The case against Beattie (II)

All sciences, and especially Moral Philosophy, ought to regulate human practice: practice is regulated by principles, and all principles suppose conviction: yet the aim of some of our celebrated moral systems is, to divest the mind of every principle, and of all conviction; and, consequently, to disqualify man for action, and to render him useless, and wretched. In a word, Scepticism is now the profession of our fashionable inquirers into human nature; a scepticism that is not confined to points of mere speculation, but has been extended to practical truths of the highest importance, even to those of morality and religion. (Essays, Introduction, p. 7)

My method here, if I continue writing these, will be to go through the book, commenting on each silly and/or bigoted thing that comes up. The density of these, if I recall correctly from my previous, not sufficiently careful reading, is quite high, and so there’s a good chance I will get tired of the whole thing before I even finish the Introduction.

To do this properly I ought instead to compile careful notes on the whole book first, rearrange under topics, and write a single essay about each topic. But Beattie is not worth such effort, in my judgment.

All of which I preface here because if I do get any distance through the book, I will no doubt return to this point again and again. But, for now: the above passage obviously could not have been written by someone who understood much about Hume. If you don’t know that already, there’s not much I can say, except: you may not have read Hume carefully enough. You might begin with this:

Thus the sceptic still continues to reason and believe, even tho’ he asserts, that he cannot defend his reason by reason; and by the same rule he must assent to the principle concerning the existence of body, tho’ he cannot pretend by any arguments of philosophy to maintain its veracity. Nature has not left this to his choice, and has doubtless esteem’d it an affair of too great importance to be trusted to our uncertain reasonings and speculations. We may well ask, What causes induce us to believe in the existence of body? but ’tis in vain to ask, Whether there be body or not? That is a point, which we must take for granted in all our reasonings. (Treatise, 1.4.2.1)

Matters are a little more complicated than this perhaps makes it seem (see e.g. what he says at the end of the chapter), but — I assert — not more complicated in any way that makes Beattie look less silly.

Honestly, though, there is no reason to look into what Hume says about this. Was Hume himself “disqualified for action”? He was not, as Beattie well knows. How could that be? How can Beattie explain this? He cannot:

That he, who succeeds so well in describing the fates of nations, should yet have failed so egregiously in explaining the operations of the mind, is one of those incongruities in human genius, for which perhaps philosophy will never be able to account. (Essay, Introduction, p. 11)

Now, a fellow less silly might, at this point, be expected to step back and reassess his premises. Could it possibly be the case that human beings, generally speaking, don’t have an ability to act, or to understand and explain the actions of others, only because they walk around with a book full of philosophical principles from which they constantly stop to draw inferences?[1]Anyone who thinks this describes Kant's view of human action has had, by the way, at least one thought too few. Could it be, indeed, that, left to themselves, they will tend to follow certain instinctive suggestions of (what they unreflectively treat as) the understanding, i.e. certain prejudices in favor of (what they unreflectively regard as) truth and virtue? Could it be, in fact, that the most skepticism can hope to achieve is to get them, for God’s sake, to feel just a little doubt as to whether they are really the one on the side of truth and virtue or not? But, being a silly fellow, Beattie is unable to entertain such questions. He barges ahead in a way that should seem familiar to those of us who have grown used to blockheaded tirades against the supposedly fashionable “skepticism” or “relativism” of our own youth (sometimes blamed, preposterously, on Kant, but not on Hume, since he is now officially part of the Enlightenment) — he barges ahead, I say, on the basis of the ridiculous idea that reading a philosophy book might cause people to stop acting, or to stop judging of action.[2]Yes, I’m aware of the stories about Pyrrho. I am, let’s say, skeptical about them. But, even granting their truth: there is a great difference between pushing an extreme philosophical view out of one’s own (non-)conviction and attributing the same view to one’s opponent over their explicit objection. Neither the silliness of the theory in itself nor obvious facts to the contrary can deter him.

But, again: don’t neglect the end of the quote I started with! What is most dangerous of all, here, is, according to Beattie, that skepticism “has been extended … to practical truths … of morality and religion.” It is not just a philosophy book that we need to carry around, so as to act correctly, but a catechism, as well. I don’t want to call bigoted, nor even silly, the idea that to act out of true morality is to act out of religious belief. Locke, for example, who is neither silly nor bigoted, maintains something like this, and so does Kant, and in a certain sense I might agree with them. But to remove such an idea from the realm of silliness and bigotry requires, at a minimum, that “religious belief” be something attainable by any rational being (without the benefit of special revelation, whatever that even is supposed to be), and also, I am nearly as certain, that “religious belief” be taken as something people express in action, not in words. In that vein, Kant, at least, and probably also Locke, would have no more hesitation that I would in saying: Hume did what he did in the service of the god — that same god in whose service Socrates endured ten-thousandfold poverty, hatred, death: the Delphic Apollo, whose two commands are "know thyself" and "nothing in excess." But Beattie would not say that, obviously.[3]Not about Hume, anyway. If I get to the part of the book where he discusses Socrates (where he takes that silly fellow, Xenophon, as his main source), I will say more about that in its place. I want to add that, if Beattie was a good man, as it seems he was, then I would also be the first to say that his actual “belief,” in this sense, was correct. But we are dealing with an attempt to hold up Beattie’s silly and bigoted works as admirable, not with an exhibition of Beattie’s life as morally exemplary. I conclude, once again, that he was not only silly, but also bigoted. QED

The case against Beattie (I)

I aim at no paradoxes, my prejudices (if certain instinctive suggestions of the understanding may be so called) are in favour of truth, virtue and Christianity, and I have no principles to support, but such as seem to me to have influenced the judgment of the rational part of mankind in all ages of the world. (Essays, Introduction, pp. 3–4)

To say “my prejudices are only in favor of truth and virtue,” if he had stopped there, would, of course, be silly. What opponent of his could possibly accept that? And in case you think he doesn’t seriously imagine that his opponent will accept it, consider what happens a little later on:

I said, that my prejudices are all in favour of truth and virtue. To avow any sort of prejudice, may perhaps startle some readers. If it should, I must here entreat all such to pause a moment, and ask of their own hearts these simple questions. — Are virtue and truth useful to mankind? Are they matters of indifference? Or are they pernicious? (p. 7)

So, this fellow literally thinks he can convince an opponent in this way: I believe in the truth, so, if you believe in the truth, you must agree with me. And that, in a word, is silly.

But, alas, it is not exactly true, or not the whole truth, that he previously said “that my prejudices are all in favour of truth and virtue.” What he said was: “my prejudices … are in favour of truth, virtue and Christianity.” I don’t know how many of my readers have had the pleasure of arguing with political or religious fanatics — obviously these are become scarce in our enlightened times — but, if you have not, I can inform you that the sentiment above expressed is not unique to Beattie. This is just what any silly, bigoted fellow will tell you. Often they will even claim not to have a particular political or religious position at all: how many times have I heard someone say that they have no interest in politics, that they are guided only by (for example) pure ahavat Yisrael, the love of (the people) Israel? But, leaving aside that their ahavat Yisrael may turn out not to be very tolerant of Reform or Conservative Judaism, or of left wing Israeli political parties (if there still are any of those), etc. — any non-Jew, at least, should be able to immediately spot how extreme a political view this actually is. A person who considers, so to speak, “Jews First” to be beyond all reasonable political controversy is not, clearly, someone with whom a non-Jew can engage in rational discourse. And we find the exact same telltale sign here: how can a non-Christian have any rational discussion with someone who thinks Christianity is an “instinctive suggestion of the understanding” and also that Christianity has been embraced by “the rational part of mankind” in all ages? But, we should note, not just any Christianity! This is how he treats St. Thomas, a Doctor of the Church:

A verbal disputant! what claim can he have to do with the laws of nature, with the observation of facts, with life and manners! Let him not intrude upon the company of men of science, but repose, with his brethren Aquinas and Suares, in the corner of some Gothic cloister, dark as his understanding, and cold as his heart. (p. 4)[1]These sentences are not exactly spoken in Beattie’s own voice — rather, they are spoken by some ridiculous straw man opponent who claims that there is these days no problem of confusing verbal with substantive disagreement (is that supposed to be Locke? Hume?). But Beattie does agree with the nasty part, as becomes clear a little later: “One kind of jargon is laid aside; but another has been adopted, more fashionable indeed, but not less frivolous” (p. 6).

So, it turns out that rational people in all ages, prompted by instinctive suggestions of the understanding, which can hardly be called “prejudices” at all — I mean, they’re just what any (normal) person would accept! — have taken for granted that Beattie’s particular brand of Protestant Christianity is the true religion. This fellow, in other words, is not only silly, but also bigoted. QED

Reserving this URL is not enough to stop me, I will find a way to denounce, bwahahaha!