vrijdag 1 september 2017

William Ritchie Sorley (1855 – 1935) zag zijn ethiek tegenovergesteld aan die van Spinoza [1]

Een van de namen die op de bibliografie van Lewis Browne, Blesséd Spinoza [cf. Blog] voorkwam en mij nog onbekend waren, is deze W.R. Sorley, naar wie ik dus op zoek ging. Zijn daar vermelde Spinoza (Oxford, 1918) bleek een niet heel omvangrijke lecture te zijn.

William Ritchie Sorley was een Schots filosoof, behorend tot de zgn. British Idealists met een bijzondere belangstelling voor ethiek. Hij schreef onder meer The Ethics of Naturalism (Edinburgh, 1885), Recent Tendancies in Ethics (Edinburgh, 1904), The Moral Life and Moral Worth (Cambridge, 1911), A History of English Philosophy (Cambridge, 1920) [cf. wikipedia en The Online Books voor de vindplaatsen op internet van Sorley’s werk]
Om een nader idee over zijn filosoferen te krijgen, deze samenvatting uit W. J. Mander, Idealist Ethics [Oxford University Press, 2016 – books.google] die als voorbeeld van de denklijn van de idealistische ethici die van Sorley geeft:
This is the line of reasoning which maintains that our primary knowledge is ethical; that what we are most certain of is our reality as moral beings, our values, and our duties. But if our moral vision is non-negotiable, the task of metaphysics can only be to find a world view which fits in with this, and (the argument continues) the most suitable philosophical system for that purpose is the idealist one. We see this form of argument at work very clearly in the thought of the British Idealist W. R. Sorley, whose overall case moves quite explicitly from considerations of value to the establishment of metaphysical idealism. For Sorley, ethical ideas, or more generally ideas about value, have primacy for the interpretation of reality, and their proper place is right at the base of any philosophical structure. It should be realized "that our metaphysics must be founded on ethics, that in our idea of the 'ought' we are to discover at least a guide to a true idea of the Is.' The point is one about doing justice to the full range of our experience. If our final view of reality is to be based upon experience, it must be acknowledged that the appreciation of moral or other worth is as genuine and immediate a part of that experience as any other, and hence an undeniable component of the data for metaphysics. No philosophical account can ever be accepted which does not do justice to our ethical experience.
Deze benadering lijkt dus de omgekeerde van die van Spinoza, voor wie een metafysica voorafging en de basis vormde voor een goede ethiek. Dit verschil in aanpakt blijkt heel sterk uit:

  W.R. Sorley, Moral values and the idea of God: The Gifford lectures delivered in the University of Aberdeen in 1914 and 1915; editions 11918, 21921 – archive.org
In deze door hem gegeven Gifford lectures maakt Sorley, door veel in te gaan op Spinoza’s leer zoals hij die leest, duidelijk hoe zijn benadering van ethiek zich lijnrecht tegenover die van Spinoza bevindt.
.Al veel eerder, in 1886-87, had hij over Spinoza colleges gegeven, die pas in 1918 werden uitgegeven als:

  W.R. Sorley, Spinoza. London: Pub. for the British academy by H. Milford, ["From the Proceedings of the British academy, vol. viii."]. Oxford university press, [1918] - 20 p. Cf. Hathirust
{In een voetnoot staat: “This chapter is taken, with omissions, from a course of lectures given in 1886-87.]
Hieronder in dit blog neem ik deze lezing over, waarin het accent ligt op het samenvatten en kritiseren van Spinoza’s metafysica. In een volgend blog beng ik een uittreksel uit zijn Gifford lectures, waaruit blijkt dat hij zijn eigen ethische filosofie in verzet tegen Spinoza vormgaf.

Een aantal jaren ervoor had Sorley al over Spinoza geschreven. Nadat hij in Edinburgh z'n MA filosofie had behaald werd Sorley assistent van Campbell Fraser. Ondertussen studeerde hij theologie aan het New College en deed hij een zomercursus in Tübingen en Berlijn [cf. 1)]. Deze studie leidde tot het artikel:
  W.R. Sorley, “Jewish mediæval philosophy and Spinoza.” In: Mind 5, 19 (1880), 362-384 opgenomen in: W.I. Boucher, Spinoza: 18th and 19th Century Discussions: Vol. 5: 1880-1888 (1999), Vol. 5, 135-148. Daarin gaf hij commentaar op:

Manuel Joël, Zur Genesis der Lehre Spinoza's : mit bes. Berücks. des kurzen Traktats "Von Gott, dem Menschen u. dessen Glückseligkeit." Breslau : Skutsch, 1871 [cf. Freimann-Sammlung Universitätsbibliothek / UB Goethe Universität]
Verder is nog te noteren dat hij het werk redigeerde van
  Adamson, Robert, The development of modern philosophy. With other Lectures and Essays. Ed. b. W. R. Sorley. Edinburgh [e.a.]: Blackwood and Sons, 1903. - XLVIII, 358 pp. Met daarin, naast een zeer uitvoerig deel over Descartes een negental pagina’s over Spinoza [Part. I. Chapter III. Spinoza: 58-66]


1) Eugene Thomas Long, "The Gifford Lectures and the Scottish Personal Idealists." In: The Review of Metaphysics, Vol. 49, No. 2 (Dec., 1995), pp. 365-395

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  Hier dan die tekst die alles opgeteld 20 pagina's telde, maar een omvang heeft van 9 pagina's druk ofwel 5 A-tjes: W.R. Sorley, Spinoza. London: Pub. for the British academy by H. Milford, ["From the Proceedings of the British academy, vol. viii."]. Oxford university press, [1918] - 20 p. Cf. Hathirust
{In een voetnoot staat: “This chapter is taken, with omissions, from a course of lectures given in 1886-87.]
Ik vind het een interessante tekst om kennis van te nemen. je ervaart de Hegeliaanse manier van beoordelen van Spinoza, tegelijk ervaar je de authentieke poging om Spinoza te verstaan en in te passen in z'n eigen benadering. In de woorden van de hierboven genoemde Eugene Thomas Long: "Sorley's effort to develop a theory of reality as a whole, one that does not separate the natural world and the world of values, is a form of idealism which begins with different individual centers of conscious life and finds here the clue to the nature of reality. The idea of God that it discovers in its effort to construct a system of the universe is a God understood through analogy with the finite mind. God is conceived to be infinite in Spinoza's sense that God is not limited by another thing of the same nature. This, however, does not mean that God cannot be limited by his own nature. To deny God the power to limit himself is to limit the infinite power of God and to make impossible the creation of finite and free persons and the appearance of the infinite in the finite." [idem p. 394] 
  


[58]

CHAPTER III [1]

SPINOZA.[2]

THE whole history of past philosophy has been ransacked in order to trace the sources of Spinoza's system. Some have regarded it as simply a continuation of Descartes' philosophy; others seem to look upon it as an elaboration of doctrines to be found in the speculative thinking of the Jews[3];. a third view lays stress upon the points of resemblance it offers to the teaching of Giordano Bruno.4 But there is no evidence that Spinoza had any special acquaintance either with the Jewish thinkers referred to or with Bruno.[4] The amount of agreement between them is no more than is inevitable among comprehensive attempts at a philosophical explanation of things. And it ought not to be forgotten that he had the means of being fully acquainted with the general touching of philosophy at the time ; and it would not be difficult to dis[59]cover in him far greater resemblance to the classical thinkers than to the Jewish writers or to Bruno. On the other hand, there is not the slightest doubt that Spinoza shared to the full the conceptions which animated the Cartesian philosophy, and that he possessed a thorough acquaintance with that system. But his doctrine is not merely Cartesianism. It is a far more complete representation of what is involved in the Cartesian philosophy than is to be found in Descartes himself. Such a system as Spinoza's did not grow into its final form without passing through some more or less imperfect stages. But the materials for tracing its development are scanty; and the inquiry itself would be more appropriate in a detailed study of Spinoza. For our purposes it is sufficient to consider the fundamental notions of his completed doctrine.
In the very title of Spinoza's chief work there appears prominently the notion of a mathematical method of laying out the contents of his philosophical conception. This method is by no means external to the nature of the conception unfolded by its means. The formal arrangement is far from being a mere form. It is the ruling thought in Spinoza's doctrine that the kind of connexion which is shown in geometry—the relaton of ground to consequent—is the one supreme connexion in the system of existence and of thought. Explanation of special particulars is gained by showing that they follow from certain grounds or reasons. To explain the universe means to connect all that is therein contained with its supreme ground or reason — after the fashion that is exhibited in geometry, or mathematics generally. Knowledge has attained its ideal when it is able to present the whole contents of that which is to be known as an orderly system of connected reasons and consequents. For Spinoza, as for Plato, causation is equivalent to the relation of ground to consequent. What he is in search for, [60] therefore, is, in truth, the supreme ground of things—the assumption which must be made in order to render intelligible the assertion of anything else.
Nothing can be more palpable than the conflict which ordinary experience seems to exhibit between things in their concrete finitude and the ideal system of logically connected grounds and consequents with which reason seems to rest content. Spinoza does not fail to make reference to this conflict; and he decides it in an emphatic and unmistakable fashion. No distinction is dwelt on more often by him than that between Understanding and Imagination. Imagination, in his use of the term, may be taken to include all those modes of viewing things which rest content with partial aspects of what is presented—which do not involve completeness of insight into the nature of the things apprehended. To imagination, in this sense, Spinoza refers all those familiar conceptions of things which hinder us from contemplating the complete symmetry of logical conception that reason demands. It is because we view things from the standpoint of imagination that we conceive of them as being contingent and variable, and not determined in a strictly logical sequence. But the more our knowledge of a thing increases, the less possible is it for us to take this partial and inadequate view. All those familiar links of connexion, which our ordinary conceptions of things involve, and on which in truth they rest—such, for example, as local position—are, for Spinoza, merely ways in which we misinterpret the real logical relations of existence. The contemplation of grounds and consequents is the sole function of the understanding: and in this conception we find the key to Spinoza's philosophical construction. God is, for him, not a cause producing the universe, or even producing finite things, but the supreme ground or reason from which all else must be deduced as a consequent. And the [61] existence of these consequents is not independent of the ground, but is to be regarded as forming part of the full and complete conception of the ground itself.
The causa sui, or Substance, is that which must necessarily be conceived as depending on nothing but itself: its essence involves existence. Such substance Spinoza calls God; but this expression means nothing but the Unconditioned—Being, in all its fulness or completeness. Evidently, there can be but one substance ; and whatever is is in God, following from His nature as a consequent follows from its logical ground. These consequents are the determinate modes of the divine being. By 'mode' is meant simply the Conditioned in all its varieties: for the conditioned is that for the conception of which the conception of a ground or reason is necessary. The modes have no real existence in themselves. As finite and limited, they are mere negations—unrealities. Any determinateness implies a negation: implies the need of a further conception, whereby the determinate is marked off, and therefore indicates an element of unreality or non-being. In accordance with this view, bodies and minds can be nothing but modifications of the one substance. If we ask how they are discriminated from one another and how their specific nature is related to Substance, we come upon the notion of ‘attribute'--confessedly a difficulty in Spinoza's philosophy. I feel inclined to accept, as veritably Spinoza's view, what seems the straightforward interpretation of the definition: "by attribute I understand what intellect perceives of substance as constituting its essence." In this mode of expression there appears to be involved a thought which can be discovered more than once in Spinoza—however difficult it may be to reconcile it with his final view —the thought that the reality of things, in itself infinite in fulness, must necessarily be apprehended in a limited [62] fashion, that is to say, must present only some apprehensible features. At the same time, an attribute must be taken to mean the way in which real existence is apprehended—a way which is nothing distinct from the essence of that which is apprehended, and may therefore be described as constituting its essence.
But complexities arise when we attempt to make clear the coherence of this notion with the rest of the system. Even if we admit that attribute is not a contingent variable quality, but the essence of substance as apprehended, we are still driven to the conclusion that this essence apprehended is relative to the intellect that apprehends, and is, for the substance itself, nothing. This conclusion is in keeping with the doctrine of the infinity of the attributes insisted on by Spinoza; and it is borne out by his evident perplexity when the question was pressed. How is it that God manifests Himself to us under the two aspects only of consciousness and extension? The real difficulty of the whole system lies here; and it is the conception of attribute which brings the difficulty to the front.
Many differences exist among interpreters of Spinoza as to his doctrine of the attributes. Only one of these views need be referred to here as leading to a very different mode of understanding the whole system, and involving, as I think, a serious misconception. According to Kuno Fischer, the attributes are to be considered as real potencies or powers—the two supreme powers which lie at the foundation of two lines of divine activity. This view gives a strongly realistic expression to what, I think, can be understood only in the light of the more purely logical conception which lies at the root of Spinoza's thinking. In particular, its version of the distinction seems incompatible with the merely ideal character of the difference between extension and thought, and with the real oneness of the whole universe of existence. [63]
Consciousness and extension are ways in which the sum of being is apprehended by us ; but there is only one sum of being. There is not a conscious Unconditioned and an extended Unconditioned, a world of consciousness and a world of extension. There is only one world viewed in different ways.
The attributes, which express the essence of God, are the generalities involved in the conceptions of all particular things. Each mode expresses in a special determinate manner some attribute of God. Like the waves on the sea, the modes have no existence in themselves; but they are the manner in which the infinite essence gives expression to itself. As we have seen, they are characterised negatively as limited, and so marked off from the infinite ground or substance. But each mode has also a positive or real aspect in so far as it expresses the ultimate substance or reality of things. Evidently, then, the ultimate ground cannot be, in the same sense, the explanation both of the positive and of the negative aspects of the particular modes. A thing is finite only in so far as it is defined by its relation to other finites; and such limitation evidently involves an infinite progression. All finite modes, then, in natura naturata—the totality of the conditioned—form a complete complex of mutually determining particulars. And in this complex it is possible to recognise gradations or stages depending on closeness of connexion with the ultimate ground or attribute.
In this way Spinoza is led to distinguish infinite from finite modes—a distinction that has resulted in much diversity of interpretation. Perhaps a sufficient key to his meaning may be found by using freely the geometrical analogy so constantly present in his treatment. In tracing particular geometrical figures to their ultimate grounds we find our-selves confronted with something very like the distinction [64] between infinite and finite modes. Thus, for example, the particular ratios of geometrical figures, when traced backwards, lead us to the general conception which we might indicate by the term figured space. It is from the way in which figures are described in space that there follow the special and various geometrical relations. In like manner figuredness in space does not involve any of these special geometrical relations, but rests principally on the essential characteristics of space itself, as Spinoza seems to assume.
The universe, then, according to Spinoza's doctrine, is one. The extended world and the world of conscious experience are not two worlds, of which one is the copy of the other. The one is the other. A circle and the idea of a circle are one and the same thing, taken now under the attribute of extension, now under the attribute of consciousness. Thus Descartes' difficulty about the relation of soul and body receives an easy solution. Soul and body are not two realities which react upon one another, but one and the same reality viewed under different attributes.
It is part of the doctrine that ideas—forms of consciousness—are not by any means limited to the inner experience of self-conscious subjects. All things are to be regarded as modes of consciousness. What characterises a mind —namely, self-consciousness or reflective consciousness—is no more than a complication of ideas, the idea of an idea. This idea of an idea comes about when there is a sufficiently intimate connexion established among the elementary ideas themselves. The unity which attaches to a self-consciousness is, therefore, a secondary or derived fact In bodies, in like manner, there may be a unity not incompatible with multiplicity—a unity of elementary constituents, but signifying no more than that the body as a whole is acted upon, and in turn reacts upon surrounding bodies. So it is in the world of consciousness. When separate ideas are so grouped [65] together that they form a whole there arises naturally, Spinoza appears to think, consciousness of that unity; and this consciousness is what distinguishes one mind from another. Evidently, when the universe is thus regarded, it is necessary to extend both to modes of consciousness and to modes of extension the thought of purely determinate or mechanical connexion.
Without entering upon any of the applications of Spinoza's principles, a short criticism may be offered of his fundamental notion. While one recognises the metaphysical depth of his view of a unity in which all determinate being has its ground, one must admit that the conception of substance is far from clear, and, from its very nature, must always remain incomplete. In the first place Spinoza is far from clear. We can trace in his exposition a wavering between two ways of regarding substance. On the one hand he considers it as purely indeterminate and abstract being, such as can be characterised by no positive mark: any determination would infringe its absoluteness. Now, clearly, from such a mere abstraction—corresponding perfectly to the Eleatic notion of the One—there is no possibility of evolution. We can in no way pass from this pure indefiniteness to the determinations that are requisite in order that substance should be real. Accordingly, Spinoza as frequently treats substance as the ens realissimum—the sum of possible reality, which cannot be exhausted in any one attribute, and which contains all possible perfection and reality. But both conceptions cannot be retained and united. We cannot at once have the abstract indeterminateness of the ground of things and the perfect fulness of reality required for the development into finite modes.
And, whichever way we take it, the conception is incomplete: it does not enable us to connect with the ground of things the infinite diversity of finite modes. These are said [66] to follow from the absolute ground. But that which gives to each mode its particularity is, in the same breath, said to be the unreal negative element, of which, therefore, substance—viewed in one way or the other—offers no explanation. Whether substance be pure abstract being or the sum of all positive reality, it is incapable of explaining the negative element. It is not impossible, indeed, that Spinoza may have inclined to the view which would make the universe merely the collective sum of finite modes; but this conception would have been entirely irreconcilable with the method which is the most important characteristic of his philosophy. The ground of things, for Spinoza, is certainly not the collective sum of finite modes.
It has been said that the nature of the conception of substance might explain the peculiar difficulties of Spinoza's doctrine. By substance we are to understand the unconditioned. But such an abstract characterisation really assumes and rests upon a recognised difference between consequents and ground, which is not explicable from the ground alone. Given a universe of finite modes and their ground or reason, then we may connect these two together after the manner of Spinoza. But from the abstract conception of ground nothing further can be obtained. Substance, which is ground simply, of itself carries us no further. There is a certain subtle assumption involved in describing it as ground; for, in truth, nothing is ground which has not a consequent. It is, therefore, not in substance as severed from finite modes—as existing in a way which is not their mode of existence—that we can look for the ultimate explanation of the universe. The universal which is simply the negative of the particular elements can in no way be reconciled with these. A substance or ground of existence which is but the negation of all finite existences can in no way serve as their bond of union.


[1] [This chapter is taken, with omissions, from a course of lectures given in 1886-87.]
[2] Born 1632, died 1677 ; published Renati des Cartes Principiorum Philosophice pars i. et ii, more geometrico demonstrate, 1663 ; Tractatus theologico-politicus, 1670. The Opera Posthuma (1677) contain Ethics, De Intellectus Emendatione, and Tractatus politicua. A Dutch translation of a work, which seems to have been called Tractatus de Deo et homine ejusque felicitate, was dis-covered and published in 1862.
[3] [Cf. M. Joel, Don Cbasdai Creskas' religionsphilosophische Lehren, 1866; Zur Genesis der Lehre Spinozas, 1871; and other pamphlets; published together as Beitriäe zur Geschichte der Philosophie, 1876.]
[4] [Cf. C. Sigwart, Spinoza's neuentdeckter Tractat (1866), p. 107 ff.]

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