Preface to Volume one of “The World Explored, the World Suffered: A Philosophical History of Psychology, Cognition, Emotion, Consciousness, and Action.

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Preface

The title of this work, “The World Explored, the World Suffered” signals the kind of description of the world which has condensed itself from the clouds of past reflection by thinkers of various kinds influenced by the Culture and ideas of Ancient Greece and the Enlightenment.

The military and technologically minded Romans have not contributed much of cultural significance to the kind of descriptions and explanations we are seeking but there is one product of the Roman imagination, one image, which stands out as an exception, and that is the image of Janus with one face turned toward the past and one face turned toward the future. In our view, the (melancholic?)face turned toward the past searches for the suffering we have learned to overcome against the background of the lost objects and lost values we have experienced. The face turned knowingly toward the future has a more Stoical expression registering in the background of its thought-field, the awe and wonder (that Aristotle and Kant refer to), underlying the reflective questioning attitude of Greek and Enlightenment Philosophy and in the foreground the Mansion of Solomon situated in a Peaceful Cosmopolitan Kingdom of ends in which all the losses of History are restored. Such an image is more characteristic of the Greek and Enlightenment exploring Philosophers than the superstitious Romans. Janus could have been the first and only God of History, searching for the beginning and the end of all things natural and human: space, time, motion, institutions, language, and culture. He could also represent the process of a dialectic of theories that orient themselves archeologically(in the context of “discovery”) looking backward to a chain of causes at the beginning of everything, or, teleologically looking forward to a chain of “purposes” or actions that constitute the above Cosmopolitan Kingdom of Ends(context of explanation/justification). Parmenides and the Plato of the Republic, of course, would have immediately seen a problem of representing the Human Condition using two faces: the problem, namely, of dividing the one up into the many. Aristotle may have been more appreciative of such an image given his claim that “Being has many meanings” but he may have been wary of the suggestion of the image that logic might be dialectical and that the principle of noncontradiction(a principle of justification) is subservient to the dialectical logic one may need to use in in the context of discovery. Kant, following Aristotle, would definitely have appreciated this dual-aspect image as expressive of his dual aspect account of the phenomenal, everyday world of “melancholic haphazardness” and the noumenal philosophical world characterized by the moral law and the noumenal self.

The View of History in this work is philosophical, Kantian rather than Hegelian or Marxist. Hannah Arendt is quoted extensively because her work is philosophically historical and moreover indicative of a Philosophical approach toward History that Kant would largely have approved of, in spite of her failure to fully understand Kantian Metaphysics.

There is Historia Generalis in which issues of time and kinds of explanations and justifications are reflectively discussed and there is Historia Specialis in which one can question whether historical figures portrayed at the dawn of History actually existed. The image of Janus is connected to Historia Generalis. The question of whether Socrates, as portrayed by Plato, is the real Socrates or a literary creation of his own is discussed in the spirit of Historia Specialis, and the conclusion is reached that the real Socrates is presented in the early dialogues and the first books of the Republic only to be replaced by the literary creation in the later books of the Republic. We also maintain that there is much in the views of the real Socrates to remind us of Aristotelian positions relating to the more general aspects of Metaphysics and History.

Philosophy of Education is also an important area to consider in this kind of investigation into Philosophical Psychology, Ethics, Politics, and Aesthetics. Education is the arena in which Psychology, Cognition, Emotion, Consciousness, and Action need to be pragmatically(in the sense intended by Kant) integrated into one all-encompassing attitude and body of knowledge. Rousseau’s, Kant’s and Locke’s works on Education reflectively discuss some of the elements of  the  integrated attitude that clearly lies behind the field of thought of the face of Janus turned toward the future. R S Peters’ work in this area(which will be discussed in Volume Two) is vitally important in that it is a significant Philosophical landmark emanating from a century of Philosophical activity that had largely turned its back upon our Philosophical past. In this context, it was probably the work of the later Wittgenstein that awoke us all from our skeptical sleepwalking and allowed attention to once again be focussed on the work of Aristotle and Kant. In Peters work, we see clearly the traces of Aristotelian thinking but perhaps associated Kantian commitments are not so clearly seen.

The Philosophical view underlying this work is embedded in Greek, Enlightenment, and Modern Philosophy insofar as Modern Philosophy shares Greek and Enlightenment philosophical values(e.g. The Philosophies of Wittgenstein, Hacker, Lear, Shields, O Shaughnessy, R S Peters, D W Ross, Hamlyn). Perhaps the position adopted could be characterized as Hylemorphic Kantianism rather than Kantian Hylomorphism in recognition of firstly, the historical fact of Aristotle’s precedence in time and secondly in view of the fact that the jury is still considering its verdict on the issue as to whether Kant’s Philosophy surpassed that of Aristotle. There are undoubtedly metaphysical issues to be resolved if one is to fully integrate the work of these two philosophers.

William James once claimed that Philosophy does not bake any bread, meaning that it is for most people, of academic interest only. That we are situating philosophical ideas in a historical account is a testimony to the commitment of this work to the position that Philosophical ideas have in the past played significant roles in the evolution of our Culture and are continuing to play a part in the difficult to discern landscape of our current cultural environment. The image of a subterranean stream making its way to the surface is one we will use in Volume Two of this work when the forces of globalization and the influence of philosophical ideas are referred to. Globalization, that is, has philosophical dimensions that can only be fully interpreted and understood with the aid of the metaphysical ideas of both Aristotle and Kant.

The work is also in some sense a History of Western Philosophy insofar as it Firstly attempts to reinterpret the contributions of many of the Philosophers of the past, and secondly aims to provide a commentary on those Histories of Western Philosophy from the last century. Brett’s work, “History of Psychology” also falls into this category of thinking in that it attempts to comment philosophically on the Philosophers that are discussed. The reinterpretation aspect views the Philosophers discussed in the context of Hylomorphic or Kantian Principles of discovery and explanation/justification.

It follows from the above comments on History and Philosophy that the view of Psychology is going to be inspired by Greek, Enlightenment, and Modern Philosophical Psychology. No definition of Psychology is defined or intended but critical to its characterization will be the extent to which it attempts to answer aporetic questions relating to the domains of Cognition, Emotion, Consciousness, and Action viewed philosophically, which in turn entails giving an account of the relations between these domains. The underlying assumption of this work accords with the judgments of both Kant and Wittgenstein that much Empirical Psychology (of the kind that is currently taught in our Universities) suffers from “conceptual confusion”, a condition William James recognised in his “Principles of Psychology” but succumbed to himself in his refusal to correctly interpret the role of metaphysics in Philosophy. William James will be one of the “Philosophers” that will be discussed in detail in Volume Two of this work. In Volume One, however, James provides us with an account of the role of consciousness in the learning of a motor skill: giving an excellent account of the relation of the will to consciousness. He also draws our attention to the role of consciousness in mental activities such as engaging in a discourse where I am both consciously aware of what I have just said and also what I am about to say. Here, he argues that Consciousness is vitally important in the awareness of what I am about to do and even if the act in which I am engaged is habitual, it emerges directly if something is done or said incorrectly.

The historical event of the separation of the scientific discipline of Psychology from Philosophy occurred immediately prior to James’s work. This revolutionary divorce is a significant event, a landmark in the historical landscape that requires both Historical and Philosophical interpretation because it was not a simple revolution but rather the consequence of an evolutionary and cultural process that began with the active suppression of Aristotle’s ideas by the Church many centuries ago. Aquinas attempted to “rehabilitate” Aristotelianism under an umbrella of faith at the expense of the principles of noncontradiction and sufficient reason but the result, unfortunately, did not look in any way Hylomorphic. The Renaissance in most of its aspects testifies to a re-emergence of Aristotelian ideas in non-University environments but Science and Politics were preparing in the bowels of Culture what Hamlyn calls the creation of the “new men”(Roger Bacon, Machiavelli, Hobbes, Descartes, Hume, Adam Smith, Rousseau). These men were not by any stretch of the imagination humanistic creatures, gentle souls. They were moulded manically in the modern iron cauldrons of chaos. (Iron is an enemy of stone, that material that Michelangelo loved so much and formed with his humanistic principles). These were the “hollow men” of T S Eliot’s modern world-men without souls, cleverly arguing against “the abstractions” of Aristotle. By the time the stream of Aristotelian ideas surfaced again in our Philosophical and cultural landscape during the latter part of the twentieth century, many other streams of “cultural Influence” were flowing including those of Secularisation, Science, Political and Economic Liberalism, Communism and Popularism. The new men had by this time succeeded in creating their “new, open European societies” in which solipsistic individuals striving for commodious life-styles replaced the solipsistic Christian praying for salvation. These Christians, in turn, had replaced the Aristotelian rational animals capable of discourse and eudaimonia (living a flourishing life): replaced i.e. the middle class of a city-state striving for areté(doing the right thing in the right way at the right time) in accordance with the principle of the common good. These new men were the men of Adam Smith who recommended the life of labour, work and the accumulation of capital. “Action”, according to Hannah Arendt is missing in this description and it was missing in both liberal and communist accounts of man. The communist ”revolution” like its predecessor the French revolution aimed at overturning the old order on theoretical grounds that demonstrated an amnesia of the continuity of the History of ideas and institutions. Indeed, Volume Two of this work will suggest that “Action” broadly defined in the way that Kant attempted could well be a better candidate for the subject matter of a Philosophical Psychology that wished to retain all the complexity of hylomorphic theory. We are also going to argue in Volume Two of this work that Globalization has its roots in Hylomorphic Philosophy and Kantian Critical Philosophy and that Aristotelian and Kantian Philosophical Psychology is essential to the task of understanding the relation of cognition, emotion, consciousness, and action.

This work with its complex title is divided into two parts, the first of which is an Introduction to Philosophy that pays respect to its Greek History revolving as it does around primarily the thoughts and theories of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. These three Philosophers are perhaps unique in History because never before and never afterward has there been such a close affinity of ideas. That Socrates was the teacher of Plato and Plato the teacher of Aristotle undoubtedly contributed to this auspicious beginning for Philosophical thought. One should add to this thought, the thought that Philosophical pupils of these times did not suffer from Oedipus complexes and desire subconsciously to harm their teachers. The spirit of Eros united teacher and pupil.

By the time we get to the Philosophers of the modern period in Volume Two, we find the relations between Kant, Hegel, and Marx to be very complex-ridden and very different. Hegel’s avowed intention was to turn Kant’s Philosophy upside down and Marx’s intention was to turn Hegel’s Philosophyand the entire world upside down. The result, in the perfect world of mathematics, might have been a return to the Kantian position but the world was at this point in time in the process of dissolving into chaos. Kant’s brief contribution to the Enlightenment was quickly enveloped by other influences(including the Hegelian influence) that would soon take us into what Arendt called “this terrible century”(the 20th century). Popper in his work “The Open Society and its Enemies” pointed an accusing finger at Plato, Hegel, and Marx and perhaps some credit ought to be given for identifying two questionable “influences” or threats to our so-called “open” societies, but the inclusion of Plato in this triangle of tyranny lacks both historical and ethical sensibility. Part One of the work is intended as stage setter or curtain-raiser. It is intended as an Introduction to Philosophy but with special reference to the elements of cognition, emotion, consciousness, and action.

Bertrand Russell in his “History of Western Philosophy” claimed that the diminishing authority of the Church and the increasing influence of Science are the major factors to be considered in the evaluation of the modern period. This is undoubtedly correct but the claim we are making is that there are also other more philosophical factors to be considered. The beginning of this period testified to the fact that the language of the soul(associated in the popular mind with religion), was being overwritten by the “more objective” language of the object and the event. This was already becoming obvious in the period leading up to and the period after the Renaissance where a battle between different kinds of image in Art was being fought. We cite Adrian Stokes and QuattroCento Art as evidence. Northern Art is craft-based, Stokes argues. The man working instrumentally and technologically with his wood in a clearing in a dark forest is contrasted with the Greek and Italian attempts to achieve a more categorical aesthetic effect with the material of stone that is more difficult to form in accordance with ideas more difficult to express. Involved in this latter more expressive work was obviously a feeling of liberation from the soul-language, hypotheticals, and instrumentalities of the religious scholars who had been working to keep the dark ages dark. We noted that Stokes turns to Psychoanalysis to explain these phenomena(In the absence of Aristotelian or Kantian ideas that were hibernating in our Universities). The following is a quote from Professor Brett who, in spite of his modernistic prejudices in favour of scientific hypotheticals and instrumentalities (and its “new” language of the soul), is alive to some of the issues at stake:

“in 1501 Magnus Hundt, Professor in Leipzig wrote a book on the “nature of man”, and made use for the first time of the term “Anthropologia”. In these words we see the process by which the naturalistic treatment of man developed its later forms. It is impossible to read Hundt’s book without feeling that it belongs to a new period….The soul is treated briefly and in epitome only: the centre of interest seems to have shifted from soul to body and in place of psychology we have the rudiments of descriptive zoology.”(Peters, P.304)

The term “Anthropology” had obviously been used much earlier by Kant in his work on Philosophical Psychology so the quote above is not historically correct but it is correct in its description of the shift of interest toward an idea of the biological stripped of its Aristotelian implications, stripped, that is of its connections with the higher psychological capacities, dispositions, and powers. Brett is here testifying to the intention of Science to “reduce” everything metaphysical to atomic ashes. Fast forward a few centuries to Hume and we will encounter this attitude again, an attitude that recommends committing all metaphysical works to the flames. Indeed this was an attitude that Freud would again encounter (almost two hundred years after Hume) when his books were burned by the scientifically-minded and technologically inclined Nazis.

If we have learned anything from Philosophical History, it is: “Where Metaphysics travels there Politics, Ethics, and Aesthetics is sure to follow.” In 1513 Machiavelli’s “Prince” is published and we are encouraged to, as Brett puts the matter, “study life as it is before our eyes”. Political realism of the form suggested by Thrasymachus is resurrected and no Socrates emerges to contest this unvarnished testament to tyranny(characterized by Russell in his “History of Western Philosophy” as “Political honesty”!). By 1574¹ we then encounter a revival of ethical relativism that clearly felt emboldened by the support of Science. No mention is made of any philosophical reaction to the above because Aristotelianism had probably at this point begun its period of hibernation in the newly formed Universities. In terms of Aesthetics, we then many centuries later, find Adrian Stokes feeling alienated by huge iron gasworks dominating the city skylines of the twentieth century.

Part One of the work(Volume one) attempts to re-create the Golden Age of Classical Greek thought that culminated in the critical work of Aristotle that, in turn, attempted to incorporate all the knowledge of this age into one collection of thoughts. It has been claimed that Modern Philosophy is footnotes to Plato and whilst there is much that is attractive in such a view it ignores the extent to which Aristotle’s work went well beyond Plato and created the conditions for the emergence of Science, the Secularisation and Globalisation processes, and Kantian Philosophy. Insofar as there can be a definition of a complex activity such as Philosophy, perhaps it is the Aristotelian “The systematic understanding of the world as a systematic whole”. In Aristotle, we come to understand Philosophy, not in terms of many coats(Ethics, Epistemology, Metaphysics, Political Philosophy, Religious Philosophy, Aesthetics) but rather one coat of many colours: a polychromatic unity.

Freud is, we will argue in Volume Two of this work, a hylomorphic Philosopher/Psychologist but his commitment to Aristotle lies well hidden, although it can be argued that after his destruction of the disastrous “Project” his commitment to Aristotelian theory became more apparent. His commitment to Plato surfaced in his later period of theorizing when he was searching for ideas that could be applied to both psychological and cultural phenomena. The language he appropriated from Plato’s writings, however, were inserted into a hylomorphic anti-dualistic framework and partly prompted him to claim that his theories were Kantian, implying a recognition that Kant’s ideas too, belonged in a hylomorphic framework. Without a theory of discourse or language, however, this position cannot be sustained. Ricoeur claims the following in relation to this discussion:

“It seems to me that there is an area today where all philosophical investigations cut across one another—the use of language. Language is the common meeting ground of Wittgenstein’s investigations, the English linguistic philosophy, the phenomenology that stems from Husserl, Heidegger’s investigations, the works of the Bultmannian school and of the other schools of New Testament Exegesis: the works of comparative history of religion and of anthropology concerning myth, ritual and belief—and finally psychoanalysis. Today we are in search of a comprehensive philosophy of language to account for the multiple functions of the human act of signifying and for their interrelationships. How can language be put to such diverse uses as mathematics and myth, physics and art…? We have at our disposal a symbolic logic, an exegetical science, an anthropology and a psychoanalysis and, perhaps for the first time we are able to encompass in a single question the problem of the unification of human discourse.”(Freud and Philosophy: an Essay in Interpretation, P.3)

Psychoanalysis does not rely on scientific assumptions. It is philosophical to its core if we interpret the intentions of Freud and his commentators correctly. It would be an interesting, if premature thought experiment, to imagine how both Aristotle and Kant would have responded to Freud’s later theorizing. It would, of course, be absurd to imagine that Freud was right about everything but it is equally absurd to evaluate his work in accordance with the wrong framework of assumptions. One hypothesis of this work(Volume Two) is that Freud is a philosophical psychologist par excellence.

No one can deny, however, that it was Plato’s more poetic Philosophy that was embraced by the melancholic Christian scholars, engaged in the activity of interpreting their beloved “sacred” texts. Religion was also filled with hypotheticals and instrumentalities that could not embrace the substantial and categorical form of Aristotelian thinking. Aristotle’s attempt to change the mood of Philosophy stalled during this dark period and Hylomorphism was forced to await the philosophical consequences of the bipolar interaction between dualism and materialism.

In Part Two of this work, there are extensive references to Brett’s “History of Psychology”, a work of a scientifically minded Historian. Brett, the Psychologist, has an ax to grind or an agenda that is clearly prejudicial to his inquiry, although it is fascinating to see the honesty of the scholar who appears able to see the value of philosophical psychology in spite of its criticism of his favoured empirical/mathematical view of Science. Brett does not, however, engage metaphysics directly with his anti-metaphysical views but merely uses his views to “justify” reducing the ancient context of explanation/justification to the more modern “context of discovery”. Brett maintains that there are three lines of inquiry into human nature that have dominated our cultural history: Psychological, Medical, and Theological/Philosophical. We point out Brett’s failure to recognize the distinction between religious and philosophical inquiries and suggest that this is indicative of his anti-metaphysical prejudice(a prejudice that was widespread at the beginning of the twentieth century when he wrote his seminal work). Brett also fails to sufficiently emphasize that within the scope of the subject of Psychology there are a number of “conflicting types of theory” ranging from the scientific biological to the Philosophical humanistic. The resources for resolving these conflicts appear not to exist inside the discipline and perhaps this points to the need for a philosophical psychology that can resolve the inherent tensions and contradictions in what can only be described as eclectic answers to the question “What is man?”

In Part Two we also take up the issue of the “Conjectural Beginnings of Human History” and the theories of Kant, Rousseau, and Freud in opposition to the more Empiricist theories of Hobbes, Locke, and Hume. One of the major areas of conflict in this discussion is the interpretation of the so-called “Myth of the Fall” in which the first man and woman are either “tainted” by their appetites(if you believe the religious interpretation) or amazingly exercising their freedom to choose a future in which knowledge will play an important part in their lives(if you believe the Philosophical view). This conflict of interpretations obviously demands some means of resolution which the Philosophy of Ricoeur(from the 20th century) may provide us with. (Involved in this discussion is obviously the issue of the conjectural beginnings of language in which we again dialectically oppose the more Aristotelian view of Julian Jaynes to the more empirically minded views of the scientific logical atomists).

We have tried in this work to acknowledge as far as possible the stream of historical events that must have affected Philosophical thinking and attitudes. Religious history is obviously important in this context as is the interpretation of religious texts. This latter activity, in particular, was important to gauge the extent to which our intellectual and ethical powers were receiving the kind of understanding and acknowledgment they obviously deserved. The original meaning of religion is connected to the law which binds people together. Both Kant and Aristotle were respectful of Religion and incorporated a Philosophical idea of God in their accounts. Paul Ricoeur, a Philosopher we will discuss in Part Two of the work, also argues that Religion deserves a place in any Philosophical account of the world and he provides us with a hermeneutical methodology that will enable the Philosopher to extract Philosophy from Religious texts. Wittgenstein too, was religious as was his translator Elisabeth Anscombe. Anscombe, indeed, was a fierce Catholic who did not flinch from carrying her religious philosophy into the public domain of historical events, accusing those in favour of abortion as being thereby in favour of murder. To many living in our secularized societies, such a view may seem antiquated. When the mob, bearing their demonstration placards of “Pro-life” versus “Pro-choice”, present themselves on our television screens it does not, in the light of the complexity of the concepts of life and freedom, seem an easy matter to make a philosophical judgment. It almost seems as if we have to choose between an Aristotelian concept of life and a Kantian idea of Freedom. This example demonstrates quite succinctly the almost poetic presence of Philosophical issues in our everyday life, where History is in the making. We should no more expect a quick and easy answer to such an aporetic question(whether aborting a foetus is “murder”–Eros v Thanatos) then we should expect a quick an easy answer to the question of whether the process of Globalization and its end-product Cosmopolitanism is what the Janus- face turned toward the future is searching for.

Volume One ends with a consideration of that critic of the ancien regime who symbolized magnificently all aspects of that paradoxical movement of Romanticism, Jean-Jacques Rousseau. He was a living paradox in many respects:

“Was Rousseau a man for all seasons or a man for no season? He trained as a Catholic Priest after having converted from Protestantism, he then revoked Catholicism for civic reasons, he was also a musician, a teacher, a novelist, an encyclopaedist, a political writer, and a political refugee, and a Child Psychologist: he writes the most poignant story of a hypothetical child and puts five of his own in an orphanage, he has such insight into the structure of the human mind but was on the verge of losing his own, and last but not least he was a loved and hated Philosopher.”

He resembled Diogenes and yet he embodied the very essence of “the new men”. Rousseau was the Robinson Crusoe of the Philosophical world needing a social contract to ensure a life of paradoxical freedom in exchange for what?–the removal of one’s chains? Paranoia prevented him from accepting help from an English kindred spirit David Hume and living the life of Robinson Crusoe in Britain. He was an encyclopedist and his life was structured like the entries in an encyclopedia, the bad juxtaposed with the good. His contribution to Philosophical Psychology was largely historical, influencing Kant to categorically consider the dignity of man as something essential to his Being. The concept of “amour propre” and its putative role in History probably also influenced Kantian ethical theory but Kant did not share Rousseau’s convictions relating to Rousseau’s “new PhilosophIcal Psychology” (rooted in “Spirit”)in which the perceptual power of “recognition” and the more abstract power of “imagination” collaborate in producing the attitude of “amour propre” and the generation of the multiplying accompanying feelings of “luxury”. Kant’s analysis is not at the level of the causal determination of “capacities” but rather at the level of the conceptual determination of “virtuous dispositions”. Kant’s commitment to what Rousseau would have regarded as bourgeois rationality rather than romantic and cynical accounts of vanity, shame, and envy would have placed him in Rousseau’s mind as a spokesman for the “ancien regime” and the associated passion of amour propre. For Rousseau, Categorical reasoning was an ancient “residue”, an ancient illusion, that can be dispersed only by the attitude of instrumental reasoning of the kind favoured by a romanticized image of a fictional Robinson Crusoe that aims at survival firstly and commodious living subsequently. Robinson has shed his chains because he has seen the limitations of life in the “modern society” of the time. Kant sees the limitations of life in a state of nature or a life of luxury, no less clearly than he sees the limitations of life in the society of his time. His resolution of the issues associated with these limitations is not categorical natural laws but rather categorical imperatives that reason uses to establish what we ought to do. This enables him to use the logic of Aristotle to explain/justify conclusions reached in practical reasoning processes. This also helps to establish a philosophical psychology in which reasons and actions and reasons and beliefs have at least conceptual if not logical relations to each other. For Kant, the association of amour propre and the imagination would have led to superstition rather than the Greek or Enlightenment “examined life”. Rousseau interestingly provides us with an account of amour propre and its emergence in the nursery. Infants begin to use their power over their parents very early and create a template for the operation of the will that apparently can survive into adulthood. Men are big children and children are little men living in a world devoid of the actualizing process that Aristotle postulated as part of the process of growing up with the telos of rationality and the “tool” of the categorical imperative. The powers of destruction we witness in little men and big children is for Rousseau merely an expression of the life force, the expression of Eros(a characterization that both Plato and Freud would oppose rigorously, recognizing this to be the work of Thanatos). Rousseau belongs undoubtedly to the Counter-Enlightenment but he also belongs to the age of the new men that Kant was witnessing. The stream of Rousseau’s ideas would feed into the stream of Hegelian Philosophy that would later swell into “mainstream” culture.

What appears to be correctly articulated in Rousseau’s Philosophical Psychology is the point of view that it is amour propre that lies at the source of the “Inequality” we find entrenched in our modern societies. Kant would have agreed that insofar as amour propre manifested the principle of self-love in disguise, it gives rise to inequalities in society. Equality on the other hand, for Kant, emerged as a consequence of the training of virtuous dispositions in accordance with the categorical imperative: a training in which the self becomes a universally thinking self that treats itself as it would any other self, namely as an end-in-itself(with dignity). Professor Smith in his Yale lectures on Rousseau portrays him as a cynic, a modern Diogenes claiming that all authority and government is a con game designed to favour the rich over the poor and create a Hobbesian middle class with the values of the rich. Had Rousseau and his counter-enlightenment followers been better versed in the Philosophy of Aristotle and its implications they might have realized that a large middle class with egalitarian values is a possible political goal that can be achieved without revolution and via the rationality of the Kantian categorical imperative. The lonely Rousseau would never, however, have sought the answers to his problems in a library containing the works of Aristotle, preferring instead the following more dramatic solution:

“we need to return to Rome and Sparta to find models of citizenship where the spirit of self-sacrifice and devotion to the common good were important.”

The Romans and the Spartans literally hated Philosophy or anything that would undermine their superstitious habits and rituals performed in the spirit of amour propre.

Volume Two will continue with the strategy of commenting upn and criticizing Brett’s work. Volume One began with the Pre-Socratic thinkers and ended with the last of the ”New Men”, Rousseau, before Kant attempted his ”synthesis” of, not just empiricism and rationalsim, but theories from the ”ancien regime” and theories from the Counter-Enlightenment that began long before the Enlightenment. Volume Two will take up the thoughts and theories of Schopenhauer, Freud, William James, Husserl, Heidegger, Sartre, Merleau-Ponty, Ricoeur, Arendt, Wittgenstein, Cavell, Anscombe, R S Peters, P M S Hacker, O Shaughnessy, Jonathan Lear, Shields, Gardner. The focus will continue to be both Historical and on the themes of Philosophical Psychology, Cognition, Emotion, and Consciousness, and in the spirit of Hylomorphic Kantianism.

“Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing admiration and awe, the more often and perseveringly my thinking engages itself with them: the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me.”

 We should end, however on a historical note and draw attention to what we would claim is a causal chain of events, beginning with the Philosophy of Rousseau, continuing with the French Revolution, to be crowned by the conquests of the master of amour propre, Napoleon, whose troops stood gazing at Kant’s tombstone on which we find the following inscription:

One can but imagine what these soldiers must have thought. Perhaps they wondered if they could conquer the stars and perhaps they also wondered whether there was anything of worth within themselves.

Notes

1Levinus Lemnius, De Occultae naturae Miraculis. Peters on P305, ”Conscience is very dependent on one’s mode of life and one’s complexion or constitution: sailors, innkeepers, tightrope walkers, usurers, bankers, and small shopkeepers have very little conscience: theirs is a busy life. The sedentary and the melancholy, on the other hand, have too much conscience: they foster imaginary sins and repent unnecessarily.” Facts and norms are being conflated, melted down in the cauldrons of science. The new men will be formed from this ”new matter without form”.