Arthur O. Lovejoy (1873–1962)

Great chain of being is one of those phrases that one had heard frequently enough to form part of one's mental furniture without being fully aware of the details. This book, based on a series of lectures given at Harvard University in the 1930s, although Lovejoy was a professor at John Hopkins. The author traces the idea of the chain of being from Platonic thought in which the One extends itself into the universe because it is supremely good and generosity is an aspect of good. Lovejoy observes that Platonism, Neo-Platonism and the Christian philosophy and theology based on it have always suffered from the juncture between the supreme good, which needs nothing and belief in which encourages a turn away from the world to contemplate union with the good and the creator, who overflows into creation, filling it with every possible type of being and belief in which encourages involvement in and study of the natural world. One thing that modern readers must remember is that humans are not at the top of the chain of being. We are only at the top of the physical beings--very distant from plants and tiny animals but equally distant from the incorporeal beings between us and the one (or the Christian God). It is the removal of this non-physical layer that makes the 'chain' seem like a demonstration of human ego.

I was interested to learn that the concept of a 'missing link' did not enter European thought with Darwin's theory. I already knew that Darwin did not originate the idea of evolution, but merely suggested a physical mechanism for it. The theory of plentitude, as elaborated in the 18th century, required that God create every possible type of being, so that there would be no gaps between the levels of existence. Such a gap, as the one that seemed to exist between the higher apes and the human race led some to try to fit remote races such as the Hottentots or Australians between apes and the fully human. For others, the missing link threatened the entire theory.

Lovejoy also explains that the concept of the 'best of all possible worlds' was not as fatuous as Voltaire notoriously made it seem in his character of Dr. Pangloss. The concept assumes that given the constraints of physical matter, free-will, etc. some worlds are not possible. Of the ones that are possible, this must be the best, because a good God, or Plato's 'the Good" cannot create less than the best. This does not mean that the world is a paradise, obviously a world that contains lions, because they are worthy of existence, and gazelles because they are also worthy of existence cannot be the best for both lions and gazelles at all times.

In any case, the book is worth reading since it examines and explains concepts that produced or influenced a great deal of philosophy and art within Western culture. My only complaint is of the amount of material that is left untranslated. There are ample examples in English, but the German, much of the French and the Latin are wasted on me.… (altro)

SELECTED POINTS OF INTEREST

COUNTERPOISE:
Although philosophers of the 17th and 18th centuries, when discoursing on the divine government of the world, often declared it to be axiomatic that the Creator always accomplishes his ends by the simplest and most direct means, they also tended to assume that he is frequently under the necessity of employing what may be called the method of counterpoise – accomplishing desirable results by balancing harmful things against one other.
1.) Pascal – “We do not sustain ourselves in a state of virtue by our own force, but by the counterpoise of two opposite faults, just as we stand upright between two contrary winds; remove one of these faults, we fall into the other.”
2.) Pope – “Statecraft” consisted in the recognition and application of two premises underlying the political method of counterpoise: that men never act from disinterested and rational motives, but that it is possible, none the less, to fashion a good “whole,” a happy harmonious State, by skillfully mixing and counterbalancing the refractory and separately antagonistic parts.
3.) Vauvenargues – “If it is true that one cannot eliminate vice, the science of those who govern consists in making it contribute to the common good.”
4.) Popular expositions of Newtonian Celestial Mechanics – happily counterbalancing one another, otherwise mischievous forces cause the heavenly bodies to roll round in their proper orbits.

COUNTERPOISE IN THE AMERICAN CONSTITUTION:
The political philosophy of James Madison includes two propositions: (a) that the political opinions and activities of individuals will, with perhaps the rarest exceptions, always be determined by personal motives at variance with the general or “public” interest – in short, by bad motives; but (b) that, in framing a political constitution, you can construct a good whole out of bad parts, can make these conflicting private interests subservient to the public interest, simply by bringing all of the together upon a common political battleground where they will neutralize one another.

There is a widely prevalent belief among Americans that the Founding Fathers were animated by a “faith in the people,” a confidence in the wisdom of “the common man.” This belief, to use the terminology of the logic books, is a grandiose example of the fallacy of division. For Madison – and in this he probably did not differ from the majority of his colleagues in the Convention – had no “faith in the people” as individuals acting in their political capacity. It is true that he recognized certain political rights of individual citizens – primarily the right to vote and to seek public office. It is also true that he sincerely believed that they were disinterestedly constructing a scheme of government which would make for the good of the people as a whole and in the long run. But “the people’ as voters, the Electorate, was made up wholly of “factions,” i.e., of individuals combined into rival political groups of parties; and a faction always strives to accomplish ends “adverse to the rights of other citizens, or to the permanent and aggregate interests of the community,” “Faith in the people” is plainly and vigorously repudiated in Federalist no. X. But what Madison did have faith in was the efficacy, and probable adequacy, of the method of counterpoise as a corrective of the evils otherwise inevitably resulting from “government in the popular model,” a “republican remedy for the diseases most incident to republican government.”

REASON, SELF-DISTRUST:
Self-searching is most commonly the offspring of self-distrust and misgivings; it is especially when he feels ill that man becomes curious, and sometimes erudite, about his inward parts.

FOOTNOTE: John C. Whitehorn (1951), desire for roles v. desire for goals.
Human beings set patterns for themselves, they formulate roles… to perform skilled acts, to be a charming hostess, or a genial host, or a high-pressure salesman, or a scholar and a gentleman – such roles appear to outrank in value, to many, the attainment of the practical goal toward which such patterns appear to be directed… Many psychiatrists… have become accustomed to think of the id as the source of all psychic energy. Yet the “it” may rival or exceed the id, in the sense that being “it” in one’s preferred social role may become the principal mainspring of motivation… Patterns of self-dramatization form the warp and woof of the texture of daily living. [Lovejoy instead uses, terminal vales (desire for ends of actions) v. adjectival values (desire for qualities or adjectives as agent); and notes there is no reason to assume one is consistently more powerful than the other.]… (altro)