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. {In een voetnoot staat: “This chapter is taken, with omissions, from a course of lectures given in 1886-87.]
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
____________________
• 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]
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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