Mendelssohn, Moses (1729–86)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Allan Arkush
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Human Nature ◽  
Common Sense ◽  
Natural Law ◽  
Possible Worlds ◽  
Political Liberalism ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Critical Philosophy ◽  
Existence Of God ◽  
Liberty Of Conscience

A Jewish disciple of Leibniz and Wolff, Mendelssohn strove throughout his life to uphold and strengthen their rationalist metaphysics while sustaining his ancestral religion. His most important philosophic task, as he saw it, was to refine and render more persuasive the philosophical proofs for the existence of God, providence and immortality. His major divergence from Leibniz was in stressing that ‘the best of all possible worlds’, which God had created, was in fact more hospitable to human beings than Leibniz had supposed. Towards the end of his life, the irrationalism of Jacobi and the critical philosophy of Kant shook Mendelssohn’s faith in the demonstrability of the fundamental metaphysical precepts, but not his confidence in their truth. They would have to be sustained by ‘common sense’, he reasoned, until future philosophers succeeded in restoring metaphysics to its former glory. While accepting Wolff’s teleological understanding of human nature and natural law, Mendelssohn placed far greater value on human freedom and outlined a political philosophy that protected liberty of conscience. His philosophic defence of his own religion stressed that Judaism is not a ‘revealed religion’ demanding acceptance of particular dogmas but a ‘revealed legislation’ requiring the performance of particular actions. The object of this divine and still valid legislation, he suggested, was often to counteract forces that might otherwise subvert the natural religion entrusted to us by reason. To resolve the tension between his own political liberalism and the Bible’s endorsement of religious coercion, Mendelssohn argued that contemporary Judaism, at any rate, no longer acknowledges any person’s authority to compel others to perform religious acts.

Epilogue and Conclusion

2021 ◽  
pp. 268-272
Author(s):  
Sarah Mortimer
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Human Nature ◽  
Religious Belief ◽  
Natural Law ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Political Authority ◽  
Historical Change ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Hugo Grotius ◽  
The Church

This chapter draws together the themes of the book and looks forward to the later-seventeenth century. It argues that for much of the sixteenth century politics was subordinate to religion; temporal authorities needed the additional sanctions provided by religious belief if they were to exert any power over the consciences of individuals. The effect was to entangle temporal power in the deepening conflicts over religious truth, and thus to reveal the brittleness of any conception of political authority which relied on the support of the Church. At the same time, older traditions of political thought did not go away and often became stronger. The circulation of classical ideas, the discovery of new peoples, the growing interest in historical change and development all suggested alternative ways of legitimizing political power, often using natural law and avoiding any reliance on specifically Christian commitments. What happened in the early-seventeenth century, and most obviously in the writing of Hugo Grotius, was a move not only to ground political society in a particular conception of human nature (conceived of juridically, as a source of rights and obligations) but also to detach Christianity from that view of human nature. It was this understanding of human beings which enabled the development of a social contract tradition through the seventeenth century and beyond, and became an important source for modern liberalism. The questions it raised would help to shape the thought of the next century.

Human nature

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ian Shapiro
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Social Influence ◽  
Human Nature ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Philosophical Thought ◽  
Political Association ◽  
Made In

Every political philosophy takes for granted a view of human nature, and every view of human nature is controversial. Political philosophers have responded to this conundrum in a variety of ways. Some have defended particular views of human nature, while others have sought to develop political philosophies that are compatible with many different views of human nature, or, alternatively, which rest on as few controversial assumptions about human nature as possible. Some political philosophers have taken the view that human nature is an immutable given, others that it is shaped (in varying degrees) by culture and circumstance. Differences about the basic attitudes of human beings toward one another – whether selfish, altruistic or some combination – have also exercised political philosophers. Although none of these questions has been settled definitively, various advances have been made in thinking systematically about them. Four prominent debates concern: (1) the differences between perfectionist views, in which human nature is seen as malleable, and constraining views, in which it is not; (2) the nature/nurture controversy, which revolves around the degree to which human nature is a consequence of biology as opposed to social influence, and the implications of this question for political philosophy; (3) the opposition between self-referential and other-referential conceptions of human nature and motivation – whether we are more affected by our own condition considered in itself, or by comparisons between our own condition and that of others; and (4) attempts to detach philosophical thought about political association from all controversial assumptions about human nature.

The Spark That Still Shines: John Calvin on Conscience and Natural Law

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Constance Y Lee
Keyword(s):  
Human Nature ◽  
Natural Law ◽  
John Calvin ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Reformed Theology ◽  
Human Reason ◽  
Moral Discernment ◽  
Central Figure ◽  
Knowledge Of God ◽  
Sufficient Knowledge

Abstract John Calvin (1509–64), a central figure in Reformed theology, is perhaps best known for his bleak doctrine of total human depravity. This dismal view of human reason has commonly overshadowed his statement that ‘some sparks still shine’. This article proposes that Calvin’s account of conscience, by conserving an illuminated space in human nature, makes possible a formal doctrine of natural law. Calvin enlists the interconnectedness between the knowledge of God and human reason to frame his anthropology. According to this, human reason was originally created to perfectly access knowledge of God but after the Fall, can only attain imperfect access. Within this broader framework, by adopting a dialectic of dual perspectives, Calvin maintains that, however fallen, human nature still partially reflects the Imago Dei as first intended. As through a glass darkly, this divine image is reflected in human conscience endowing it with sufficient knowledge for moral discernment. Calvin’s emphasis on ‘common grace’ in the preservation of this knowledge allows him to simultaneously maintain human ignorance and their universal accountability to objective norms. In this way, Calvin’s account of conscience enables him to hold both apparent extremes in tension: the immanent fallibility of human beings with the external normative standards they ought to pursue.

Natural Right in Hobbes and Kant

2012 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 66-90 ◽  
Author(s):  
Howard Williams
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Natural Law ◽  
Natural Rights ◽  
Critical Philosophy ◽  
Natural Right ◽  
Rational Individual ◽  
Divine Support ◽  
Orthodox View

Both Hobbes and Kant tackle the issue of natural right in a radical and controversial way. They both present systematic, secular theories of natural law in a highly religious age. Whereas Hobbes transforms natural right by placing the rational individual bent on self-preservation at the centre of political philosophy, Kant transforms natural right by putting the metaphysical presuppositions of his critical philosophy at the heart of his reasoning on politics. Neither attempts to provide an orthodox view of natural right as directly or indirectly derived from God’s commands, although subsequent to their philosophical deduction as natural rights or laws both do not entirely repudiate the idea that these rights or laws can be portrayed as having divine support.

Hobbes's Modern Prometheus: A Political Philosophy for an Uncertain Future

2007 ◽  
Vol 40 (1) ◽  
pp. 101-127 ◽  
Author(s):  
Loralea Michaelis
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Human Nature ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Point Of Entry ◽  
The Future ◽  
Uncertain Future ◽  
Dramatic Departure

Abstract. This paper takes the Prometheus story in chapter 12 of Leviathan as the point of entry for an examination of the importance that Hobbes assigns to the problem of an uncertain future in his political philosophy. Hobbes's thinking on human nature represents a dramatic departure from the ancients not only because his mechanistic psychology reverses the ancient conception of the relation between reason and passion but also because his understanding of the temporal situation of human beings privileges the future to an unprecedented degree. It is against the backdrop of a universe in which the problem of an uncertain future has reached intolerable proportions that Hobbes develops his portrait of human nature; it is against the backdrop of this universe that he develops his account of Leviathan as the only earthly power capable of stabilizing the horizon of expectation.Résumé. Cet article utilise l'histoire de Prométhée au chapitre 12 du Léviathan comme introduction à l'examen de l'importance qu'accorde Hobbes au problème de l'incertitude de l'avenir dans sa philosophie politique. La pensée de Hobbes sur la nature humaine constitue une dérogation spectaculaire par rapport aux Anciens non seulement parce que sa psychologie mécaniste s'oppose diamétralement à l'ancienne conception de la relation entre raison et passion, mais également parce que sa compréhension de la situation temporelle des êtres humains privilégie l'avenir et ce, à un degré sans précédent. C'est sur la toile de fond d'un univers dans lequel le problème de l'incertitude de l'avenir a atteint des proportions intolérables que Hobbes construit son portrait de la nature humaine comme un tourbillon de passions incontrôlées; c'est sur la toile de fond de cet univers qu'il élabore son récit du Léviathan, seule force terrestre capable de stabiliser les attentes de l'avenir.

Thomas Paine’s democratic linguistic radicalism: a political philosophy of language?

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carine Lounissi
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Human Nature ◽  
Common Sense ◽  
Philosophy Of Language ◽  
Political Elite ◽  
The Political ◽  
The Common ◽  
Common Man

Carine Lounissi’s premise in this chapter is that characterising Thomas Paine’s radicalism is a challenge, which she takes up by focusing on his “democratic style” as a way to make his ideas accessible to the common man. The author thus studies Paine’s “democratic style”, for which he was harshly criticised, as being part and parcel of his inherently republican and democratic radicalism. She argues that in his writings Paine sought to deconstruct the discourse of the political elite of his time, associated with the trappings of royalty, and promoted the language of common sense instead as an instrument of resistance predicated on the universality of human nature. He invented a radical linguistics whereby he wished to go back to the roots of words.

An alterantive Free Will Defence

1982 ◽  
Vol 18 (3) ◽  
pp. 365-372 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Ackermann
Keyword(s):  
Free Will ◽  
Possible Worlds ◽  
Christian Belief ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Brute Fact ◽  
Existence Of God ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Problem Of Evil ◽  
Rational Reflection ◽  
Definite Proof

Many philosophers have written in the past as though it were nearly obvious to rational reflection that the existence of evil in this world is incompatible with the presumed properties of the Christian God, and they have assumed a proof of incompatibility to be easy to construct. An informal underpinning for this line of thought is easy to develop. Surely God in his benevolence finds evil to be evil, and hence has both the desire and the means, provided by his omnipotence and omniscience, to eradicate it. But it remains a brute fact that evil exists. While this seems plausible enough at first glance, and seems damaging to the rationality of Christian belief, attempts to pin down a definite proof of incompatibility have encountered difficulties. The root difficulty is perhaps that the surface plausibility of incompatibility is ultimately mistaken. In what he calls a Free Will Defence against natural atheology, Alvin Plantinga has presented what seems a definitive proof, on rather modest assumptions, of the logical compatibility of God's nature and the existence of evil. Logic alone can neither prove nor disprove God's existence, since the defence rests on the empirical assumption that evil exists in this world. What Plantinga shows, put very simply, is that God may have created a world as good as any that an omnipotent, omniscient, and benevolent being might have created given that human beings must exist in that world. Whether Christianity ought to court logical rationality may seem highly dubious, but on the supposition that it does, Plantinga's proof that the existence of God is logically compatible with the existence of evil seems to me to (provisionally) settle the issue of whether Christianity is a possible object of rational belief, at least insofar as the problem of evil is considered the major obstacle to rationality of belief. Perhaps it is now clear that I do not intend here to attack the validity or the significance of Plantinga's proof. At the same time, I think it possible to argue for Plantinga's conclusion on other grounds, grounds that seem to me philosophically more appealing, and grounds that are manifestly compatible with the Biblical record. After briefly summarizing Plantinga's argument, I shall propose an alternative free will defence that circumvents some of the presuppositions of his arguments, an alternative that may be attractive to philosophers who are not interested in an ontology involving Plantinga's conception of possible worlds.

De Veritate

Grotiana ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 35 (1) ◽  
pp. 75-94
Author(s):  
Sarah Mortimer
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
Human Nature ◽  
Natural Law ◽  
Civic Life ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Christian Religion ◽  
Christian Morality ◽  
Religious Controversy

Grotius always claimed that De veritate was not a controversial work, but it was not as innocuous nor as straightforward as Grotius would have his reader believe. It was the theological counterpart to his groundbreaking De iure belli ac pacis and it offered a distinctive version of Christianity which could complement his system of natural and international law. Both works were built upon a particular conception of human nature and natural law, one which was not shared by many of Grotius’ contemporaries. In De veritate, Grotius emphasised that human beings could and should embrace Christianity voluntarily, in response to the revelation they found in the Scriptures. In this way, Grotius provided a way of understanding Christianity which did not appeal to any innate notion of God, and which removed the Christian religion from the sphere of nature and from the shared civic life which was built upon natural foundations. His aim was to shield civic life from the potentially destabilising effects of religious controversy and to promote Christian morality, but his ethical reading of Christianity brought with it important political and theological consequences. This article will show both the novelty, and the instability, of Grotius’ conception of Christianity.

Hutcheson, Francis (1694–1746)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christian Maurer
Keyword(s):  
Immanuel Kant ◽  
Human Nature ◽  
Natural Law ◽  
Moral Sense ◽  
Scottish Enlightenment ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Moral Good ◽  
Marcus Aurelius ◽  
Religious Dimensions ◽  
Good And Evil

Francis Hutcheson was an Irish–Scottish moral philosopher. He is best known for his epistemological claim that a disinterested moral sense is the source of our ideas of moral good and evil, and for his psychological claim that human beings are naturally motivated by disinterested benevolence, and not by self-love alone. At the dawn of the Scottish Enlightenment, these claims carried considerable philosophical and theological weight – Hutcheson’s optimism regarding the moral capacities of human nature is particularly noteworthy. Hutcheson’s arguments in moral epistemology for the reality of a disinterested moral sense are developed in opposition to different versions of ethical rationalism and ethical egoism, and they further oppose Calvinist ideas about the incapacity of corrupt postlapsarian human beings to know moral good and evil. Hutcheson’s arguments in moral psychology for the reality of disinterested benevolence are developed in opposition to different egoistic psychologies which resolve all desires into self-love. For Hutcheson, such debates are intrinsically connected to those on the moral status of human nature: both his defence of the reality of benevolence and his defence of the disinterestedness of the moral sense are directed against conceptions of human nature as morally corrupt. Hutcheson’s ideas about aesthetics and politics, his approach to natural law theories, and the religious dimensions of his philosophy have also attracted scholarly attention. Hutcheson had an affectionate interest in classical thinkers like Cicero and Marcus Aurelius, and in early modern figures like the Cambridge Platonists and, especially, Shaftesbury. He was inspired by John Locke’s theory of ideas and Samuel Pufendorf’s natural law theory, albeit dealing with those at some critical distance. Like so many of his contemporaries, he attacked Thomas Hobbes and Bernard Mandeville. The development of his writings makes manifest his critical engagement with contemporary ethical rationalists like Samuel Clarke, Gilbert Burnet, and John Balguy, and with psychological egoists like John Clarke of Hull and Archibald Campbell. Joseph Butler was a source of inspiration for Hutcheson. Hutcheson himself exerted a considerable influence on the Scottish Enlightenment and beyond: he had a complex relationship with David Hume, he was the teacher of Adam Smith; and various famous thinkers like Richard Price, Thomas Reid, Immanuel Kant, and Jeremy Bentham reacted to Hutcheson’s moral philosophy.

Pufendorf, Samuel (1632–94)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
J.D. Ford
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
International Law ◽  
Human Nature ◽  
Natural Law ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Moral Science ◽  
Law Of Nature ◽  
Hugo Grotius ◽  
University Professor ◽  
The Law

Pufendorf was the first university professor of the law of nature and nations. His De iure naturae et gentium (On the Law of Nature and Nations) (1672) and De officio hominis et civis iuxta legem naturalem (On the Duty of Man and Citizen according to Natural Law) (1673) greatly influenced the handling of that subject in the eighteenth century. As a result Pufendorf has been recognized as an important figure in the development of the conception of international law as a body of norms commonly agreed to have universal validity by sovereign states. He regarded himself as an exponent of a new moral science founded by Hugo Grotius which transformed the natural law tradition by starting from identifiable traits of human nature rather than ideas about what human beings ought to be.

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