted from both nature and society as if this abstract man stands as a total end in himself, as sacrosanct, beyond any demand of society which nature assigns to him as inescapable part and participant of it. It seems the philosophes first reduce the human being to an abstraction — by taking him entirely out of the context of historical experience and traditional understandings of natural law going back millennia. Then, with man having been so abstracted, from there it is easy to dissolve him into an abstract mass: The individual is no longer the natural or even “legal” bearer of rights; rather, the legal bearer of rights is now the mass, the “group”— mankind at large or however else defined.
There is a further consideration regarding the original American founding that we should remember today: The British colony at Massachusetts was not established by means of military power — which is the usual way that states of whatever description acquire new territories. Instead, the Massachusetts Bay Colony was established by religious refugees: They were dissenters from the Church of England, the established church of which the reigning king was titular head.
Beginning with Henry VIII and extending to all his successors, the king of England entirely combined in his own person both the fundamental secular and spiritual authority of British society. But, when religious pilgrims on November 11, 1620, at Provincetown, Massachusetts, ratified what has been described as the first written constitution in human history, the Mayflower Compact, they were acting in resonance to a spiritual authority superior to that of the then-reigning king, James I — or of kings in general.
Just by making the voyage to America, the religious refugees were repudiating the authority of the king over their spiritual lives. Once there, the secular authority of the king was of absolutely no help to them. They had to shift for themselves, and basic survival was the highest priority: Almost the majority of the original colony perished during their first New England winter. They were forced to place their reliance entirely on themselves, on each other, and on God. The Mayflower Compact, moreover, made the pilgrim’s primary reliance on God perfectly explicit. Its first five words are: “In the name of God, Amen.”
Hold that thought while we turn to the French experience.
For centuries, the foundation of French society, culture, and politics had been the idea of the Etats General, of which there were three “estates”: the aristocracy, whose head was the King; the Church, whose head was the Pope; and everybody else; i.e., your average, everyday, common, “small” people….
What is known is that when King Louis XVI was decapitated, the social force of the French aristocracy was effectively decapitated with him. Also it is known that in the four-year period between the invasion of the queen’s bedchamber and the execution of the king, some 16,000 French men and women were guillotined at Paris — mainly aristocrats and other well-off people — as “enemies of the State.” Also all Church lands (probably accounting for some twenty percent of the total French real estate) and property were forcibly confiscated by the State, now reposed in a body called the National Assembly, composed by the Third Estate, the “people” of France. Thousands of clergy — bishops, priests, monks, and nuns — were murdered.
In effect the Third Estate utterly destroyed the other two: That’s the French Revolution in a nutshell.
Foundational Ideology
The French Revolution managed to kill off the first two Estates — and with that, evidently hoped to extinguish forever all aristocratic and theological ideas, pretensions, and powers regarding questions of the human condition. Indeed, the general expectation then seemed to be the Third Estate, the people, unchained from past “superstitions” and “repressions,” had at last come into its own sphere, where it could finally define and exercise true human “liberty.”
But the people were not some sort of homogeneous mass. Rather, there is a natural hierarchical order within the Third Estate similar to that found in both the aristocratic and theological estates.
In France at the time, at the top of this natural hierarchy were the people with expertise in manufacturing, commerce, banking, and law. They were the beneficiaries of the rising tide of the Enlightenment, as plentifully nourished from the side of Newtonian science.
In the rank immediately below them were the skilled craftsmen. Below this, relatively unskilled laborers. Then, the “least” of the people, the peasants/serfs who mainly were the impoverished suffering victims of the feudal order then embraced by both the aristocracy and the Church.
Thus within the Third Estate there were marked disparities of wealth, opportunity, education, talent, and ability. Yet the doctrine of Egalité erases all such distinctions: An Einstein and the most ignorant day laborer were considered “equal.” All were “equal” in the National Assembly too. On this basis, the doctrine of Fraternité, of the universal brotherhood of mankind, is blind and silent regarding the problem of: how the victims of the revolution become “non-brothers” in the first place, such that they could be destroyed with impunity by the mob, or condemned as “enemies of the state” by the National Convention and sent to the guillotine. On this basis, the doctrine of Liberté seems little more than a defense of gratuitous, passionate license that is immensely destructive to society.
Burke’s analysis of the situation in France, the condition of the National Assembly, and their combined implications, retains its extraordinary political noteworthiness to defenders of Liberty in our own day:
“It is no wonder therefore, that it is with these ideas of everything in their constitution and government at home, either in church or state, as illegitimate and usurped, or, at best as a vain mockery, they look abroad with an eager and passionate enthusiasm. Whilst they are possessed by these notions, it is vain to talk to them of the practice of their ancestors, the fundamental laws of their country, the fixed form of a constitution, whose merits are confirmed by the solid test of long experience, and an increasing public strength and national prosperity.
“They despise experience as the wisdom of unlettered men; and as for the rest, they have wrought underground a mine that will blow up at one grand explosion all examples of antiquity, all precedents, charters, and acts of parliament. They have ‘the rights of men.’ Against these there can be no prescription; against these no agreement is binding; these admit no temperament [modification], and no compromise: anything withheld from their full demand is so much of fraud and injustice. Against these their rights of men let no government look for security in the length of its continuance, or in the justice and lenity of its administration….”
Burke again reminds us a few pages later on that there is deep danger in relying on abstract rights when it comes to the organization of a just — that is “liberal,” in the sense of liberty, the root idea of classical liberalism — political society:
“The moment you abate anything from the full rights of men, each to govern himself, and suffer any artificial positive limitation upon those rights, from that moment the whole organization of government becomes a consideration of convenience. This it is which makes the constitution of a state, and the due distribution of its powers, a matter of the most delicate and complicated skill. It requires a deep knowledge of human nature and human necessities, and of the things which facilitate or obstruct the various ends which are to be pursued by the mechanism of civil institutions. The state is to have recruits to its strength, and remedies to its distempers. What is the use of discussing a man’s abstract right to food or medicine? The question is upon the method of procuring and administering them. In that deliberation I shall always advise to call in the aid of the farmer and the physician, rather than the professor of metaphysics.”
In Burke’s view — and I daresay in the view of his contemporary American readers — the French Revolution was a
“… usurpation which, in order to subvert ancient institutions, has destroyed ancient principles, will hold power by arts similar to those by which it has acquired it. When the old feudal and chivalrous spirit of Fealty, which by freeing kings from fear, freed both kings and subjects from the precautions of tyranny, shall be extinct in the minds of men, plots and assassinations will be anticipated by preventive murder and preventive confiscation, and that long roll of grim and bloody maxims which form the political code of all power not standing on its own honor and the honor of those who are to obey it. Kings will be tyrants from policy when subjects are rebels from principle.”
“Excuse me … if I have dwelt too long on this atrocious spectacle of the sixth of October 1789, or have given too much scope to the reflections which have arisen in my mind on occasion of the most important of all revolutions, which may be dated from that day, I mean a revolution in sentiments, manners, and moral opinions. As things now stand, with everything respectable destroyed without us, and an attempt to destroy within us every principle of respect, one is almost forced to apologize for harboring the common feelings of men….”
Clearly, Burke understands the French Revolution first and foremost as a “revolution in sentiments, manners, and moral opinions” — that is, it was preeminently a social, not a political revolution. Certainly that was not the case with the American Revolution. Indeed, Bernard Bailyn, eminent professor of Early American History at Harvard, has asked a tantalizing question: Was the American Revolution a revolution, or was it an evolution?
The prevailing American view at the time did not reject the ancient British tradition of natural liberty under natural law; it was rejecting King George as the traducer and usurper of this tradition. They didn’t want a king or a pope; they wanted a system of self-government that had already been in long usage in America. Ultimately they wanted a Constitution exclusively devoted to the defense of human liberty under just and equal laws. Which if history was of any guide meant that the action of the State had to be kept minimal in its scope by well-defined authority.
Most colonial Americans, being heirs of the same ancient, natural-law cultural tradition as Edmund Burke, likely would have agreed with him about this:
“…We are not the converts of Rousseau; we are not the disciples of Voltaire; Helvetius has made no progress amongst us. Atheists are not our preachers; madmen are not our lawgivers. We know that we have made no discoveries; and we think that no discoveries are to be made, in morality; nor many in the great principles of government, nor in the ideas of liberty, which were understood long before we were born, altogether as well as they will be after the grave has heaped its mould on our presumption….”
The allusion to Rousseau here is particularly instructive. Rousseau held that man is born perfectly good: He is born the “noble savage.” But as soon as he is in the world long enough, he becomes subject to a relentless process of corruption that makes him “bad” — because of the “bad institutions” of society, including churches and states, educational systems, economic organizations, and so forth. Man is victimized by society and powerless against it. “Bad institutions” are entirely to blame for human misery.
In short, Rousseau’s doctrine is directly opposed to the natural law doctrine that human beings are responsible (within limits) for whatever happens to them. Natural law theory holds that individual human beings alone have the ability to choose, decide, act; and that they are responsible for the decisions they make. And this implies the objective existence of good and evil. It also requires a universal (divine) spiritual authority to underwrite the foundational truths of the natural and moral worlds, thus to bring them into correspondence in human reason and experience.
In short, the Americans were not disciples of Rousseau…. He stands their theory of man on its very head.
Two Views of Man — Then and Now
The two revolutions have theories of man that are diametrically opposed, based on the idea of what constitutes human liberty, of the source of human rights. What Locke and Burke and the Americans held in common was the belief that human rights are the gifts of God, and are therefore inseparable from human nature itself. In other words, these rights inalienably inhere in concrete individual persons, each and every one, equally.
In contrast, on the French revolutionary view, human rights are the province of an abstraction known as “mankind.” Its doctrine is the Rights of Man — not the equal, inalienable rights of actual men. It sets up scope for the idea of “group rights,” as opposed to the idea of rights divinely vested in the individual person in such a way as to constitute his or her very own human nature. Under the French Revolution, the “metaphysicians” — Burke’s term for intellectual elites — would guide the rest of us in our understanding of such matters. In short, our rights as human beings ineluctably would be what politically powerful elites tell us they are. There is to be no higher standard of truth than that.
In the so-called post-modern world, the revolution that works overtime to kill truth wants to destroy it at its root — at the Logos. Rather than engage in fully free and fair debate, the entire project of the French Revolution seems have been the delegitimation of the idea that there is an “objective” standard by which Reality can be ascertained and judged, the root criterion for the discernment of good and evil in the actual world, by which human beings, acting according to reason and experience, can guide their lives in fruitful ways — or do the opposite. In short, once the concept of good and evil is destroyed, the human being has no firm guide by which to navigate his own personal existence.
Instead of the perennial question of good v. evil, in the post-modern world some “metaphysicians” tell us there is no objective truth at all — which logically follows from the presupposition of the “death” of God which they have, like Rousseau, already achieved in their own minds. The description of human reality thus boils down to a competition of amoral human “narratives,” or skilled opinions; but in the end still opinions. And under the principle of Egalité, one man’s opinion is just like any other man’s, neither good nor bad.
It appears we have among us today “metaphysicians” who desire, in the words of the great Anglo-American poet T. S. Eliot, to contrive and execute “systems so perfect that no one will need to be good.” And then to impose them on humanity. To succeed in this project, first they have to discredit the foundational motivating ideas of the American Revolution….
To speak of the Now: The currently sitting American president seems to be an activist of the French model. He is distinctly a post-modernist thinker, as an analysis of his words vis-à-vis his actions will show. Evidently he has no sympathy for the values, principles, and goals of the American Revolution, and has disparaged the Constitution — to which he freely swore an Oath of fidelity — on grounds that it is a “system of negative liberties” that has outlived its usefulness.
Indeed, it appears that he is doing everything in his power finally to drive a silver stake through the very heart of American liberty — the historic liberty of We the People of the United States of America, and that of our Posterity — for which the Constitution originally was “ordained and established.”
©2010 Jean F. Drew
ENDNOTES
1 Kenneth Sylvan Guthrie, The Pythagorean Sourcebook and Library, David Fideler, ed., Grand Rapids: Phanes Press, 1988, p. 97.
2 Thomas Fleming, Liberty!: The American Revolution, New York: Viking, 1997, p. 104f.
3 Fleming, p. 105.
4 Ibid.
5 Fleming, p. 112.
6 Fleming, p. 118.
7 Ibid.
8 Ibid.
9 Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France, New York: The Classics of Liberty Library, 1982, p. 105f. Note: Because this edition is a facsimile of the original publication of 1790, I’ve taken the liberty of modernizing the spelling and punctuation.
10 John Trenchard and Robert Gordon, Cato’s Letters, Vol. 1, Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, Inc., 1995, p. 406ff.
11 Burke, p. 87–88.
12 Burke, p. 85–86.
13 Burke, p. 89–90.
14 Burke, p. 116.
15 Burke, p. 119; emphasis added.
16 Burke, p. 127–128; emphasis added.
Yes, it's true the Roman Church does not teach the preexistence of the soul. And BTW, neither does Aristotle.
But Plato does mention it — though I can't say in a terribly useful fashion for present purposes perhaps. In Timaeus he writes:
...We should think of the most authoritative part of our soul as a guardian spirit given by god, living in the summit of the body, which can properly be said to lift us from the earth towards our home in heaven; for we are creatures not of the earth but of heaven, where the soul was first born, and our divine part attaches us by the head to heaven, like a plant by its roots, and keeps our body upright. If therefore a man's attention and effort is centered on appetite and ambition, all his thoughts are bound to be mortal, and he can hardly fail, in so far as it is possible, to become entirely mortal, as it is his mortal part that he has increased. But a man who has given his heart to learning and true wisdom and exercised that part of himself is surely bound, if he attains to truth, to have immortal and divine thoughts, and cannot fail to achieve immortality as fully as is permitted to human nature; and because he has always looked after the divine element in himself and kept his guardian spirit in good order he must be happy above all men. There is of course only one way to look after anything and that is to give it its proper food and motions. And the motions that are akin to the divine in us are the thoughts and revolutions of the universe. We should each therefore attend to these motions and by learning about the harmonious circuits of the universe repair the damage done at birth to the circuits in the head, and so restore understanding and what is understood to their original likeness to each other. When that is done we shall have achieved the goal set to us by the gods, the life that is best for this present time and for all time to come. — Desmond Lee, translator; emphasis added.Marry this insight to Plato's doctrine of seminal ideas, which suggests that prior to birth (incarnation), the [pre-existent] soul as microcosm "knows" all things; but the "circuits in the head" that are "deranged at birth" leads to a condition wherein the slate of human consciousness is completely wiped clean WRT this knowledge. Thereafter, the process of human knowledge acquisition mainly consists of "remembering" what was already known before we were born, via a process called anamnesis.
All of which is an interesting conjecture which remains utterly outside any possible human direct observation or validating test.
There is nothing in human mortal experience that can provide any kind of verification of such an idea. We have no experience, and no language, to address the issue of the pre-existence of souls.
And so if the Roman Church (like Aristotle) does not address this matter, perhaps this is because the matter really cannot be addressed from the standpoint of mortal human direct knowledge and experience. So don't waste your time dwelling on it!
In the end, as you say dear brother in Christ, "what do all these pre existent souls do or feel and know?...Or do they just hang around blank ready for the order to be filled in time?" NO MAN can answer that question, just as NO MAN ever comes back from the dead to advise us of what post-existence is like.
In short, this may be a question about which it is futile for mortal human beings to preoccupy themselves with....
And so the Church likely is entirely correct not to dwell on the pre-existence of souls....
Just some thoughts FWIW.
Thank you ever so much, dear brother in Christ, for writing!
And so ... "man is the measure" of reality at the personal scale? Reality ultimately must obey what a particular man might happen to want? And that somehow one's personal proclivities and preferences along this line determine what happens in the real world on a universal scale? Is that what you're saying?
If so, I'd reply: Man can conceive of the universe any which-way he wants to. But the REAL universe goes on, irrespective of man's imaginings — at least those that do not conform to the REAL universe, which God created in the Beginning. His LOGOS rules — then, now, and forever.
Man is part and participant of/in the real ["objective"] universe. As such, he never determines it. In short, human rhetoric does not change actual Reality. That maneuver works only in human dreams....
Then again you wrote:
The idea of an immortal soul, a whole being that "feels" and "sees" and exists transcendentally on another conscious plane, is intriguing. To me, it's like dark matter—a convenient postulate that could answer a lot of questions, but no one knows what it is or how to detect it and recognize it.Very intriguing way to put the matter, my friend!
Thank you so very much for writing, dear kosta!
Somehow, dear brother in Christ, I do not object to Objection 2, above. Although St. Thomas Aquinas evidently did. But his answer to it — "Something can be added every day to the perfection of the universe, as to the number of individuals, but not as to the number of species" — not only strikes me as pretty lame, but as strangely off-topic also.
But then, who am I to say???
Thank you so much for the link, dear brother in Christ!
THANKS FOR THE PING.
That's right. What is a solid to us is not a solid to a neutrino. That's why we are a measure of our reality; we can be aware of other realities but we cannot participate in them. Pretending to be a neutrino and trying to fly through a rock will be most disappointing. We can't be something other than what our natures make us to be.
A human being can only be a whole and if that whole includes a soul and a body then anything other than that combination is not a human being. As human beings we can only exist and live and function in human reality, or so it seems.
I see this as Aquinas saying perfection being added as we(humans) see it in time and the number of species is to be understood as us(humans) knowing God knows the number of species from eternity
but as strangely off-topic also.
The answer to objection# 3 saying ...."Consequently it was not fitting that God should make the soul without the body from the beginning: for as it is written (Wisdom 1:13-16): “God made not death . . . but the wicked with works and words have called it to them.”
It makes this on topic
I appreciate you views on this interesting topic
Again? To the best of my recollection you’ve sought to disqualify some Founders (Adams, Jefferson, Franklin, Paine, etc) on the basis of their Christian doctrines, not on their Christian values, and ignored the others entirely. But, let me see, I’ve mentioned a number of values: Adore God; revere and cherish your parents; love your neighbor as yourself; be just; be true; murmur not at the ways of Providence; equality in the eyes of God, equality before the law; do unto others.
And, the Founders have witnessed that Christian values fueled the Revolutionary Act, whether or not you approve of all their tenets of dogma.
We’ve been over this I don’t know how many times, you emphasizing doctrinal distinctions, I emphasizing Christian values. You’ve stated your desire that we stop beating a dead horse, but it seems there’s still some life in the old girl.
Of course. Nothing personal. The Romans used threats, humiliation, and fear to force conquered peoples to submit to Roman will. Romans cared not a whit for religion, only that the conquered not set themselves against Roman will. The same reason why Romans flogged Boudica and raped her daughters. Although individual Roman soldiers may have thought it great fun, the point was to force submission by humiliation, brutalizing, and slaughter. Islamics and Marxists/Socialists employ the same tactics today.
For a Christian there can be no greater humiliation than to be forced to deny Christ, as dispiriting as rape, torture, or slaughter might be. To its humiliation, Roman Might did not ultimately prevail and, worse, the Christians, having not learned a thing from their brutal experience at the hands of the Romans, not only defeated Roman Might, but also turned it to serve their own disreputable purposes.
You’ve stated your desire that we stop beating a dead horse. Not however, it appears, unless you have the last word. Very well, for the sake of that poor horse, you get to have the last word.
According to the Bible, God gave man his breath of life on the last day of the Creation. And man has been passing it on to the offspring ever since (see traducianism). This view solves the problem of further creation after God ended "all his [creative] work," as well as avoids the need to presuppose the problematic pre-existence of the souls.
I agree.
Did the Greeks simplify this?(I think)
Traduscianism was the belief of the Church before Blessed Augustine introduced creationism, i.e. belief that God creates a new soul at the moment of conception. The East simply retained the original belief. There is no doctrinal strife as regards this subject in the Church; both traditions are accepted, with creationism predominating in the west and traducianism in the East.
However, trasucianism inadvertently leads us to realize that we are all brothers, since the life we have is the same life God gave to Adam, and through Adam to all of humanity. Creationism leads us to look at each person as life unto itself.
The God Who knows the number of species, and the number of hairs on our heads, certainly can be expected to know the number of human souls He created right at the beginning. Or so it seems to me. Still this is not a provable statement!
Question about traducianism: is the "breath of Life" — spirit —equivalent to "soul?" The Scriptures tell us God breathed Adam alive; that is, made what He formed of the dust to live; and that original breath of life was something that Adam passed on to his progeny over all the human generations until now; and if spirit = soul, that would mean that Adam himself creates the souls of his offspring upon their physical conception. And they in turn do likewise WRT their offspring. This definitely does not work for me. But perhaps I haven't understood traducianism well enough. I guess the matter turns on whether spirit = soul or not. I'm not clear on this question.
Neither do I think I'm a "creationist" in the sense that I believe God specially creates each man body and soul at physical conception in time. Or did I misunderstand that notion as well?
Just to complicate matters further, here are some lines from St. Anselm, Archbishop of Cantebury that I find particularly interesting:
Those things which were created from nothing had an existence before their creation in the thought of the Creator.It is in Anselm's sense that I conceive of the pre-existence of souls — i.e., in the timeless Mind of God Creator. This is more a Platonic than an Aristotelian notion. Or so it seems to me.
BUT I seem to see a truth that compels me to distinguish carefully in what sense those things which were created may be said to have been nothing before their creation. For, in no wise can anything conceivably be created by any, unless there is, in the mind of the creative agent, some example, as it were, or (as is more fittingly supposed) some model, or likeness, or rule. It is evident, then, that before the world was created, it was in the thought of the supreme Nature, what, and of what sort, and how, it should be. Hence, although it is clear that the being that were created were nothing before their creation, to this extent, that they were not what they now are, nor was there anything whence they should be created, yet they were not nothing, so far as the creator's thought is concerned, through which, and according to which, they were created. — Monologium, Chapter X.
This topic truly is fascinating, dear brother in Christ! Thank you so very much for your excellent contributions to this discussion!
Very interesting insight, kosta. Thank you!
Thank you oh so very much, dear YHAOS, for all of your insights shared on this thread!
Man is part and participant of/in the real ["objective"] universe. As such, he never determines it. In short, human rhetoric does not change actual Reality. That maneuver works only in human dreams....
Thank you oh so very much for all of your insights, dearest sister in Christ!
And so ... "man is the measure" of reality at the personal scale?
Man is a measure of his own reality. No one else can measure his reality. Just as a woman is a measure of woman's reality and man (male) is of his because they are distinct realities. After all, each person is a measure of his or her reality by virtue of how they are.
And that somehow one's personal proclivities and preferences along this line determine what happens in the real world on a universal scale? Is that what you're saying?
Each person will try to create conditions that best suit his or her physical and psychological makeup, how each experiences and deal with the world. For example, overweight people may prefer stretchable clothes; non-smokers may wish to create a smoke-free environment; disabled individuals may wish to see more wheel chair ramps, etc. Along with these desires they also create a set of values that reflect their reality.
Very few people attempt to change or influence things they cannot influence, such as earthquakes or hurricanes; heat waves; tidal waves, etc. At best they can hope to come up with technology that will give them some time to escape or seek shelter. The reality of Nature is simply accepted as such and man can do no more than hope he will manage to escape the natural (impersonal) wrath of the physical world.
If so, I'd reply: Man can conceive of the universe any which-way he wants to. But the REAL universe goes on, irrespective of man's imaginings
I agree.
Man is part and participant of/in the real ["objective"] universe. As such, he never determines it. In short, human rhetoric does not change actual Reality
Again, that is correct. However, that does not mean that man does not measure or change the world (within means) according to human standards, according to his measure.
In subjective experience, a man may well believe that he is the measure of his own reality (i.e., of the reality of which he is — finally — merely part and participant during his mortal existence). Indeed, it seems such an idea gained considerable traction with the Enlightenment, which deemed the power of human reason to be unlimited in principle. (Of course, the philosophes had to bump off God first.)
In objective experience, this "subjective man" is also and necessarily a part and participant, not only in the world of Nature, but also in the social world; i.e., of human society. What he thinks in subjective moments inevitably bleeds out into the way he relates to the natural world and the social world of his fellow men.
If every man believes that he is the measure of his own reality, it goes without saying that inevitably conflicts will occur between two systems of perceptual reality that lack a common ground.
You give examples of this, dear kosta: e.g., the non-smoker insists on a smoke-free environment; the smoker would like to enjoy a post-prandial cigar or cigarette over his coffee at the conclusion of a meal in a fine restaurant. If every man is his own "measure," then both are "right." But if an argument breaks out between the two sides (as usual), where is the higher, objective (i.e., common to all) standard or "measure" to which to appeal to resolve the conflict? And so it becomes a political matter, to be resolved "by the numbers." And thus yet another "political minority" is thrown under the bus.
Reflecting on the practical moral relativism your view seems to invoke, I find it useful to remember certain great classical insights about the nature of man and his relations to God, world, and society.
The classical Greek philosophers recognized that man had a given nature; that is, his nature is not something that he can remake or construct for himself — no matter how much he would like to.
Plato thought man is the microcosm, the image or eikon of the Cosmos; and as such fundamentally alike, syngenes, to the Cosmos.
In other words, man recapitulates in his own being all of the components of cosmic order. The Cosmos is laid out as a hierarchy, at the summit of which is the Epikeina, or divine Nous (the structuring principle of the Cosmos), and at its root the Apeiron, the cosmic depth (the unlimited, indefinite, unbounded; the unlimited source of all particular things — i.e., it is pure as-yet nonexistent potentiality). Because it transcends all limits, the Apeiron is in principle indefinable (that's a limit on reason right there).
In Plato's myth of the Cosmos, the Apeiron of non-existence is not merely a negative dimension of the Whole but the reality that is the creative origin or Beginning of existent things, including life and the order of the "things" called men.
In between Epikeina and Apieron, we find man. He mirrors the cosmic hierarchy, recapitulating all the orders of the Cosmos in himself, including, in descending order, the divine first and foremost (for man is "the ensouled animal that thinks," i.e., possesses reason, which is divine). Then there are five levels descending from there: the levels of human psyche (1) — nous (reason, mind); human psyche (2) — the emotional life, passions; animal nature; vegetative nature; and inorganic nature. Man is naturally structured by this hierarchy, which bottoms out in the unfathomable Apieron from which he arose as a physical creature, an into which his body will return at death.
The implication is that man, as part and participant of the Whole, somehow contains the Whole within himself. Two of the hierarchical levels represent the "poles" of transcendent reality in which man immanently participates: Epikeina and Apeiron, the Limited and the Unlimited. Both are divine.
It is fashionable today to reject the possibility of transcendent reality because by its nature it is not something that can be advanced on the basis of verifiable propositions, or subjected to empirical tests.
Yet empirical tests "reduce" the universe to only what can be observed and tested. Huge sectors of human experience lie completely outside of such methods.
What empirical method could test the truth of Plato's pregnant insights, e.g., that man, as microcosm, is the Cosmos "writ small"; that society is man "writ large?"
Back to my original point: If every man is his own measure, then that is tantamount to saying that there is no measure in the world, but only that which individuated human consciousness can produce in response to transient conditions. And if every man's measure is unique to himself, it is difficult to see how the various and sometimes mutually-opposing measures can be reconciled — absent a higher criterion of Truth that can justly adjudicate the contending claims.
You conceded my point (I think) that "the Real universe goes on, irrespective of man's imaginings." But then almost instantly seemed to refute it by saying "...However, that does not mean that man does not measure or change the world (within means) according to human standards, according to his measure."
Which begs the point I'm trying to get at: The man's self-measure either conforms to a measure beyond himself or (to me) man's "measurements" ought quite property to invoke skepticism and doubt.
Thank you so very much, dear kosta, for your provocative essay/post, and for participating in this rather strange conversation!
p.s.: I'm sorry to be so tardy replying. I've been pretty busy myself lately.... I'm not on-line as much as I'd like nowadays.
The implication is that man, as part and participant of the Whole, somehow contains the Whole within himself. Two of the hierarchical levels represent the "poles" of transcendent reality in which man immanently participates: Epikeina and Apeiron, the Limited and the Unlimited. Both are divine.
I believe it was none other than the guy you suggested I get a room with, Richard Dawkins, who observes that to an insect surface tension is a heck of a lot more important than gravity. To us, of course, surface tension means very little but gravity is a major issue.
Or, using a cosmic example, who cares if there is a supernova in NCG4696?! It's real, but in our life here on earth it's trivia: it doesn't help you get a job, pay the bills, get a date, keep you young, or healthy, etc. But to an astronomer who makes his living finding such cataclysmic events just may be the most important thing in his life! :)
So, assuming Plato was correct, what difference does it make to us? In what way does Plato's transcendentals affect us any more than surface tension does (unless you are hoping to get a job teaching Platonism)? This life we have is about us making it comfortable here and now, having a job, food, comfort, loved ones, etc. What goes on in the background we cannot see, detect, feel, and even know for certain, does not pay the bills or keep the water warm and might as well not even exist.
You unwittingly confirm this when you say
When I say that man is his own measure it means how he fits himself into the material world, and that is by no means subjective. To the contrary, subjective is what man imagines himself to be; not necessarily what he is. Objective is realizing that a VW Golf is not the car to buy if someone barely fits into an SUV. Subjective is that we are transcendental spirits, and objective is that "man's gotta know his limitations." ["Dirty Harry"]
No, betty boop, the unseen and the undetectable, is not always important in our lives, let alone essential. But, likewise, empiricism isn't ether; just because we can measure it doesn't mean it's significant. It depends what it is. That's why it's so important for me to know what is God.
Surface tension is a perfect example. We can measure it but so what. Our keyboards and telephones are a certain size because they are best suited for the size of our hands. They could be larger or smaller, but we made them just right. This is an example where man manipulates and creates his environment to his measure, what's best for us. And that becomes the standard.
Disagreeing with me, you observe
Yes they are. But the one who has more power is "more" right. :) Former Governor of New York Nelson Rockefeller is rumored to have quipped "we are all equal, but some are more equal" or words to that effect. It doesn't seem "fair," but that's got to do with our culture and not absolute values. Some cultures believe that each man is where he is because God wanted them to be there and that's fair to them.
You ask
and I say there isn't any common to all higher standard; we can approximate it. There are agreed-upon standards. In the case of smokers versus non-smokers the scale of "fairness" is tipped in favor of the latter because they are the ones being harmed. Our society sides with those being harmed. You may say that's because of the Bible. Maybe, but the same can be observed in societies that don't use the Bible.
So, is "do no harm"a common higher standard to all? Pretty much (generally speaking), because being harmed it not something too many people like (again man's own measure)! :) Smoking is unhealthy and that is harmful for the smokers as well as those around them (besides, for non-smokers the smell of smoke is really obnoxious).
I know you like Plato, but I don't. I think he was a brilliant man with too much time on his hands (and possibly a disturbed childhood—just joking!).
Perhaps it's because the world realized that it, like surface tension, doesn't pay the bills and keep the water warm, and is therefore of limited if questionable value.
By showing that they have a pragmatic value.
To a transient man transient conditions are important, else life will pass him by; carpe diem.
They have been reconciled by agreement or by force. The agreement exists on the appropriate level of commonality of the subject. On the very basic level there is no agreement or even a need for reconciliation.
For example, all our homes are different even if they were mass produced with the same layout; none is furnished exactly the same way. Our homes are our own communal microcosm, a miniature society, where someone calls the shots and someone obeys them. However, our homes may have to conform to some standards of safety and community we live in, typical of the development, county, city, state or country.
Man conforms to those measures which are imposed upon him either by himself (his physical and psychological makeup) or the world around him. No matter how you turn it around, we measure (and judge) everything and all that we experience by our own ruler. When conditions exceed the scale of our rulers we quit, move, rebel, etc. trying to re-establish a measure suitable to us.
At least that's how it looks to me.
Slippery analytical slope here, dear kosta: Plato does not reduce his analysis of the Cosmos to problems of surface tension. So why do you?
I would say that a person using "surface tension" as somehow an ultimate test of Reality would probably be insane. As Professor Dawkins confesses, surface tension may be of great importance to insects (assuming they are cognizant of such in any way), but not so much to human beings. [Activities of the human body that involve surface tension are ordinarily orderly dealt with on molecular and cellular levels, conducing to the homeostasis of the system, far below the level of human consciousness.]
Insects do not imagine Reality. So this example is a non sequitur. For here we are interested in how human beings conceive of Reality. (And that includes you.) Or at least I am so interested.
You wrote:
...the unseen and the undetectable, is not always important in our lives, let alone essential. But, likewise, empiricism isn't ether; just because we can measure it doesn't mean it's significant. It depends what it is. That's why it's so important for me to know what is God.And thus the perfect posture of moral equivalency. More crudely put, fence-straddling.
How on earth do you expect to know "what is God" if you insist on processing Him through the "meat grinder" that you consider "logical analysis?"
That is to say, before you can "judge" the reality of God, He has to present Himself to your court of judgment, and submit to your rules of evidence. We will not bother to consult a jury in this case. For who could be the peer of God? Instead, we, expressing the measure of ourself, will deign to become the measure of God — and by the way, of His Creation also....
In the lines above you condemn BOTH the "unseen and indetectable" and empiricism, too. Which is a really neat feat; since the understanding of the human species relative to the world of Reality has been relying, dependent on just these two things for several millennia by now.
Now you want us to try something else???
What, pray, would that be, dear kosta?
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