Anthony Gottlieb

There are seven philosophers under this book’s purview, who are: Rene Descartes, Thomas Hobbes, Baruch Spinoza, Locke, Bayle, Leibniz, and Hume. Their curiosity in challenging assumptions facilitated reduction in persecution for intellectual thought. Conquered prejudice and blind admiration in favor of cautious collection of facts. Gottlieb looks at their philosophies from the perspective of their time rather than attributing today’s values unto them. The enlightenment precipitated in tolerance of religious dissent, and increased the power that people held to shape their government. Because of the philosophers, impediments to knowledge and well-being were questioned, which fostered an ask for better alternatives.

Descartes philosophy stems from doubt. Doubted as much as possible before claiming any knowledge. Even by being cautious and doubtful, he nevertheless accepted many suspect assumptions with his philosophies and knowledge which depended on the existence and nature of God. With previous poor treatments of philosophers whose work was unacceptable to Church and educational establishment, Descartes knew that his ideas could be dangerous. As such, in order to be accepted, he tried to pacify the pious. Although Descartes wanted to appease potential threats, he was abusive to his contemporary rivals and accused former collaborators of stealing his ideas. Through his search for certainty, many found his ideas to be misconceptions, which is common in ideas which need to be claimed before potential alternative can be found.

Hobbes made many enemies by provocatively attacking academics and theologians alike. Known for his political philosophy in which the state has immense power. Under this philosophy, the people willingly accept to follow a sovereign authority to prevent dire consequences. The sovereign would need a monopoly on political authority as anything less would not be effective at staving of chaos. The benefits of having such a sovereign would be to live without threat to life by violence or other cruelties. In irony, although Hobbes saw the potential for abusing the subjects, he did not consider this to be an option because the sovereign would wrong God and risk the sovereign’s soul to eternal death. This is ironic because Hobbes was well-versed in history which contained many leaders that prove him wrong.

Spinoza did not want people to confuse human values with the point of view of the divine. Thought that it was possible to know what was good or bad for humanity but that the credibility of the viewpoints were not equal. Questioned miracles and divine interventions. Saw it as an error to see divine intervention as mutable, as that presumed that laws of nature are like human laws which were at the discretion of the lawmaker. To Spinoza, amazing events were not evidence of infinite power, while amazing power can lead people astray. Did not want to rule out alternative explanations to events before considering them. Spinoza recognized that persecuting independent though would have unintended consequences.

Locke wanted people to avoid completely relying on the opinions of others. His philosophy, as Gottlieb puts it, was an ‘assault on the lazy acceptance of received opinions’. Even in morals, morals required people to think about them, which required a lack of blind acceptance to others practices and standards. Legitimacy of the government should also be made independently. Many of his views on government were used as pretext to rebel, which Locke would not have quickly approved of. The power of the government came from people joining to form a community, creating a social contract which held political power.

Bayle noticed that a particular event, such as a comet, could not be signal from God because the signal could easily backfire. The signal could encourage alterative forms of worship. An event does not carry a particular deity’s signature, making the signal ambiguous. Although there were not many atheists during the time, Bayle, unlike his contemporaries, did not think that atheism would lead to as much wickedness as was considered. His philosophy indicates that it is not appropriate to coerce people to think or do a particular thing because God wanted those thoughts and action from convictions resulting from a search for truth. Honest mistakes should not be considered as sin, and therefor should not be punished as such.

It is Leibniz’s notations which are used in infinitesimal calculus. Leibniz speculated that there should be a building block of matter which cannot be divided further. He called them atoms, but not the atoms of what physics claims to be atoms. These were monads, of which everything else is built from.

Hume is known for what is now known as the problem of induction. Asking for intellectual modesty as knowledge is based on limited experience. Distinguished between relations of ideas and matters of fact. Reasoning about ideas produces mathematics and definitional claims. Reasoning about facts produces more information but are depended on experiences and are incapable of being demonstrated.

This book is a bit limited in the number and diversity of the philosophers showcased. They are mostly all popular. Although the philosophies are different, they do have a trend in response to religion. Although these philosophers were in the minority and were primarily persecuted for their heterodox ideas, it seems that what is missing are philosophers who disagreed with enlightenment philosophers or showcased the mentality which the enlightenment philosophers were responding too. This is unlike the book’s predecessor, Dream of Reason, which showcased very diverse philosophies and various philosophers which are not well known. A bit difficult to read and understand sometimes as the information presented was somewhat disorganized.… (más)

The Dream of Enlightenment
Subtitled: The Rise of Modern Philosophy
Anthony Gottlieb
Tuesday, June 11, 2019

I read some of this book over the past few weeks, in my usual way of a few minutes here and there at the end of a work day. I started over when I started a long airplane trip, so I could better follow the arguments. Gottlieb provides summaries of the thought of philosophers with some insights into their lives and environments. Since he started as a journalist, he is often better at the human stories.

He argues that much of philosophy occurred as two "staccato bursts" of thought, each of about 150 years duration, one discussed in his previous book "The Dream of Reason" (I read that years ago) from 450 BCE to 300 BCE, encompassing Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, and the one discussed in this volume, starting with Galileo in the 1630's and ending at the French Revolution in 1789.

Descartes lived a comfortable life, and began his program of radical doubt in the course of a series of vivid dreams after a day of contemplation of mathematics. He published three essays, including the essay on analytic geometry, with a “Discourse on Method” describing the doubt and resolution with the help of a benevolent God. The introduction of God might have been a sop to avoid notice by the Inquisition.

The thought of Thomas Hobbes is described next. “The monster of Malmesbury” was widely believed to be impious, and was denounced many times. Hobbes wrote that the whole universe was physical, so God had to be physical, and that the body and soul disintegrated until the last coming. His political philosophy opined that in the state of nature no one would be safe from the fear of attacks by his fellow beings, so everyone was better off to surrender to a King.

Of the philosophers discussed by Gottlieb, Spinoza’s system of thought is the most attractive to me. “God … required of men no other knowledge of himself than is contained in a knowledge of His justice and charity”. God is all of nature and does not have human qualities, does not intervene in the world,

Locke is the subject of the next chapter, subtitled "Philosophy for the British". "The mind, if it will proceed rationally, ought to examine all the grounds of Probability and see how they make more or less, for or against and probable Proposition, before it assents or dissents from it …". He was, according to Gilbert Ryle, the inventor of common sense, and his legacy is British empiricism. He also articulated the idea of the "social contract" as the basis of legitimate government. I am interested that he initially wanted to be a physician, and accompanied Sydenham on rounds; Sydenham was reviled in the medical profession for his insistence on studying disease: "The function of a physician [is the] industrious investigation of the history of diseases, and of the effects of remedies, as shown by the only true teacher, experience…"

There is then an "Interlude on a Comet" discussing Pierre Bayle, a French Huguenot, who wrote a brief text rejecting the idea that the occurrence of an unusually bright comet was a warning from God. The book argued that atheists could be moral, incensing the church. Gottlieb says that Bayle, although not well known, is cited by many subsequent philosophers, and that his "Historical and Critical Dictionary" is "the arsenal of all Enlightenment philosophy". It was said, when asked about his religious beliefs, that Bayle replied "I am a good Protestant …for … I protest against everything that is said, and everything that is done".

Leibniz, an amazing polymath and philosopher, was eager to merge ancient and Scholastic philosophy with the new study of matter and motion, a study he advanced with his separate invention of calculus. With his theory of monads, he tried to link matter and motion with the notion that monads had mind like capabilities that enable mechanical laws to be "derived from higher reasons".

David Hume was a good fellow, and many of his contemporaries held him in high regard. He wrote a Treatise on Human Nature, an attempt to study humanity by the same methods that are used to study the rest of nature. His summary of the work in the "Abstract" is largely a discussion of knowledge by induction. I can recall reading this in college philosophy, and trying to argue on a chemistry test that his theory is the same as Margenou, a book that I did not read.

Voltaire, Rousseau, and the "Philosophes", the French schools of thought, form the final chapter. Gottlieb suggests the enlightenment helped to make the world more intellectually adventurous and less ignorant.… (más)

Ours may not be the best of all possible worlds; but these pioneers helped to make it an intellectually adventurous and, as d'Alembert suggested, a less ignorant one.

Dream was a most welcome birthday present for me personally its publication is also timely given a world which sorely needs to examine its present trajectory. It is a survey by a retired journalist, a layman more than apt to do the heavy lifting about the advocates of a mechanized world, the stirring time in our early Modern period when the ghosts under our bed and the threat of Old Scratch could be outdistanced. The noble products of this were the technology and the trappings of tolerance; unfortunately, it is an ongoing project. Voltaire is included as foil to many: Leibniz, Hume and Rousseau, but Voltaire captures something human and timeless, much as his Candide, when pondering the fortunes of the New World, quips it may not be better but at least it will be different. If only.

I am blessed with an adequate familiarity of all the thinkers cited. My chief course of improvement will be to read more Hume. Please forgive the possible vanity, but I often feel like a Hobbes or Spinoza, though I lack the talent and ambition of either. Leibniz had by far the coolest life and Rousseau was quite an asshole.… (más)