Lecture 1/term 2:
What is Man?’ The Quest for Human Nature and the ‘Science of
Man’ in the Enlightenment
This is an introductory lecture because we are moving into a different
intellectual terrain in this term, we will move into what has been called
‘the Enlightenment’. The period of the Enlightenment – roughly late
seventeenth and eighteenth century has been identified has a period in
which new way of approaching the world can be identified. Central to
this new way of thinking about the functioning of the world were ideas
about what it means to be human. We will see during this term that these
ideas were not entirely original, we have encountered many of them
already in the last term. But it is during the Enlightenment that they
became popular; it is during the Enlightenment that these ideas and
practices became widespread and discussed by many people – not just a
handful of elite scholars.
These ideas and practices about what it means to be human popularised
during the Enlightenment became the core of our ‘modern’
understandings of individual and collective human agency and experience
and we will trace these ideas up to the turn of the 20th then and how they
still play a central role in the theories and practices of Freud psychoanalysis.
But let me remind you of the overall aims of this module:
We were covering the 15th to the mid-seventieth century. We started with
some theory guys the 19th century cultural historian Jacob Burckhardt and
the postmodern literary critic Stephen Greenblatt.
I am well aware that it was a rather painful experience for many of you.
You’ve probably thought: Wrong choice of module, wrong course…all
this is a terrible nightmare mistake….get me out of here!!! I am very
grateful that you did not fled in hundreds but stuck with it…
But it was deliberately inflicted pain – following my German conviction
‘without pain no gain’. It was deliberate because I wanted you to
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understand two important assumptions that stands at the core of all the
sessions in this course, and these are:
 Human nature is not transhistorical but is constructed differently at
different times and in different spaces. This includes the
understanding of our biological nature. We tend to think today
human nature is a biological issue, however, that we think this way
has a long history – which we are tracing her in this module. We
saw last term that understandings of the human body did play a
role in the understanding of human nature but it was not
dominerring and rivalled by much more powerful ideas – religion
begin the most important one. All the people we’ve talked about
had God in mind wether we looked at Descartes, Vesalius,
Columbus or Augustine. In order to understand what they meant by
‘being human’ or ‘human nature’ we had to work ourselves back
into the intellectual and socio-cultural world in which they lived.
We had to reconstruct their thinking but also their practices and
found out that they indeed not backwards but that they thinking
and doings were perfectly logical for their own times – just not for
ours.
Think about the witch hunts. Indeed a terrible practice but when
we read Weyers and got behind his reasoning they almost make
sense…that does not mean that they were good. It shows how
humans are capable of intellectually explaining the most terrible
things to them….and it raises another problem: if we understand
these practices in the past do we think they are okay? It brings in
the problem of morals – the morals of the historian. And these are
the morals of today –
 The inpact of today’s morals and views leads me to the second theme
that that underlies the organisation of this module. I want you to
become aware of the fact that when we talk about human nature or
what it means to be human that we always – and there is no way
around it – bring our current understandings to th past. We always
measure it against our morals and understandings; we make the past
our own so to speak. The past never speaks for itself.
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We saw that very clearly with Burckhardt and Greenblatt. One was a
‘romantising’ the Renaissance because he felt deeply frustrated,
perhaps even frightened what he identified as modern ways of life and
modern identities. The other, Greenblatt living and writing during
neoliberal hype of the 1990s in one of its hotspots, California -- rewrote Renaissance identities within the script of neoliberal beliefs of
what human identity is (fleeing, attaptable, every changing, no core…
in shor), Greenblatt’s saw Renaissance people as being caught up in a
continuous act of self-fashioning – as he was himself in his hown
time.). He also romanticise the past but more as a celebration of the
present; to find an equivalent of the present in the past.
Using these two scholars I want you to be aware of what historians
do—and as you are historians what you do when you look at the past,
when you look at documents and interpret them. You are not neutral
and objective, nor should you be. It is boring to pretend objective and
does not write good history, I suggest.
All of that shows – and that is the aim of the whole module – cannot to
investigate for its own sake – as many historians believe that. What we
have to keep in mind is that historian do a work of interpretation and that
all interpretation is a very personal matter and it links to your
understanding of what human nature is.
This is the reason why I switch in the seminars between the past and
contemporary issues because I want to make you aware how your opinion
on contemporary issues – such as animal testing or cruelty – guides your
interepretations of history.
I know that it is not an easy thing to do because it does reveal something
about yourself, something personal and nobody likes to expose that. It is
much easier to answer fact questions.
Howeber, the aim is here not only to learn fact – any idiot can do that!
The aim of this course is that you identify something you care for –
something that hids you as something you are good at – because you
really like it. Because you care. And then I want you to pursue it. To dig
deeper into this interest and to get good at explaining why you like it – or
not like it – dislike is also a good hint at something which is exhiting. I
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hate Foucualt for example when I first encountered him but was so
annoyed that I wanted to understand why he was so annoying.
The point of this module is that you understand that history is not about
transferrible skills – it is about helping us to illuminate key questions of
human life right now and here. I always felt that reducing it to
transferable skills is an insult to any thinking intellectual being – You are
intellectuals, people who can think. And history as a way to reflect on
oneself
Now, I am of course aware that my very strong belief that about history is
a way to understand oneself in the present is also a construction, and not
even very original. It is not that even in all cultures today that this idea -that history helps to understand human nature -- is agreed upon (china,
no).
No.. it is a very Western idea and it emerges at a particular moment in
time, a period which will concern us from now on, the period of the
Enlightenment.
I know that you are all specialist on it because you treated it last year in
this big overview course, didn’t you? I nevertheless think that I give a bit
of an overview of central idea of this rather complicated and multifaceted
period.
(slide Enlightenment)
Two things to do in this lecture:
1. What Was the Enlightenment? I shall talk a bit more generally about
this famous period just to refresh your memory
2. Then, I shall look at some of the underlying assumptions about
human nature that the Enlightenment was so fond of and that became
the basis for a entire new research project, that aimed at finding the true
nature of man.
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This research project was called the ‘science of man’
So, but first a bit of memory what WAS the Enlightenment? (lean
back you head and get all your specs stored in your memory
back into action)
There is no easy definition for ‘the Enlightenment’. The Italians called
it the movement of Illuminismo, which meant something different
from the term lumiere which was used in France, or the Aufklaerung
used in the German speaking lands. The differences that were
attached to these terms in each country go back – to the sociocultural and political differences at the time. Britain and France were,
for example, unified national state with a political/cultural centre,
London and Paris. German and Italy consistsed of small independed
and rivalling states, some of them part of the huge conglomerate
called the Holy Roman Empire, ruled by the Habsburg monarchy
from Vienna.
It is easy to see that these different political setting produce different
thinking about central themes that were discussed during the
Enlightenment.
So, the debates over the meaning of the term enlightenment go
themselves back to the eighteenth century where we find many
attempts to define these terms, their contents and characteristics.
Probably the most famous attempt to solve the meaning of
Enlightenment was launched in Germany 1783:
In 1783 the influential a Berlin newspaper -- Berlinerische
Monatschrift -- asked readers to send in answers to the question:
What is Enlightenment? (Was ist Aufklaerung?)
The editor explained that everybody in the intellectual work in
Germany and abroad was talking about it but what that exactly was
far from clear, he said. So his newspaper took the initiative to
‘enlightened’ its readers about this fashionable and much-talked
about term.
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Over the following year the newspaper got many responses from
very famous German-speaking intellectuals at the time. This in itself
reflects the importance that they attached to this term.
The answer that became most famous was that of the Prussian
philosopher Immanuel Kant ().
(slide – Kant)
The opening paragraph is the thing here –
So what did he think?
(slide)
‘Enlightenment is mankind’s exit from self-incurred immaturity.
Immaturity is the inability to make use of one’s own
understanding without the guidance of another. Self-incurred
is the inability if its cause lies not in the lack of understanding
but rather in the lack of the resolution and the courage to use it
without the guidance of another. Sapere aude! (Dare to know!)
Have the courage to use your own understanding! It is thus the
motto of the enlightenment.’
Immanuel Kant, ‘An Answer to the Question: What is
Enlightenment?’ Berlinerische Monatsschrift (1784): 481-494,
481.
Kant argues here that enlightenment means for humankind to free
itself from preconceived ideas and especially from the use of
preconceived ideas by educated elites – he had in mind the church
and unenlightened absolutist rulers, so-called despotic rulers
(Frederic the Great of Prussia was of course Kant’s glorfied exception
– he was an enlightened ruler). He believed this process of mental
liberation was actively at work in his own lifetime.
If all men and women would dare to use their own judgement as Kant
encouraged them --- and here he was in tune with other thinkers of
his time, then, he promised, they could all participate in developing
morals, ethics, and laws that would created a happy society, a society
that would favour the few over the many. A system of equality and
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individual and collective freedom would emerge. A system that
would diminish the sway of prejudice (also referred to as
superstition) and religious fanatism, and a world in which the
exercise of political and religious authority was consistent with
reason.
By leading people to escape their basic physical and emotional drives
through the exercise of ‘reason’, enlightened philosophers like Kant,
sought to lead humanity towards its true nature, a nature that they
deemed free from the desire to terrify or compel others. They aimed
to set a model for human interaction by cultivating together what the
Scottish writer David Hume called -- their ‘sociable qualities’ -accepting that no human need be the enemy of another and that all
are inclined, by their rational nature, to be useful and pleasant to
individual other and the community. This trait of engaging with the
welfare and happiness of others rather than merely seeking to satisfy
ones’ own basic needs, Kant and friends believed, separated humans
from animals. ( you might want to think how that differs from
Descartes)
It is probably correct to say that Kant and other did not see the
Enlightement as finished, a completed project, but as an ongoing
process. A processs fraught with danger and problems. He says this
in his article,
(Slide)
‘It is now asked “whether we live at present in an enlightened
age?”, the answer is: “No, but we do live in an age of
enlightenment.” As matters stand now, much is still lacking for
men to be completely able – or even to be placed in a situation
where they would be able – to use their own reason confidently
and properly in religious matters without the guidance of
another. Yet we have clear indications that the field is now
being opened from them to work freely towards this , and the
obstacles to general enlightenment or to the exit out of their
self-incurred immaturity become even fewer.’
Immanuel Kant, ‘An Answer to the Question: What is
Enlightenment?’ Berlinerische Monatsschrift (1784): 481-494,
481
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But what was this project exploring?
Now, this huge European-wide project which was in the making
which explored on a practical level the question of human reason,
nature, and religion and the relationship between public discussion,
religious faith, and political authority. As I’ve pointed out above,
these explorations yielded different answers in the different
countries due to the different socio-cultural settings in which the
individual thinker was living.
Some of the participants, for example the Germans, were more
devout than others and tended to treat religion as a matter of
tolerance. Moreover, whereas Kant, for example, did not call for
revolutions but aimed at a revolution from above, guided by
enlightenment rulers such as Frederic II, French philosopher at
the same time were much more radical in their claims. And it
all ended in a rather bloody way as we know.
To, religion and its role in regard to reason
was a huge debate
The Enlightenment was a European movement of educated minds,
men and women, and therefore of a particular class of people. It
allowed women to come to the fore and participate in these debates.
(although in history we now look at the non-elite classes too during
the Enlightenment but that is a more recent development).
It was also a movement that was not pursued in isolation but in
constant communication with others. It took place through formal
channels such as publication and distribution of books and periodical
– republic of letters). It also spread through social gatherings that
developed into permanent literary and scientific academies. Again,
these are places were women came forward as leaders of salons and
so on.
– this is very different from the period we were discussion before. In
the late seventeenth and eighteenth centeury we haves a public
sphere developling in which such ideas were discussed. Nothing like
this existed really in he Renaissance nor 16 or 17th century. We saw
that people like Vesalius or Descartes were hanging out at courts and
its elites circles. But now we have bourgeois people participating.
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remind them: it as been famously argued by the German
contemporary philosopher Juergen habermas that the
englightenment saw the emergence of the so-called public
sphere.) – this included a ever widening market for books on such
subjects.
Enlightenment men and women thrived in these discussion circles
and they considered themselves as ‘literate’ rather than what we
have what we know now as ‘experts’. They were polymaths which
refers to a breadth of mind rather than a narrow specialisation, a
polymath then was a person whose interest ranged from
mathematics to poetry, and how could as easily assess a book on
metaphysics as a stage play.
So, the 18th century the ideal of an enlightened person was a man or
women with a polymathic, sociable, autonomous, and practical
personality. Knowledge they aimed to produced through their unique
personality aimed to be ‘useful’ knowledge for the individual, but,
even more importantly, for the society at large.
They were all engaged in this big project I mentioned before – to find
the perfect and true nature of man, so that one could fostered man’s
best traits for the happiness of all.
History was deemed way to get at such big goal:
It was written back then not by men and women with different
backgrounds….there wer not yet any professional historians – that is
a story of the 19th century and we will learn about it next year in
historiography.
Why were they so up for history?
History, they believed, would help to educate individuals into these
perfect human Enlightenment beings, taught them past human
virtues such as human genious, tolerance, sympathy and kindness
each other and . ---- it reminds a bit of these Renaissance scholars
who wanted to turn people into perfect examples of the Roman past,
doesn’ it…but I shall demonstrate in a moment that it is different.
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There lies a bit difference to our commonplace idea of history
and the role of the historian. While academic historians today
tend to shy away from too political a statement and try to avoid
the idea that their work is driven by a moral and ethial
agenda that aimed at changing peoples behaviour and
thinking, enlightenment writers on history did not have that
problem.
History for them is part of Kant’s ‘aude sapere’ the project of
thinking for yourself and history was considered a key player in the
public discussion over religious faith, or political authority. Historical
narratives were understood as lessons for the present, historical
narrative meant to encourage moral and ethical reflection on the
present and help the individual to locate himself or herself within
this new enlightened present and future. The historian was therefore
a key player in the Enlightenment battle over Reason, Nature, and
Religion. He or she was seen as a refinded intellectual that thought
hard and deep about question of what it means to be human and how
this question could be answered through a thorough investigation of
the past.
(Nobody back then of course had a postmodern mind and
questioned this clearly very ideological construction of
history…that is very different from today. Enlightenment
historians would have considered our postmodern worry
about the past as weird. ) – you may want to think why
that is…why we did loose this optimism of the
Enlightenment? )
So, the exploration of history was part of the big Enlightenment
project of the ‘science of man’ and is shared many characteristics
with other forms of investigation in this new science of man.
And it is then, that our current understanding that history is useful –
although we often don’t know how to argue for it – is born. We will
investigate this point further next year in historiography. So, keep it
in mind.
So, they were all searching for the true science of man?
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But why now? Why in at that particular moment in time…or period of
time, it is hardly a moment. Why was suddenly ‘man’ such a sexy
theme?
We have seen in the last term that people have asked the question
What is Man before? There were earlier attempts to investigate man,
other early incidents that brought up this question in rather intense
ways since the 15th century.
So, we have seen that the Renaissance discovered the individual, and
Montaigne invented a new way of writing and thinking about himself
that put him at the very centre of his investigation.
However, while it is true that the Enlightenment inherets these
questions, Renaissance ‘man’ and even Montaigne was still locating
‘man’ within the Christian universe, created in the Garden of Eden, as
an image of the Christian God. When Renaissance scholars and artists
like Vesalius or Da Vinci tried to reconstruct ‘the perfect man’, it was
not only a Christian man but also perfect according to the standards
of the ancient. ‘Perfect man’ – entirely male of course then -- was not
perfect to man-made standards but to metaphysical and historical
standards, that were made by good and approved by the ancients.
The belief in the divinely created cosmos, advanced by Greek
philosophers such as Aristotle, was at least until the end of the
seventeenth century a standard belief (although Copernicus had
questioned it in the middle of the sixteenth century).
The aim of Renaissance scholars and their love for antiquity was not
to radically question all beliefs about man but they aimed at
consolidating a reassuringly harmonious vision of human nature and
destiny. Moralists believed, Roy Porter argues, that from Classical
poets, philosopher moralists, historians and statesmen – models of
virtue could be derived which the truly civilised man of the
Renaissance could pursue, in harmony with the Christian progress
towards spirituality and salvation. (Porter, p. 12). Men like Vesalius
we have seen wished to reform his own time by reconstructing these
old virtues and applying them in the present.
The Renaissance thus emphasised dual but mutal conconant
aspirations for man. It restored Classical learning, and thereby
recovered a this-worldly model for social and political living. These
twin-goals, uniting the good virtuous man and the good Christian,
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commanded widespread acceptance for well over. Montaigne was well
within these ideas, we remember this problem with the concept of
‘curiosity’. The Reformation not really changed this ideal; in a way it
just related it to the question which religion offered the best way to
achieve that goal of virtuousness and Christianity.
We also saw this twin-goal in action when it came to aligning the
new man from the new world with European understandings.
Yes, all this had been unknown to the ancients but the discoveries did
not radically questioned European self-understanding. In fact, we
saw that the new man was often constructed in European ways
of thinking, along the lines and in opposition to European ideals
and virtues. The other became the negative version of the
Christian and virtuous European.
The seventeenth century, we have seen was more corrosive to
these older ideal and ideals of mankind. The new sciences –
Galileo, Kepler and we talked a lot about Descartes – were really
about establishing something new, and destroyed the old harmonies
of an anthropocentric (man-centred universe), that small closed
world focused upon man himself, which both Greek science and the
Bible had endorsed. Instead earth became a rather insignifant planet
within an huge universe which scholars now investigated via their
microcsopes.
Man was no longer at it centre.
We have also seen particularly Descartes mechanical philosophy
which claimed that nature comprised nothing but particular matter
governed by universal laws whose actions could be understood by
mathematical formula. He was very adamant to destroy the system of
the old and get something completely know going which would stand
the test of all possible criticism.
Somehow nature became impersonal, even dead and no longer
inhabited by invisible spirits, demons, and other unexplicable forces.
Human bodies were imagined as automata; animals even entirely as
automata lacking all consciousness.
What is interesting and we could see this when we looked at
increasingly discussions over what is human nature were
combinging the world of nature and religion and faith. Nothing really
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new because they were of course instigated during the Reformation.
The bible was after one of the authorities.
But what is interesting is that now you get scholars investigating the
truthfulness of the bible by using the new tools of scientific
investigation, learned by Francis Bacon. Could the bible really be only
6000 years old? Was Adam truly the first man? Could a serpent really
hold a conversation with Adam and Eve? Where does all the water
from the Deluge come from and where did it disappear? In what
language did Noha speak to the animals – well we know know after
the last block-busters movie about it? What was actually a micracle
and could God really direct such a thing? And how did it differ from
natural effects? How do we know the difference?
In short, religious statements of the Bible for example became
questions and starting points for investigation into nature…that is
very new! It has to be emphasised that not all researchered aimed to
undermine the bible. Not all of these investigators were atheists.
But they nevertheless questioned fundamentally the revealed
authority of religion and asked for new and better knowledge of
these issues to be sought.
So, as Porter puts it, since the latter part of the seventeenth century,
European thinker began to believe that in order to understand the
true history and destiny of the human race, one could no longer
blindly rely on the authority of the Greek and Roman thinkers
(the Ancients) or on the Bible. Man nature – so they began to
believe—was not yet properly known; it must become the
subject of inquiry.
Systematic doubt – advocated by Descartes – experimentation, like
Harvey or mathematical formulas that showed the regularity of
nature were the preferred procedures that would reveal the
fundamentals of human existence as a conscious being in society.
(A little caveat here) Again I want to remind you that although
these empirical ways of gaining knowledge – we today identifiy
as scientific --- were very much praised by Enlightenment
thinkers, we should not refrain from thinking that here lies the
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origin of our obsession with the natural sciences. Suddenly
they explained the world in scientific terms. No!!
I think we should continue to refrain from using the term
natural sciences at all; after all the term ‘science’ and ‘scientist’
were not invented until 1830s in England. It is better to
continue to use the term ‘natural philosophy’ because that was
most in use back then. Science or Scienzia in French and Italian
and the German Wissenschaft, mean virtually ‘knowledge’ or
knowing and was not necessarily connected with knowledge of
nature.
Again, investigations of nature were not yet separated from
intellectual areas, nor were its practitioners radical
distinguished from those in other intellectual of other forms of
investigation.
Enlightened normality were scholars like Voltaire who
worked on the popularisation of Newtonian
mathematical physics, while also producing plays,
poems, short stories, and political criticism, or by
Diderot, whose speculation about the order of nature the
nature of human perception occurred in the mids of
other enquiries and discussions, such as in those
contained in his novel Rameau’s Nephew.
Science was not yet a defined body of knowledge, not yet a
discipline, a body of knowledge separated from other
knowledges, with its own subject matter, let alone divided into
sub-discipline such as ‘physiology’ or ‘geology’ – this is
important to remember because many historians you will read
will use the term natural science – such as porter – and that can
be a bit confusing. I would prefer if you think about these
investigation as natural philosophy because the search remains very
much a serach for the hidden laws of God’s world.
This brings me to some assumption about human nature that
these new sciences of man were relying on.
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1. It is predominantly a search for the underlying laws of man’s
existence. Human nature was progressing by laws. A great role
for the enthusiasm for the identification of laws played the
great popularity of Isaac Newton’s physics all over Europe. One
even spoke about a Newtonmania.
(slide with hume)
David Hume, a scottisch philosopher and historian was particular
enthuasiatic andapplied ito human history
(slide with newton)
1687 Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy
and his attempts to produce mathematical descriptions
based on experimentation of the cosmic order, the
motion of planets, the famous laws of gravity and the
idea of planets space as infinite.
These ideas were discussed in an every-widening market
for popular natural philosophy. All these popular
accounts of Newton mathematics – there were even
book for children called ‘the little newton’ or specially for
women whose nature one was convinced did not easily
obay to laws, of course distorted his views and gave their
own twists to them. But most contrived to produced an
idea that Newton had described the whole of the created
universe and had described that order as a selfregulating balanced system of lawful movement. In many
of these accounts it appeared that whatever the
theoretical objections to the possibibility of or
knowledge of the external world might be, at least
physical laws of motion could be completely described by
self-consistent mathematical systems.
David Hume for example aimed to discover the laws of
human nature and hoped to become the ‘Newton of the
moral sciences’
Empirically collected evidence
Hand in hand with this belief in the laws of nature was
the belie that knowledge would be gained empiricially,
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through the senses. We have seen that this idea of
gaining knowledge had always been contested and had to
rival with the knowledge of the ancients.
So, there was an empirical search for laws in all areas of
human existence. And even those those who did not wish
to subscribe to such laws saw the need to define
themselves against them. (Vitalist who believed in spirits.
We will see that later).
2. Human nature not as fixed but as developing in stages –
from savages to civilised enlightenment being.
Now the idea of progress of civilisation is a key assumption and
belief of all Enlightenment thinkers.
A key figure here is the Scott adam Ferguson whose ideas were
widely accepted.
He believed in a stage development of all humanity, wherever you
are humans developed in the same way!
(Ferguson slide)
(slide of Stage theory)
Usually they imaged a development from savagery to the
Englightement – their time was of course the epitomy of human
development. Such a ‘natural history of man’ was a very popular
pursuit.
Englightenments scholars aimed to develop, empirically,
imaginatively and systematically such a natural history of man,
tracing the emergence of European man out of the state of
‘savagry’ which was assumed to have been his primeaval origin
and which 18th century explorer discovered in darkest Africa,
American and eventually in Australia. Often these people – such as
aboriginals were transported to Europe, measured and
investigated by scientists.
But they became also entertainement for the masses. Omai is
such an example or the hottentoten venus. Compared to the
sixteenth century explorers who brought Tupinama over to
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Europe too who made Montaige think about his own humanity,
the foreign people were now investigated scientifically. They
became part of the big ‘science of man’.
(slide Omai)
But there were also savages in Eurpope one performed
experiments on and exhibited to the public. A big scientific hit
were the enfants savage which were found, feral children found in
the still very dense woods all over Europe who did not resemble
humans at all, at least the did not display any attributes
considered human back then such as language, table manners etc.
Slides (enfant savage)
The enormous attempts to educate them demonstrates another
firm believe of human nature in the Enlightenment
3. the firm belief in the perfectability of human nature; the
ability of humans to raise themselves through education over
level of beasts and savages. The Enlightenment had an
unbelievable belief in the plasticity of man’s faculties, and a
great confidence in the species capacity for learning, change,
adaptation and improvement.
(slide children education book)
Child education or pedagogy was therefore considered
paramount. All famous philosopher give their opinion on
that topic perhaps most famously the French Rousseau.
(picture of emile)
Women were now considered key players in the
civilising process of humanity because they educated
children.
(slide of Locke)
Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1609) and
Some Thoughts Concerning Education (1663)
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This belief in the perfectability of human nature also
spurred research into the functioning of human thinking
and, no surprise, we have competing theories about of
the mind appearing, which hotly debated different new
ideas about identity and the self. We will talk here of
course about John Locke who famously postulated that,
at birth, mind was a blank slate or tabula rasa. Contrary
to Cartesian philosophy based on pre-existing concepts,
he maintained that we are born without innate ideas, and
that knowledge is instead determined only by experience
derived from sense perception.
Man’s nature, capacities and knowledge were thus
entirely the product of learning from experience; Man
was thus a child of his environment; but, in turn, he
acquired the capacity to transform those same
surroundings. In a way, Locke saw man as his own
maker; that is at least what many admirers saw in his
work; man’s self-developing potential knew now hardand-fast bounds.
It hardly comes as surprise that Locke was an ardent
admirer of Francis Bacon’s empirical method which he
celebrated throughout his life as the ony way of gaining
any knowledge.
It drove some scholars to boldly suggest that indeed the
times were close in which man, thanks to his capacity for
‘perfectability’ would soon overcome weekness, disease
and even death itself.
There were also some attempts, by the French natural ist Lamarck
and the father of Charles Darwin, Erasmus Darwin to outline the first
biological theory of evolution, which presupposed that such a
capacity of humans to learn could be passed on to the offsprings.
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Now this belief in perfectability of humans also changed the look
human behavoirs formerly described as unchristian or even as sinful.
4. Enlightenment thinkers like Locke did no longer see human
nature as innately sinful; that ideas was considered without a
basis – remember that the bible did not count as a basis
anymore.
Instead such passions which had been usually
condemned by the Church such as passions of love,
desire, pride and ambitions were not inevitably evil and
or eternally destructive. Properly channelled they could
serve as aids to human advancement. (we remember that
Francis Bacon did such a service to the vice of curiosity.
We have already discussed that he turned it into a vice.
(slide of Mandeville)
The Anglo-Dutch philosopher Bernard Mandeville, or
Bernard de Mandeville (1670 – 1733), is a good
example of that for The Fable of the Bees which was
discussed European wide (Jean-Jacques Rousseau
commented on The Fable of the Bees in Part One of his
Discourse on the Origin and Basis of Inequality Among
Men (1754) and was understood as an attack on
Christian virtues.
Mandeville had concluded his work – actually a poem on
the economic conditions of England – that vicious human
greed led to fruitful co-operation if properly channelled.
So, private vice could be public benefits.
Manderville spoke to heart of an emerging new breed of political
economists such as the Scottish Adam Smith who contented that the
selfish behaviour of individual producers and consumers, of pursued
in accordance with the competitive laws of the market, would result
in the common good – thanks, in part to the help of the ‘invisible
hand’ of Providence.
(images of Smith)
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Now let me conclude:
The Enlightenend ideas about man were not all know; in fact some
scholars have argued that they are mostly been voiced long before
the 18th century. That is actualy true. Enlightenment scholars investi
These two assumption – human nature is relative and not primarily
defined as biological; and that historians use
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