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Adventures in Philosophy |
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Thomas Paine (picture) was an English political writer, active in the American and French revolutions. His influential pamphlets include Common Sense (1776), The Rights of Man (1791), and The Age of Reason (1793). He advocated republicanism, deism, the abolition of slavery, and the emancipation of women. Paine, born in Thetford, Norfolk, England, was a friend of Benjamin Franklin and went to America in 1774, where he published several republican pamphlets and fought for the colonists in the War of Independence. In 1787 he returned to Britain. The Rights of Man is an answer to the conservative political theorist Edmund Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France. In 1792, Paine was indicted for treason and escaped to France, to represent Calais in the National Convention. Narrowly escaping the guillotine, he regained his seat after the fall of Robespierre. Paine returned to the United States in 1802 and died in New York. Contemporaries of Thomas Paine used to speak of him only in superlatives either of enthusiasm or contempt. Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton, though differing on many points, agreed that Paine was a man to be avoided or distrusted. England, his native country, outlawed him. Jacobin France, where Paine at first had been made an honorary citizen and had been elected a member of the National Convention although he did not speak French, imprisoned him because he had agitated against the execution of the king. When Paine died, he had been poor, sick and ostracized for many years. A century after his death, Theodore Roosevelt, a president of the United States, sneered at him as a "filthy little atheist." But independent historians have recognized that Thomas Paine, by his pamphlet Common Sense (1776) and by untiring agitation, convinced influential but hesitating Americans that independence should be declared because it was the only way to save the colonies. It was also Paine who insisted on the gathering of the Continental Congress, for the purpose of framing a Continental charter. Furthermore, it was Paine who earlier than any other proclaimed America's mission to be the defense of freedom and democracy by presenting to the whole world the example of a republic of free men. Without any doubt, America and humanity in general owe Thomas Paine a grateful memory, although he was not free from vanity and his education was incomplete. But Paine was not a man to save only one country. He defended the French Revolution against Edmund Burke in his book The Rights of Man (1791) with the same ardor as he had defended the American Revolution, and he tried to revolutionize England, though without success. In his Age of Reason (1794-96) he tried to emancipate humanity from Christian traditions and to establish a religion of deism. He did not recognize that the Age of Reason had ended when his book was printed. After and throughout many failures in business while he lived in England, Paine had educated himself by confining his spiritual interests strictly to the science of his time. He was an artless writer although he displayed extraordinary talents for aphoristic formulas and for striking expressions. Many ideas put forth by Thomas Paine have had an influence on the development of Classical Liberalism. In The Radical Academy
Elsewhere On The Internet
Claude Henri, Comte de Saint-Simon (1760-1825) In Saint-Simon's (picture) personality, the mind of a true philosopher was coupled with that of a smart businessman, that of a sincere philanthropist with that of an adventurous schemer. He fought at Yorktown for American independence. He was the first to advocate the building of the canals of Suez and Panama. More than a hundred years before the Young Plan, he demanded the foundation of an international bank, and his most faithful disciples became founders of joint-stock societies and constructors of canals and railroads, which, as Saint-Simon taught them, are necessary for the organization of human welfare and the realization of the ideals of human solidarity. Saint-Simon was the first to denounce "exploitation of men by their fellow men," and to prognosticate the increasing concentration of capital and industry. But he was also one of those "wicked speculators" who were branded by Robespierre, and he narrowly escaped execution. During the French Revolution he amassed a large fortune, but he died in poverty. Saint-Simon's dominant idea was that the social system must be an application of the philosophical system, and that the function of philosophy is a prevalently social one. After ten years of studies devoted to physics, astronomy and chemistry, he turned to the study of human society and pronounced as its result that philosophical changes cause social changes, and that philosophy, as he conceived of it, must found a new society, a new religion, and a new evaluation of men. He especially emphasized that in modern times the industrial worker had become of far greater importance than the nobleman, the soldier and the priest, and, consequently, that he must occupy a higher social position than the former dignitaries. To industrial workers, scholars, and bankers he entrusted the organization of his new social system, which may be characterized as a kind of technocratic socialism. But the form of government was, in Saint-Simon's opinion, of lesser importance than the problem of administration. Therefore, he was not radically opposed to monarchism. After the publication of his works on the Reorganization of Europe (1814), The Industrial System and Catechism of Industrials (1821-1824), he wrote The New Christianity in the year of his death, 1825, by which he intended to substitute a secular religion of pantheistic and sensualistic color for the Christian faith. A small circle of enthusiastic disciples revered Saint-Simon who lived in obscurity and poverty as the founder of the religion of the future. After his death he became famous the world over, due to the propagandistic ardor of his pupils. He particularly influenced Goethe, Carlyle, Auguste Comte and Karl Marx. In The Radical Academy Elsewhere On The Intrernet
It is more by his activities than by his thoughts that Robert Owen (picture) influenced the mind and practical life of later ages. He was a man of one idea which he called "socialism" but which rather means "cooperative settlements." He was obsessed by this idea, and not very capable of explaining and developing it in a scientific manner. But he devoted much of his time, energy and fortune to its realization, and influenced British social legislation by his restless insistence on the removal of the most flagrant abuses of the early industrial system. After being a cotton-twist manufacturer in Manchester, Owen acquired, in 1797, a factory in New Lanark which, under his direction, became a model factory and attracted the curiosity of many thousands of visitors from various countries. Employing 1,700 hands out of the 3,000 inhabitants of the village, Owen refused to employ children under the age of ten, or adults for more than ten and a half hours a day. He provided the families of his workers with schools, a cooperative store, the opportunity to hear music and to take physical exercises. Later he tried to organize cooperative settlements elsewhere in England and in the United States. But he was rather a despotic, though benevolent, ruler, and always a sworn foe of political democracy, educating his adherents to political indifference. In his book New View of Society (1813) and in numerous periodicals, he tried to propagate the idea that the existing evils were not due to lack of religion, against which Owen always proclaimed his animosity, but to a wrong distribution of wealth and to a deficient regulation of production which caused economic crises as a consequence of over-production. The rise of the factory system was defended by Owen, who, against Malthus, maintained that the increase of the productive capacity of the human race would be more rapid than the increase of the population. Owen's aim was revolutionary but not his method of realizing it. In The Radical Academy Elsewhere On The Internet
David Ricardo (picture), one of the classical political economists, was born in London in 1772. One of Ricardo's basic convictions, namely, the belief that businessmen are always acting with a full knowledge of all possible consequences of their actions, has been proved to be wrong. Also, some of his other propositions have been definitely refuted. Nevertheless, Ricardo's authority as an acute and informed thinker remains unshattered, and many of his discoveries have become commonplace. Important concepts, formulated by him, have been adopted by economists who defend either private enterprise or socialism. Ricardo, the son of a Jewish stockbroker who had come to England from Holland, was a financier and member of the London Stock Exchange. He lacked classical education, having attended only an elementary school, but he had learned, as an autodidact, natural sciences and political economics. From 1819 until his death, he was a member of Parliament, and was, despite his radical opinions, revered by both sides of the House as the highest authority in matters of finance and currency. Although Ricardo was a clever businessman, his political and economic demands took no regard of vested interests, not even his own private interests. In his Principles of Political Economy and Taxation (1817), Ricardo states an "iron law" in virtue of which rent is always rising while real wages remain stationary, and the profits of the manufacturer and the farmer, kept at the same level by the competition of capital, are constantly declining. In order to change this state of things, Ricardo attempted in vain to ally the rest of the nations against the great landowners. His statements are founded upon exact observations of the economic situation of his own time and the preceding fifty years of British history, but from this reliable knowledge, Ricardo proceeded to rash generalizations. A powerful advocate of free trade, Ricardo was by no means an optimist. He expressed grave apprehensions concerning class struggle. Marx borrowed this and some other formulas from Ricardo but drew different conclusions from them. BuIwer-Lytton's novel Pelham and many other literary documents of the second and third decades of the 19th century testify to Ricardo's popularity, although his own style was rather dry. His premature death was mourned by the entire British nation. In The Radical Academy
Elsewhere On The Internet
Frédéric Bastiat (picture) was a French economist, statesman, and author. He did most of his writing during the years just before -- and immediately following -- the Revolution of February 1848. This was the period when France was rapidly turning to complete socialism. As a Deputy to the Legislative Assembly, Mr. Bastiat was studying and explaining each socialist fallacy as it appeared. And he explained how socialism must inevitably degenerate into communism. But most of his countrymen chose to ignore his logic. Bastiat was born in Bayonne, Aquitaine, France. His public career as an economist began only in 1844, and was cut short by his untimely death in 1850. Bastiat had caught tuberculosis, probably during his tours throughout France to promote libertarian ideas, and that illness eventually prevented him from making further speeches -- particularly at the legislative assembly to which he was elected in 1848 and 1849 -- and took his life. Frédéric Bastiat died in Rome, Italy on December 24, 1850. Bastiat declared on his death bed that his friend Gustave de Molinari. Molinari was publisher of Bastiat's masterpiece The Law (1849) and his spiritual heir. Bastiat can be said to be of the "Harmonic" school of libertarians, who consider utilitarian and natural law arguments as two complementary aspects of a same world. Bastiat did not take part in the anarchist-minarchist debate -- he arguably died too early for that; he seems to have considered the State as something inevitable as far as immediate practical matter -- something that ought to be taken into account as long as it existed. He also explicitly deplored violent revolution as a way to get rid of governments. This was a view no doubt influenced by the horrors of the Jacobins and the trials of the French Revolution. Like all classical liberals, Bastiat maintained a deep distrust of all government, in any form, and worked all his life to demonstrate that government control of private individuals and regulation of private industry is inefficient, economically damaging, and morally wrong. In The Radical Academy Elsewhere On The Internet
When the Prince of Metternich was still considered the most powerful man in Europe, he said that "no one gave me more trouble than a devil of an Italian, emaciated, pale, poor, but eloquent as a tempest, inspired as an apostle, sly as a thief, and tireless as a lover -- his name is Giuseppe Mazzini." (picture) In his private life, simple, kindly, affectionate, sometimes even playful, Mazzini, during the twenty years preceding 1850, was regarded by the revolutionaries of all the countries of Europe as their master, by the Italian people as the prophet of their future greatness, and, when he took refuge in England, Mazzini, a defeated man roused the enthusiasm of philosophers like Henry Sidgwick and John Morley, and of poets like Wordsworth, Swinburne and Meredith, and was, notwithstanding their dissension in fundamental political questions, a highly respected and dear friend of Thomas Carlyle. It is characteristic of Mazzini that he embraced the cause of European revolution and the unification of Italy only when he saw proscripts who, after the collapse of their uprising of 1821, asked his mother for charity. His vision of the future was colored by pity for the poor and the suffering. He did not neglect the social aspect of the revolution, but he condemned the theory of class struggle and did not recognize chosen classes or chosen nations. He always put humanity above nations, his own included, and God above humanity. Equally opposed to Marx as to the Pope and the kings, Mazzini believed in the ultimate victory of disinterested motives over egoism, of idealism over materialism and utilitarianism, and in a religion of humanity freed from prejudices, aware of the cultural values of the Biblical tradition, and able to enhance the dignity of the human individual. He proclaimed the rights as well as the duties of Man. Although he did not conceive new ideas, he was a moral power of considerable influence. In The Radical Academy Elsewhere On The Internet
John Stuart Mill (picture) was an English philosopher and economist. A follower of Jeremy Bentham, he elaborated the philosophy of the "greater good" in his philosophy of utilitarianism, as expounded in Utilitarianism (1861). His other works include On Liberty (1859), in which he asserts the freedom of the individual, Principles of Political Economy (1848), and his remarkable Autobiography (1873), which describes his forced education by his father, the Scottish philosopher James Mill (1773-1836). John Stuart Mill also served with the East India Company, and later entered the English Parliament as a liberal. The dream of social reform and the building of a more ideal society was basic to the thinking of John Stuart Mill. He believed that the phenomena of social living conformed to fixed laws just as other phenomena do. However, he recognized that the factors involved in society are so numerous and are changing so constantly that prediction is impossible. Thus, the methods of study used in other sciences, those of the laboratory, are not applicable to the study of society. By the method of deduction from many instances we can see tendencies in human social development and can point to them as guides to activity, he taught. Believing this to be true, Mill held that the task of the social scientists was to investigate social groups to discover how the different forms of society develop and follow each other. Thus, by a study of history we can discover the laws of social progress and development. Then we can point to tendencies in the present social structure and predict that there is a high degree of probability that certain social results can be expected. For example, a study of ancient civilizations will show the reasons for their fall. The historian can point to factors in the social structure which contributed to the downfall of the civilization. Then, if an examination of a present society reveals the same factors as present and operating, it can be predicted with a degree of probability that that society will also fall. Mill recognized that social well-being was necessary for individual well-being, that the individual was tied up with the group and that his happiness was dependent upon the status of the group. Thus, he dreamed of a society in which the happiness and prosperity of all was certain, and in which all would share the wealth of the group. In his Autobiography he wrote:
Mill was struggling here with a problem that seems to have become more and more clear since his day: the problem of undeserved poverty and equally undeserved wealth. Society, as he understood it, exists for the good of all individual members. Therefore, each must have freedom to work and be rewarded for his efforts. But, the raw materials of the world cannot be the exclusive possession of a few. These belong to all, and must be held by society as the representative of all. Mill believed that a time would come when such would be the case and when society could guarantee economic freedom to all. Mill was a staunch defender of individual liberty because he was convinced of its social usefulness. But he was ready to sacrifice individual property rights when they endangered the common good. He remained the advocate of representative government, but he considered the social question of increasing importance and became more and more devoted to the cause of the working class, without, however, any intention of idealizing the workers. When he campaigned for a seat in Parliament, he warned his constituents that he would do nothing for their special interests but only what he thought to be right. He also fought for women's suffrage and for the rights of colored people. Mill was a courageous and considerate fighter for human rights, always trying to understand the fair side of his adversary. During the second half of the 19th century, his ascendancy over the spirit of European philosophy was immense. Since then it has withered. But many of those who used to belittle Mill are, in fact, obligated to him. John Stuart Mill is one of the major influences on the development of Classical Liberalism. In The Radical Academy
Elsewhere On The Internet
In the daytime, Herr Kasper Schmidt was a teacher at a young ladies' school, a respectable citizen of Berlin and a loyal subject of his king, Frederick William IV of Prussia. In the evening, he drank wine in a restaurant where he met some writers of left-wing Hegelianism and discussed with them philosophical problems. More often than not, these debates and the wine fired the imagination of the speakers who competed one with another in exalting, both earnestly and parodistically, their personal mission as radical revolutionaries. Some members of that company later became notorious as political adventurers, others became more or less prominent socialists. Kaspar Schmidt, after coming home, worked, late in the night, at a manuscript which he published under the title Der Einzige und sein Eigentum (The Ego and his Own, 1845). The author of this book, calling himself Max Stirner (picture) is generally considered as the founder of theoretical anarchism and the most radical individualist in the history of philosophy. While most of his contemporaries conceived the individual as determined by collective factors of various kinds, Stirner proclaimed the uniqueness and absolute independence of his ego. For even the notion of the individual is in Stirner's opinion a useless concession to collectivism. He leaves it to other egos to claim the same uniqueness for themselves. While establishing the ego as the sole reality and the sole value, Stirner emphasizes his opposition against society, against the state, against reactionary and revolutionary parties, against liberalism and socialism, against any legislation and social conventions. For Stirner, the negation of all values except the ego means the only guarantee of personal freedom and the sole way of constructing a philosophical system by independent thinking. His motto is, "I am dependent on nothing," and his cardinal principle is, "For me there is nothing like myself." Whatever other people regard as value, ideas, notions, tenets or laws, are dealt with by Stirner as specters which haunt unenlightened men. While trying to exorcise these specters by exposing their unreality, Stirner becomes a mythologist on his own. He was severely attacked by Marx and Engels; however, his book remained practically ignored during his lifetime. Stirner gave his adventurous spirit a free course only in his inward life. What later became known as political anarchism would have terrified him, and he would have opposed it as contrary to his cult of the ego. In The Radical Academy Essay: The Possessed, by Max Stirner Elsewhere On The Internet
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