American Enlightenment Thought

Philosophy

American Enlightenment Thought Although there is no consensus about the exact span of time that corresponds to the American Enlightenment, it is safe to say that it occurred during the eighteenth century among thinkers in British North America and the early United States and was inspired by the ideas of the British and French Enlightenments. Based on the metaphor of bringing light to the Dark Age, the Age of the Enlightenment (Siècle des lumières in French and Aufklärung in German) shifted allegiances away from absolute authority, whether religious or political, to more skeptical and optimistic attitudes about human nature, religion and politics. In the American context, thinkers such as Thomas Paine, James Madison, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams and Benjamin Franklin invented and adopted revolutionary ideas about scientific rationality, religious toleration and experimental political organization-ideas that would have farreaching effects on the development of the fledgling nation. Some coupled science and religion in the notion of deism; others asserted the natural rights of man in the anti-authoritarian doctrine of liberalism; and still others touted the importance of cultivating virtue, enlightened leadership and community in early forms of republican thinking. At least six ideas came to punctuate American Enlightenment thinking: deism, liberalism, republicanism, conservatism, toleration and scientific progress. Many of these were shared with European Enlightenment thinkers, but in some instances took a uniquely American form. Table of Contents 1. Enlightenment Age Thinking 1. Moderate and Radical 2. Chronology 3. Democracy and the Social Contract 2. Six Key Ideas 1. Deism 2. Liberalism 3. Republicanism 4. Conservatism 5. Toleration 6. Scientific Progress 3. Four American Enlightenment Thinkers 1. Franklin 2. Jefferson 3. Madison 4. Adams 4. Contemporary Work 5. References and Further Reading 1. Enlightenment Age Thinking The preand post-revolutionary era in American history generated propitious conditions for Enlightenment thought to thrive on an order comparable to that witnessed in the European Enlightenments. In the pre-revolutionary years, Americans reacted to the misrule of King George III, the unfairness of Parliament ("taxation without representation") and exploitative treatment at the hands of a colonial power: the English Empire. The Englishman-cumrevolutionary Thomas Paine wrote the famous pamphlet The Rights of Man, decrying the abuses of the North American colonies by their English masters. In the post-revolutionary years, a whole generation of American thinkers would found a new system of government on liberal and republican principles, articulating their enduring ideas in documents such as the Declaration of Independence, the Federalist Papers and the United States Constitution. Although distinctive features arose in the eighteenth-century American context, much of the American Enlightenment was continuous with parallel experiences in British and French society. Four themes recur in both European and American Enlightenment texts: modernization, skepticism, reason and liberty. Modernization means that beliefs and institutions based on absolute moral, religious and political authority (such as the divine right of kings and the Ancien Régime) will become increasingly eclipsed by those based on science, rationality and religious pluralism. Many Enlightenment thinkers-especially the French philosophes, such as Voltaire, Rousseau and Diderot-subscribed to some form of skepticism, doubting appeals to miraculous, transcendent and supernatural forces that potentially limit the scope of individual choice and reason. Reason that is universally shared and definitive of the human nature also became a dominant theme in Enlightenment thinkers' writings, particularly Immanuel Kant's "What is Enlightenment?" and his Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals. The fourth theme, liberty and rights assumed a central place in theories of political association, specifically as limits state authority originating prior to the advent of states (that is, in a state of nature) and manifesting in social contracts, especially in John Locke's Second Treatise on Civil Government and Thomas Jefferson's drafts of theDeclaration of Independence. a. Moderate and Radical Besides identifying dominant themes running throughout the Enlightenment period, some historians, such as Henry May and Jonathan Israel, understand Enlightenment thought as divisible into two broad categories, each reflecting the content and intensity of ideas prevalent at the time. The moderate Enlightenment signifies commitments to economic liberalism, religious toleration and constitutional politics. In contrast to its moderate incarnation, the radical Enlightenment conceives enlightened thought through the prism of revolutionary rhetoric and classical Republicanism. Some commentators argue that the British Enlightenment (especially figures such as James Hutton, Adam Ferguson and Adam Smith) was essentially moderate, while the French (represented by Denis Diderot, Claude Adrien Helvétius and François Marie Arouet) was decidedly more radical. Influenced as it was by the British and French, American Enlightenment thought integrates both moderate and radical elements. b. Chronology American Enlightenment thought can also be appreciated chronologically, or in terms of three temporal stages in the development of Enlightenment Age thinking. The early stage stretches from the time of the Glorious Revolution of 1688 to 1750, when members of Europe's middle class began to break free from the monarchical and aristocratic regimes-whether through scientific discovery, social and political change or emigration outside of Europe, including America. The middle stage extends from 1751 to just a few years after the start of the American Revolution in 1779. It is characterized by an exploding fascination with science, religious revivalism and experimental forms of government, especially in the United States. The late stage begins in 1780 and ends with the rise of Napoléon Bonaparte, as the French Revolution comes to a close in 1815-a period in which the European Enlightenment was in decline, while the American Enlightenment reclaimed and institutionalized many of its seminal ideas. However, American Enlightenment thinkers were not always of a single mind with their European counterparts. For instance, several American Enlightenment thinkers-particularly James Madison and John Adams, though not Benjamin Franklin-judged the French philosophes to be morally degenerate intellectuals of the era. c. Democracy and the Social Contract Many European and American Enlightenment figures were critical of democracy. Skepticism about the value of democratic institutions was likely a legacy of Plato's belief that democracy led to tyranny and Aristotle's view that democracy was the best of the worst forms of government. John Adams and James Madison perpetuated the elitist and anti-democratic idea that to invest too much political power in the hands of uneducated and property-less people was to put society at constant risk of social and political upheaval. Although several of America's Enlightenment thinkers condemned democracy, others were more receptive to the idea of popular rule as expressed in European social contract theories. Thomas Jefferson was strongly influenced by John Locke's social contract theory, while Thomas Paine found inspiration in JeanJacques Rousseau's. In the Two Treatises on Government (1689 and 1690), Locke argued against the divine right of kings and in favor of government grounded on the consent of the governed; so long as people would have agreed to hand over some of their liberties enjoyed in a pre-political society or state of nature in exchange for the protection of basic rights to life, liberty and property. However, if the state reneged on the social contract by failing to protect those natural rights, then the people had a right to revolt and form a new government. Perhaps more of a democrat than Locke, Rousseau insisted in The Social Contract(1762) that citizens have a right of self-government, choosing the rules by which they live and the judges who shall enforce those rules. If the relationship between the will of the state and the will of the people (the "general will") is to be democratic, it should be mediated by as few institutions as possible. 2. Six Key Ideas At least six ideas came to punctuate American Enlightenment thinking: deism, liberalism, republicanism, conservatism, toleration and scientific progress. Many of these were shared with European Enlightenment thinkers, but in some instances took a uniquely American form. a. Deism European Enlightenment thinkers conceived tradition, custom and prejudice (Vorurteil) as barriers to gaining true knowledge of the universal laws of nature. The solution was deism or understanding God's existence as divorced from holy books, divine providence, revealed religion, prophecy and miracles; instead basing religious belief on reason and observation of the natural world. Deists appreciated God as a reasonable Deity. A reasonable God endowed humans with rationality in order that they might discover the moral instructions of the universe in the natural law. God created the universal laws that govern nature, and afterwards humans realize God's will through sound judgment and wise action. Deists were typically (though not always) Protestants, sharing a disdain for the religious dogmatism and blind obedience to tradition exemplified by the Catholic Church. Rather than fight members of the Catholic faith with violence and intolerance, most deists resorted to the use of tamer weapons such as humor and mockery. Both moderate and radical American Enlightenment thinkers, such as James Madison, Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, John Adams and George Washington, were deists. Some struggled with the tensions between Calvinist orthodoxy and deist beliefs, while other subscribed to the populist version of deism advanced by Thomas Paine in The Age of Reason. Franklin was remembered for stating in the Constitutional Convention that "the longer I live, the more convincing proof I see of this truth-that God governs in the affairs of men." In what would become known as the Jefferson Bible (originally The Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth), Jefferson chronicles the life and times of Jesus Christ from a deist perspective, eliminating all mention of miracles or divine intervention. God for deists such as Jefferson never loomed large in humans' day-to-day life beyond offering a moral or humanistic outlook and the resource of reason to discover the content of God's laws. Despite the near absence of God in human life, American deists did not deny His existence, largely because the majority of the populace still remained strongly religious, traditionally pious and supportive of the good works (for example monasteries, religious schools and community service) that the clergy did. b. Liberalism Another idea central to American Enlightenment thinking is liberalism, that is, the notion that humans have natural rights and that government authority is not absolute, but based on the will and consent of the governed. Rather than a radical or revolutionary doctrine, liberalism was rooted in the commercial harmony and tolerant Protestantism embraced by merchants in Northern Europe, particularly Holland and England. Liberals favored the interests of the middle class over those of the high-born aristocracy, an outlook of tolerant pluralism that did not discriminate between consumers or citizens based on their race or creed, a legal system devoted to the protection of private property rights, and an ethos of strong individualism over the passive collectivism associated with feudal arrangements. Liberals also preferred rational argumentation and free exchange of ideas to the uncritical of religious doctrine or governmental mandates. In this way, liberal thinking was anti-authoritarian. Although later liberalism became associated with grassroots democracy and a sharp separation of the public and private domains, early liberalism favored a parliamentarian form of government that protected liberty of expression and movement, the right to petition the government, separation of church and state and the confluence of public and private interests in philanthropic and entrepreneurial endeavors. The claim that private individuals have fundamental God-given rights, such as to property, life, liberty and to pursue their conception of good, begins with the English philosopher John Locke, but also finds expression in Thomas Jefferson's drafting of the Declaration of Independence. The U.S. Bill of Rights, the first ten amendments to the Constitution, guarantees a schedule of individual rights based on the liberal ideal. During the constitutional convention, James Madison responded to the anti-Federalists' demand for a bill of rights as a condition of ratification by reviewing over two-hundred proposals and distilling them into an initial list of twelve suggested amendments to the Constitution, covering the rights of free speech, religious liberty, right to bear arms and habeas corpus, among others. While ten of those suggested were ratified in 1791, one missing amendment (stopping laws created by Congress to increase its members' salaries from taking effect until the next legislative term) would have to wait until 1992 to be ratified as the Twenty-seventh Amendment. Madison's concern that the Bill of Rights should apply not only to the federal government would eventually be accommodated with the passage of the Fourteenth Amendment (especially its due process clause) in 1868 and a series of Supreme Court cases throughout the twentieth-century interpreting each of the ten amendments as "incorporated" and thus protecting citizens against state governments as well. c. Republicanism Classical republicanism is a commitment to the notion that a nation ought to be ruled as a republic, in which selection of the state's highest public official is determined by a general election, rather than through a claim to hereditary right. Republican values include civic patriotism, virtuous citizenship and property-based personality. Developed during late antiquity and early renaissance, classic republicanism differed from early liberalism insofar as rights were not thought to be granted by God in a pre-social state of nature, but were the products of living in political society. On the classical republican view of liberty, citizens exercise freedom within the context of existing social relations, historical associations and traditional communities, not as autonomous individuals set apart from their social and political ties. In this way, liberty for the classical republican is positively defined by the political society instead of negatively defined in terms of the pre-social individual's natural rights. While prefigured by the European Enlightenment, the American Enlightenment also promoted the idea that a nation should be governed as a republic, whereby the state's head is popularly elected, not appointed through a hereditary blood-line. As North American colonists became increasingly convinced that British rule was corrupt and inimical to republican values, they joined militias and eventually formed the American Continental Army under George Washington's command. The Jeffersonian ideal of the yeoman farmer, which had its roots in the similar Roman ideal, represented the eighteenth-century American as both a hard-working agrarian and as a citizen-soldier devoted to the republic. When elected to the highest office of the land, George Washington famously demurred when offered a royal title, preferring instead the more republican title of President. Though scholarly debate persists over the relative importance of liberalism and republicanism during the American Revolution and Founding (see Recent Work section), the view that republican ideas were a formative influence on American Enlightenment thinking has gained widespread acceptance. d. Conservatism Though the Enlightenment is more often associated with liberalism and republicanism, an undeniable strain of conservatism emerged in the last stage of the Enlightenment, mainly as a reaction to the excesses of the French Revolution. In 1790 Edmund Burkeanticipated the dissipation of order and decency in French society following the revolution (often referred to as "the Terror") in his Reflections on the Revolution in France. Though it is argued that Burkean conservatism was a reaction to the Enlightenment (or antiEnlightenment), conservatives were also operating within the framework of Enlightenment ideas. Some Enlightenment claims about human nature are turned back upon themselves and shown to break down when applied more generally to human culture. For instance, Enlightenment faith in universal declarations of human rights do more harm than good when they contravene the conventions and traditions of specific nations, regions and localities. Similar to the classical republicans, Burke believed that human personality was the product of living in a political society, not a set of natural rights that predetermined our social and political relations. Conservatives attacked the notion of a social contract (prominent in the work of Hobbes, Locke and Rousseau) as a mythical construction that overlooked the plurality of groups and perspectives in society, a fact which made brokering compromises inevitable and universal consent impossible. Burke only insisted on a tempered version, not a wholesale rejection of Enlightenment values. Conservatism featured strongly in American Enlightenment thinking. While Burke was critical of the French Revolution, he supported the American Revolution for disposing of English colonial misrule while creatively readapting British traditions and institutions to the American temperament. American Enlightenment thinkers such as James Madison and John Adams held views that echoed and in some cases anticipated Burkean conservatism, leading them to criticize the rise of revolutionary France and the popular pro-French Jacobin clubs during and after the French Revolution. In the forty-ninth Federalist Paper, James Madison deployed a conservative argument against frequent appeals to democratic publics on constitutional questions because they threatened to undermine political stability and substitute popular passion for the "enlightened reason" of elected representatives. Madison's conservative view was opposed to Jefferson's liberal view that a constitutional convention should be convened every twenty years, for "[t]he earth belongs to the living generation," and so each new generation should be empowered to reconsider its constitutional norms. e. Toleration Toleration or tolerant pluralism was also a major theme in American Enlightenment thought. Tolerance of difference developed in parallel with the early liberalism prevalent among Northern Europe's merchant class. It reflected their belief that hatred or fear of other races and creeds interfered with economic trade, extinguished freedom of thought and expression, eroded the basis for friendship among nations and led to persecution and war. Tiring of religious wars (particularly as the 16th century French wars of religion and the 17th century Thirty Years War), European Enlightenment thinkers imagined an age in which enlightened reason not religious dogmatism governed relations between diverse peoples with loyalties to different faiths. The Protestant Reformation and the Treaty of Westphalia significantly weakened the Catholic Papacy, empowered secular political institutions and provided the conditions for independent nation-states to flourish. American thinkers inherited this principle of tolerant pluralism from their European Enlightenment forebearers. Inspired by the Scottish Enlightenment thinkers John Knox and George Buchanan, American Calvinists created open, friendly and tolerant institutions such as the secular public school and democratically organized religion (which became the Presbyterian Church). Many American Enlightenment thinkers, including Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, read and agreed with John Locke's A Letter Concerning Toleration. In it, Locke argued that government is ill-equipped to judge the rightness or wrongness of opposing religious doctrines, faith could not be coerced and if attempted the result would be greater religious and political discord. So, civil government ought to protect liberty of conscience, the right to worship as one chooses (or not to worship at all) and refrain from establishing an official state-sanctioned church. For America's founders, the fledgling nation was to be a land where persons of every faith or no faith could settle and thrive peacefully and cooperatively without fear of persecution by government or fellow citizens. Ben Franklin's belief that religion was an aid to cultivating virtue led him to donate funds to every church in Philadelphia. Defending freedom of conscience, James Madison would write that "[c]onscience is the most sacred of all property." In 1777, Thomas Jefferson drafted a religious liberty bill for Virginia to disestablish the government-sponsored Anglican Church-often referred to as "the precursor to the Religion Clauses of the First Amendment"-which eventually passed with James Madison's help. f. Scientific Progress The Enlightenment enthusiasm for scientific discovery was directly related to the growth of deism and skepticism about received religious doctrine. Deists engaged in scientific inquiry not only to satisfy their intellectual curiosity, but to respond to a divine calling to expose God's natural laws. Advances in scientific knowledge-whether the rejection of the geocentric model of the universe because of Copernicus, Kepler and Galileo's work or the discovery of natural laws such as Newton's mathematical explanation of gravity-removed the need for a constantly intervening God. With the release of Sir Isaac Newton's Principia in 1660, faith in scientific progress took institutional form in the Royal Society of England, the Académie des Sciences in France and later the Academy of Sciences in Germany. In pre-revolutionary America, scientists or natural philosophers belonged to the Royal Society until 1768, when Benjamin Franklin helped create and then served as the first president of the American Philosophical Society. Franklin became one of the most famous American scientists during the Enlightenment period because of his many practical inventions and his theoretical work on the properties of electricity. 3. Four American Enlightenment Thinkers What follows are brief accounts of how four significant thinkers contributed to the eighteenth-century American Enlightenment: Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison and John Adams. a. Franklin Benjamin Franklin, the author, printer, scientist and statesman who led America through a tumultuous period of colonial politics, a revolutionary war and its momentous, though no less precarious, founding as a nation. In his Autobiography, he extolled the virtues of thrift, industry and money-making (or acquisitiveness). For Franklin, the self-interested pursuit of material wealth is only virtuous when it coincides with the promotion of the public good through philanthropy and voluntarism-what is often called "enlightened self-interest." He believed that reason, free trade and a cosmopolitan spirit serve as faithful guides for nation-states to cultivate peaceful relations. Within nation-states, Franklin thought that "independent entrepreneurs make good citizens" because they pursue "attainable goals" and are "capable of living a useful and dignified life." In his autobiography, Franklin claims that the way to "moral perfection" is to cultivate thirteen virtues (temperance, silence, order, resolution, frugality, industry, sincerity, justice, moderation, cleanliness, tranquility, chastity, and humility) as well as a healthy dose of "cheerful prudence." Franklin favored voluntary associations over governmental institutions as mechanisms to channel citizens' extreme individualism and isolated pursuit of private ends into productive social outlets. Not only did Franklin advise his fellow citizens to create and join these associations, but he also founded and participated in many himself. Franklin was a staunch defender of federalism, a critic of narrow parochialism, a visionary leader in world politics and a strong advocate of religious liberty. b. Jefferson A Virginian statesman, scientist and diplomat, Jefferson is probably best known for drafting the Declaration of Independence. Agreeing with Benjamin Franklin, he substituted "pursuit of happiness" for "property" in Locke's schedule of natural rights, so that liberty to pursue the widest possible human ends would be accommodated. Jefferson also exercised immense influence over the creation of the United States' Constitution through his extended correspondence with James Madison during the 1787 Constitutional Convention (since Jefferson was absent, serving as a diplomat in Paris). Just as Jefferson saw theDeclaration as a test of the colonists' will to revolt and separate from Britain, he also saw the Convention in Philadelphia, almost eleven years later, as a grand experiment in creating a new constitutional order. Panel four of the Jefferson Memorial records how Thomas Jefferson viewed constitutions: "I am not an advocate for frequent changes in laws and constitutions, but laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind. As that becomes more developed, more enlightened, as new discoveries are made, new truths discovered and manners and opinions change, with the change of circumstances, institutions must advance also to keep pace with the times." Jefferson's words capture the spirit of organic constitutionalism, the idea that constitutions are living documents that transform over time in pace with popular thought, imagination and opinion. c. Madison Heralded as the "Father of the Constitution," James Madison was, besides one of the most influential architects of the U.S. Constitution, a man of letters, a politician, a scientist and a diplomat who left an enduring legacy on American philosophical thought. As a tireless advocate for the ratification of the Constitution, Madison advanced his most groundbreaking ideas in his jointly authoring The Federalist Paperswith John Jay and Alexander Hamilton. Indeed, two of his most enduring ideas-the large republic thesis and the argument for separation-of-powers and checks-and-balances-are contained there. In the tenth Federalist paper, Madison explains the problem of factions, namely, that the development of groups with shared interests (advocates or interest groups) is inevitable and dangerous to republican government. If we try to vanquish factions, then we will in turn destroy the liberty upon which their existence and activities are founded. Baron d' Montesquieu, the seventeenth-century French philosopher, believed that the only way to have a functioning republic, one that was sufficiently democratic, was for it to be small, both in population and land mass (on the order of Ancient Athens or Sparta). He then argues that a large and diverse republic will stop the formation of a majority faction; if small groups cannot communicate over long distances and coordinate effectively, the threat will be negated and liberty will be preserved ("you make it less probable that a majority of the whole will have a common motive to invade the rights of other citizens"). When factions formed inside the government, a clever institutional design of checks and balances (first John Adams's idea, where each branch would have a hand in the others' domain) would avert excessive harm, so that "ambition must be made to counteract ambition" and, consequently, government will effectively "control itself." d. Adams John Adams was also a founder, statesman, diplomat and eventual President who contributed to American Enlightenment thought. Among his political writings, three stand out: Dissertation on the Canon and Feudal Law (1776), A Defense of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America, Against the Attack of M. Turgot (1787-8), and Discourses on Davila (1791). In the Dissertation, Adams faults Great Britain for deciding to introduce canon and feudal law, "the two greatest systems of tyranny," to the North American colonies. Once introduced, elections ceased in the North American colonies, British subjects felt enslaved and revolution became inevitable. In the Defense, Adams offers an uncompromising defense of republicanism. He disputes Turgot's apology for unified and centralized government, arguing that insurance against consolidated state power and support for individual liberty require separating government powers between branches and installing careful checks and balances. Nevertheless, a strong executive branch is needed to defend the people against "aristocrats" who will attempt to deprive liberty from the mass of people. Revealing the Enlightenment theme of conservatism, Adams criticized the notion of unrestricted popular rule or pure democracy in the Discourses. Since humans are always desirous of increasing their personal power and reputation, all the while making invidious comparisons, government must be designed to constrain the effects of these passionate tendencies. Adams writes: "Consider that government is intended to set bounds to passions which nature has not limited; and to assist reason, conscience, justice, and truth in controlling interests which, without it, would be as unjust as uncontrollable." 4. Contemporary Work Invocations of universal freedom draw their inspiration from Enlightenment thinkers such as John Locke, Immanuel Kant, and Thomas Jefferson, but come into conflict with contemporary liberal appeals to multiculturalism and pluralism. Each of these Enlightenment thinkers sought to ground the legitimacy of the state on a theory of rational-moral political order reflecting universal truths about human nature-for instance, that humans are carriers of inalienable rights (Locke), autonomous agents (Kant), or fundamentally equal creations (Jefferson). However, many contemporary liberals-for instance, Graeme Garrard, John Gray and Richard Rorty-fault Enlightenment liberalism for its failure to acknowledge and accommodate the differences among citizens' incompatible and equally reasonable religious, moral and philosophical doctrines, especially in multicultural societies. According to these critics, Enlightenment liberalism, rather than offering a neutral framework, discloses a full-blooded doctrine that competes with alternative views of truth, the good life, and human nature. This pluralist critique of Enlightenment liberalism's universalism makes it difficult to harmonize the American Founders' appeal to universal human rights with their insistence on religious tolerance. However, as previously noted, evidence of Burkean conservatism offers an alternative to the strong universalism that these recent commentators criticize in American Enlightenment thought. What in recent times has been characterized as the 'Enlightenment project' is the general idea that human rationality can and should be made to serve ethical and humanistic ends. If human societies are to achieve genuine moral progress, parochialism, dogma and prejudice ought to give way to science and reason in efforts to solve pressing problems. The American Enlightenment project signifies how America has taken a leading role in promoting Enlightenment ideals during that period of human history commonly referred to as 'modernity.' Still, there is no consensus about the exact legacy of American Enlightenment thinkers-for instance, whether republican or liberal ideas are predominant. Until the publication of J. G. A. Pocock's The Machiavellian Moment (1975), most scholars agreed that liberal (especially Lockean) ideas were more dominant than republican ones. Pockock's work initiated a sea change towards what is now the widely accepted view that liberal and republican ideas had relatively equal sway during the eighteenthcentury Enlightenment, both in America and Europe. Gordon Wood and Bernard Bailyn contend that republicanism was dominant and liberalism recessive in American Enlightenment thought. Isaac Kramnick still defends the orthodox position that American Enlightenment thinking was exclusively Lockean and liberal, thus explaining the strongly individualistic character of modern American culture. 5. References and Further Reading  Bailyn, Bernard. The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution. Harvard: Harvard University Press, 1967.  Ferguson, Robert A. The American Enlightenment. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1997.  Hampson, Norman. The Enlightenment: An Evaluation of its Assumptions. London: Penguin, 1968.  Himmelfarb, Gertrude. The Roads to Modernity: The British, French and American Enlightenments. London: Vintage, 2008.  Israel, Jonathan. A Resolution of the Mind-Radical Enlightenment and the Intellectual Origins of Modern Democracy. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009.  Kramnick, Isaac. Age of Ideology: Political Thought, 1750 to the Present. New York: Prentice Hall, 1979.  May, Henry F. The Enlightenment in America. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1978.  O'Brien, Conor Cruise. The Long Affair: Thomas Jefferson and the French Revolution, 1785-1800. London: Pimlico, 1998.  O'Hara, Kieron. The Enlightenment: A Beginner's Guide. Oxford: OneWorld, 2010.  Pockock, John G. A. The Machiavellian Moment: Florentine Political Thought and the American Republican Tradition. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1975.  Wilson, Ellen J. and Peter H. Reill. Encyclopedia of the Enlightenment. New York: Book Builders Inc., 2004.  Wood, Gordon. The Creation of the American Republic. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1969. Author Information Shane J. Ralston Email: email@example.com Pennsylvania State University U. S. A. Article printed from Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy: http://www.iep.utm.edu/amer-enl/ Copyright © The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. All rights reserved.


Dietrich von Hildebrand and the Philosophy of Religion

Philosophy

Dietrich von Hildebrand seeks to pursue the idea that the discipline of phenomenology can offer a way of surmounting what Kant saw as the intrinsic limitations of human metaphysical enquiry. In this book review of the 2021 edition of Hildebrandâs What is Philosophy?, Hildebrandâs train of thought is reconstructed in some detail, from his opening remarks about knowing in general through to his account of the intuition of essences, the question of objectivity, and the overarching purpose of philosophy. Hildebrandâs argument culminates in the claim that philosophy is not only the fundamental activity of a mind turned toward God, but is properly a preamble to religious faith. The review concludes by raising a number of objections to Hildebrandâs version of phenomenological realism.

Shum, P. (2022), Review of Dietrich von Hildebrand's What is Philosophy?, in Phenomenological Reviews, 18 March 2022. Page 1 of 21 Book Review of Hildebrand, D. (2021), What is Philosophy?, (Steubenville, Ohio: Hildebrand Press). Introduction Any philosopher's epistemology will exert a considerable influence on his or her attitude toward the place and significance of religion in human life. Even for nonphilosophers, and those of us who may not be academically inclined, our openness and receptiveness toward religion will be implicitly influenced by numerous general epistemological considerations. These might include our understanding of what kinds of things are amenable to being known, the possible modalities of their disclosure, and the appropriate criteria for confirming the validity of any ostensible discovery. Dietrich von Hildebrand attaches particular significance to the place of religion in our lives, and to the kind of philosophical enquiry that can be conducive toward religious conviction and commitment. He thinks not only that philosophical knowledge has its climax in its knowledge of the existence and attributes of God, but that philosophy itself is the fundamental activity of the mind turned toward God, and that the proximity of an object's relation to God is the yardstick by which philosophers ought to rate the importance of the objects of philosophical knowledge. He maintains that religious convictions count as knowledge, and that God is able to disclose Himself to, and communicate with ordinary religious practitioners who may not themselves have the requisite intellectual capacities for critical philosophical enquiry. Impartial readers of What is Philosophy? are entitled to ask themselves whether Hildebrand's epistemology has the resources to warrant such a trenchant affirmation of the importance of religion. Of particular relevance here is Hildebrand's response to Kant's revolutionary claim that human knowledge about the universe is Shum, P. (2022), Review of Dietrich von Hildebrand's What is Philosophy?, in Phenomenological Reviews, 18 March 2022. Page 2 of 21 necessarily delimited by subjective a priori features of the mind. An important part of Hildebrand's reply centres on the idea that synthetic a priori truths can be discovered during metaphysical enquiry because at least some objects are capable of being given to us in their essential being. Let us examine closely how Hildebrand develops his position, before trying to assess its strengths and weaknesses. Knowledge in General An important starting point for Hildebrand lies in the anthropological question concerning the distinction between humans and animals. Hildebrand observes that humans, unlike animals, are inclined to wonder about the meaning of life, and the destiny of their own species. This is part of what it means to say that humans are "ordered toward eternity". Philosophical questioning of this kind is an intrinsic part of being human. For this reason, Hildebrand regards epistemology as first philosophy, and begins the book with an account of knowledge in general. As the book proceeds, the epistemological enquiry narrows its focus to seek to clarify the true nature of a priori knowledge. When Hildebrand accords knowing the status of a foundational phenomenological datum, he means that knowing as such is an act of consciousness that cannot be reduced to anything else. He seeks to investigate the phenomenology of knowing: to consider "what it is like" to know something, and to bring to light the essential structures of this fundamental act. For Hildebrand, knowing is an intentional participation in the world. In the first instance, knowing is essentially receptive: it is a receiving, not a producing. Yet this is not the whole story, for if knowing is receptive, it is not purely passive. Knowing has an active element, in that there is a mental "going with" the object. This "going with" the object is an intellectual penetration of it. It is a "making common cause" with the object. We find, then, that while it is true Shum, P. (2022), Review of Dietrich von Hildebrand's What is Philosophy?, in Phenomenological Reviews, 18 March 2022. Page 3 of 21 that the object discloses itself to the subject, there is an active cooperation on the part of consciousness with the self-disclosure of the object. Knowing is in this sense a mental possessing of the object, an intentional participation in the object's being. I note en passant that there is a connection between Hildebrand's "going with" account of knowledge and the topic of empathy. The subject's response to the object may be an affective one, such as love. On the other hand, a response could be theoretical, like conviction or conjecture. Hence an important difference between conviction and knowing is that knowing is a receiving, whilst conviction is a response to that receiving. In other words, conviction is secondary with respect to knowing. Conviction posits not only the existence of the object, but a state-of-affairs pertaining to the object. The question of the metaphysical positing of the object of knowledge over against merely affirming that there is a fact of the matter about the object's properties turns out to be an important theme in Hildebrand's epistemology as the book proceeds. Taking cognizance of something is predominantly passive, but judging and asserting are more active. A precondition of judging and asserting is a prior act of taking cognizance. The object of an act of judging is a state-of-affairs, i.e. a putative fact. Asserting objectifies knowing (taking cognizance) into a proposition. Basic Forms of Knowledge We find, then, that there are different kinds of knowledge, which can take place in different ways, and with different possible kinds of object being known. One kind of knowing involves the epistemic state of knowing about something, or knowing a fact, a set of facts, or a body of information. This kind of knowing can have varying levels of certitude. It is said to be superactual in the sense that I might happen to know [wissen], for example, that the capital of China is Beijing, regardless Shum, P. (2022), Review of Dietrich von Hildebrand's What is Philosophy?, in Phenomenological Reviews, 18 March 2022. Page 4 of 21 of whether I am thinking about this fact at the present time. Superactual knowing is possible due to the conserving power of the human mind. Superactual knowledge can influence my understanding of a given situation in an implicit manner, i.e. a manner which is not consciously foregrounded. Hildebrand wants to include religious convictions in this kind of knowing. An important distinction that Hildebrand wishes to emphasise is between a static knowing and a dynamic coming to know something. An episode of taking cognizance is said to be (epistemically) dynamic because the subject comes to know something during the episode, something s/he did not know before. Static cases of knowing are normally the outcome of a dynamic episode of taking cognizance, or of multiple such episodes. An epistemological theme that Hildebrand develops is this idea of a dynamic taking cognizance "giving birth" to a static possessing. The Nature of Philosophical Knowledge In Chapter 3, Hildebrand elaborates in more detail upon his taxonomy of different types of knowledge. Two key distinctions that he draws attention to are (a) the distinction between pre-systematic and philosophical enquiry; and (b) the distinction between naïve and theoretical pre-systematic enquiry. As far as (a) is concerned, pre-systematic enquiry is the kind of enquiry we often undertake that falls short of the rigorous requirements of philosophy. As far as (b) is concerned, theoretical pre-systematic enquiry involves reflection, whilst naïve pre-systematic enquiry does not. When Hildebrand looks more closely at instances of naïve pre-systematic enquiry, he discovers that they come in several different types. Some instances are completely unthematic, whilst others are tacitly thematic. Some instances are what Hildebrand calls "pragmatic", such as a cook checking to see if a pan of water is Shum, P. (2022), Review of Dietrich von Hildebrand's What is Philosophy?, in Phenomenological Reviews, 18 March 2022. Page 5 of 21 boiling. Pragmatic object thematicity sees the object in instrumental terms. There is a particularly important form of non-pragmatic enquiry, which Hildebrand calls "special naïve taking cognizance". When special naïve taking cognizance takes place, an object becomes "crystal clear [...] in its deepest nature" to the observer. An example of this is suddenly seeing the true nature of someone's personality. Theoretical knowledge is knowledge that stems from reflection, over against knowledge that stems from perception. This is to say that in the transition from naïve enquiry to a theoretical attitude, something is gained, namely reflection, but something is also lost, namely proximity to the object. So-called "organic" theoretical knowledge grows "organically" out of episodes of naïve taking cognizance. It is a kind of condensation of episodes of naïve taking cognizance. The foregoing discussion of non-systematic enquiry positions Hildebrand to specify some of the distinctive characteristics of a truly philosophical form of enquiry. In philosophical enquiry, the degree of certitude attached to a state-of-affairs is always commensurate with its level of givenness. Philosophical taking cognizance seeks to penetrate to an even deeper level of the concrete givenness of the object than naïve taking cognizance. Philosophical knowledge is always self-critical in the sense of examining its own (a) well-foundedness of premises; (b) stringency of arguments. (It is interesting to note in this context that notwithstanding the stress Hildebrand places on self-criticality and rigour in philosophy, he also maintains that there is a place under certain conditions for the transmission of philosophical truths by tradition.) A particularly high degree of knowledge thematicity is present during philosophical enquiry. Yet philosophical cognizance very often also foregrounds enquiry into the object in its own right. So there is in operation in philosophical enquiry both thematicity of enquiry and thematicity of the object. Sometimes the Shum, P. (2022), Review of Dietrich von Hildebrand's What is Philosophy?, in Phenomenological Reviews, 18 March 2022. Page 6 of 21 thematicity of enquiry predominates, and sometimes the thematicity of the object predominates. In all cases, however, there needs to be an organic stemming of philosophical conclusions from episodes of naïve taking cognizance. We might say that Hildebrand perceives a "snake in the grass" threatening the philosophical project. He places this threat under the rubric of "superficial thinking". Superficial thinking can be unself-critical, unsystematic, and liable to lose all authentic contact with the object. Hildebrand discusses a variety of possible causes of superficial thinking. Superficial thinking may rely on arguments that one has learned unquestioningly from someone else. It may involve an unjustified generalisation taken from a single perceptual episode. It may involve the unconscious acceptance of premises that are mistakenly presumed to be self-evident. Another mistake is to import a statement from science into philosophy and then treat the statement as metaphysical. An example of this would be claiming that miracles are impossible. The outcome of such lapses is often a prejudicing, impairment, or interruption of the accuracy of attempts at naïve taking cognizance. The superficial thinker's enquiry fails to penetrate to the concrete givenness of the object. The Object of Philosophical Knowledge In Hildebrand's phenomenology, there emerges an alignment of truth with being. One example of this alignment is to be found in Hildebrand's view that the principle of non-contradiction is true not by virtue of being a tautology, but instead on the grounds that it is established by rational intuition. Hildebrand's justification here is that when an existent object is brought to givenness, its existence is intuitionally self-evident. In this context, one sees that it is not possible for something to both be and not be. This renders the principle of non-contradiction synthetic (i.e. not analytic) in the Kantian terminology. Hildebrand thus upholds Kant's synthetic/analytic Shum, P. (2022), Review of Dietrich von Hildebrand's What is Philosophy?, in Phenomenological Reviews, 18 March 2022. Page 7 of 21 distinction, even though he may on occasion use the term "tautological" in the place of analytic, and "non-tautological" in the place of synthetic. In Hildebrand's view, one of the most important aims of philosophy is to discover a priori states-of-affairs. But what exactly does Hildebrand mean by a priori? An a priori state-of-affairs is one which is intrinsically necessary. This does not mean that all a priori states-of-affairs are restricted to logic and mathematics. On the contrary, Hildebrand considers propositions like "Moral values presuppose a person as bearer", "Love includes a desire for union", "Moral guilt presupposes responsibility", and "It is not possible for an object to both be and not be" to be synthetic a priori. When it is discovered, an a priori state-of-affairs is known with certainty. This view of a priori knowledge is strongly influenced by that of Plato in Meno. It is distinct from another sense of the a priori that is common in philosophy, which is that of a formal prerequisite. For Hildebrand, it is certainly not the case that all a priori knowledge is obvious at first sight. Instead, a priori knowledge can be acquired by intuitional contact with the object, or by logical deduction, or by some combination of the two. Yet philosophers should be able to explain their a priori findings to others in such a way that they can become either self-evident or strictly proved by deduction. Deduction itself is ultimately founded upon an intuitional grasping of the truth of the laws of logic. A priori givenness is completely different from empirical givenness. Ascertaining an essentially necessary state-of-affairs does not depend upon empirical evidence. It depends only upon the givenness of a necessary essence. A necessary essence could be given in a dream or in an act of the imagination. The foundation of Shum, P. (2022), Review of Dietrich von Hildebrand's What is Philosophy?, in Phenomenological Reviews, 18 March 2022. Page 8 of 21 the possibility of synthetic a priori knowledge is the faculty of the intuition of a necessary essence. So experience is involved here, but not empirical experience. There are different types of unity. A heap of trash is an accidental unity. Secondly, the essence of gold, and of the lion species are known as morphic unities. Thirdly, in Hildebrand's terminology, there are necessary essential unities, which are the same as intrinsically necessary unities. Hildebrand also refers to these as genuine essences. Examples of genuine essences are love, triangle, person, number, moral value. This brings us to Hildebrand's notion of intelligibility. The heap of trash mentioned above is intelligible as a unity, but only just. It is lacking in meaningfulness. It has the character of being accidental or contingent. Of greater intelligibility are the morphic unities and the regularities in nature that can be discovered by science. These entities and patterns have a kind of necessity to them, but it is a natural necessity as opposed to an intrinsic necessity. We might say that they are naturally intelligible. Hildebrand reserves the highest level of intelligibility, which he calls incomparable intelligibility, for entities and states-of-affairs that are intrinsically necessary. Entities and states-of-affairs having the property of being incomparably intelligible are capable of being known with certainty. They become self-evident in the course of phenomenological enquiry. An example of an incomparably intelligible state-of-affairs is "Moral values presuppose a person as bearer." Having intuitional access to a genuine essence is not the same as being able to define it. The essence of love, for example, is amenable to phenomenological investigation, but it is not amenable to being defined. In Hildebrand's view, it is a mistake to think that the intuition of genuine essences is somehow less Shum, P. (2022), Review of Dietrich von Hildebrand's What is Philosophy?, in Phenomenological Reviews, 18 March 2022. Page 9 of 21 philosophically respectable than (a) finding a definition; (b) formulating a concept; or (c) deductive reasoning. A genuine essence, by virtue of its incomparable intelligibility, can be known with certainty by philosophers. This, however, is not the same as indefeasibility on the part of the knower. This is to say that philosophers are justified in attributing certainty to their knowledge of a genuine essence in the case that it becomes self-evident to them, but the findings of philosophers always remain defeasible. Hildebrand regards it as an absolutely certain philosophical discovery that genuine essences have their own autonomous being in their own ideal metaphysical sphere. Hildebrand understands metaphysics to be the philosophy of real being, both possible and actually existing. The metaphysical picture that he sets out involves a concrete sphere of individual objects and an ideal sphere of essences. Both the concrete and the ideal spheres count as real in Hildebrand's metaphysics. Hildebrand's main criticism of Kant is that Kant was wrong to think that metaphysical enquiry could not disclose synthetic a priori truths about the noumenal world. Hildebrand argues that he has disproven this key Kantian tenet, by showing that it is possible to acquire a priori knowledge of genuine essences. Statements affirming what we intuit about genuine essences are synthetic a priori truths about the way things are in themselves, which will hold true in any universe. Hildebrand admits that he does not provide a very detailed explication of how the ideal and concrete spheres interact with each other, saying that this is a very mysterious problem. What he is prepared to say on this matter is that the two spheres are "bonded" very closely, and that there is significant variation between such things as numbers, colours, moral values, and persons, in their modes of existence, and in the modes of "bonding" that can take place between the concrete and ideal spheres. The Shum, P. (2022), Review of Dietrich von Hildebrand's What is Philosophy?, in Phenomenological Reviews, 18 March 2022. Page 10 of 21 relation between the concrete sphere and the ideal sphere is one of "partaking". Hildebrand also maintains that it is plausible to hypothesise that genuine essences exist "in God" in some sense or senses that remain to be clarified. This brings us to the question of the place and significance of God in Hildebrand's philosophy. Hildebrand's concept of God is that of an infinite person who is the ground and source of all existence. Hildebrand believes the Cosmological Argument validly shows the existence of such a God. This God has a sui generis mode of existence that Hildebrand calls "necessary real existence", which is a different mode of existence from that possessed by genuine essences. Objectivity and Independence from the Human Mind One of the main questions considered in Chapter 5 concerns the relation between electromagnetic waves and colours. Are they the same kind of thing? Is one more real than the other? Are colours fully objective? This discussion helps to illuminate Hildebrand's metaphysics, clarifying his view of which entities can be regarded as metaphysically real, and the place of the objects of science in this metaphysical picture. Hildebrand's investigation into the phenomenology of perceiving a colour concludes that colours are different from the objects of science, on the grounds that something cannot be such-and-such a colour mind independently, but instead can only be such-and-such a colour for a perceiving consciousness. Colours, then, cannot be said to be mind independent, because truth claims about the colour of objects presuppose the cooperation of the human mind. Hildebrand notes that the term "subjective" has many possible senses in philosophy, and that it is for this reason ambiguous to assert that colours are subjective. However, if "subjective" is taken strictly and solely in the sense of presupposing the cooperation of the human mind, Shum, P. (2022), Review of Dietrich von Hildebrand's What is Philosophy?, in Phenomenological Reviews, 18 March 2022. Page 11 of 21 then propositions of the form "X is subjectively such-and-such a colour" are capable of being objectively true or false, with the proviso that such statements do not belong to science. This is sufficient, in Hildebrand's view, to make colours objectively real. An important corollary of this latter conclusion is that some things are objectively real without being mind independent. Colours and electromagnetic waves are on different "levels" of being, because electromagnetic waves are mind independent whilst colours are not. One of the most distinctive and unusual features of Hildebrand's account of our perception of the natural world lies in his view that some (and only some) phenomenal properties are capable of bearing a "message" character. The message characteristic consists in the relevant phenomenal property appearing as if it were a message, ostensibly from God. Colours are capable of bearing this characteristic. For a believer in God, this message character amounts to "God-willed". If something is "God-willed" it is thereby meaningful. Possessing a message character is evidence for the observer that an object is real. An example of this message character could be an apprehension by an observer that a blue sky is intended by God to look blue to humans. This gives the blueness of the sky an objective validity. Hildebrand's account of the message characteristic of certain phenomenal properties is bound up with his view that God created the world, and that humans are intended by God to be masters of creation. The manner in which an object appears to humans is held to be pertinent to its objective meaning, on the grounds that God created this world for humans. This line of reasoning supports Hildebrand's conclusion that colour has an objective meaning for humans. According to this view, one of the reasons God created electromagnetic waves was to make colours visible to Shum, P. (2022), Review of Dietrich von Hildebrand's What is Philosophy?, in Phenomenological Reviews, 18 March 2022. Page 12 of 21 humans. The red colour of a rose is no mere illusion. Instead, if a rose looks red, it does so because it is intended to look like that by God. The Two Basic Themes of Knowledge The title of Chapter 6 turns out to be somewhat ambiguous, since it could refer either to the distinction between perceptual and non-perceptual knowledge or to the distinction between cognitive and contemplative knowing, both of which are relevant to what is discussed. Perceptual knowledge is more foundational than its nonperceptual counterpart, in Hildebrand's view, on the grounds that during perception [Wahrnehmung] the object is given presentationally to consciousness. Perceptual knowledge is what preoccupies Hildebrand in this chapter, and his main finding is that perception can contain both cognitive and contemplative moments. These are supplementary to the moment of "taking cognizance" that is discussed earlier in the book. Intellectual intuition supports both the cognitive and the contemplative parts of knowing an essence. Cognitive knowing, which precedes contemplative knowing, is a grasping or apprehension of the object for what it is. Cognitive knowing, in Hildebrand's terminology, is "notional", enabling the subject to "appropriate" the object. Contemplative knowing, by contrast, is more intimate, involving a "dwelling within" the object by consciousness. Contemplation is only appropriate in relation to certain kinds of "spiritual" object, such as an artwork, a personality, or a value. Taken collectively, Hildebrand proposes that the three perceptual moments of taking cognizance, cognition, and contemplation are able to "fecundate" the subject's mind in an especially "intimate" and "plentiful" way. Characteristic Features of Philosophical Knowledge and Enquiry When it comes to the question of philosophical method, Hildebrand sets great store on rigour. This is what Hildebrand means when he says that philosophical Shum, P. (2022), Review of Dietrich von Hildebrand's What is Philosophy?, in Phenomenological Reviews, 18 March 2022. Page 13 of 21 enquiry must always be "critical". Premises must be justified; intuitions must be evident; arguments must be stringent. There can be no place for whimsical or fanciful thoughts. Indeed, philosophy, in Hildebrand's view, should be no less rigorous than science. However, Hildebrand does recognise that there is a difference between scientific rigour and philosophical rigour. Science and philosophy go about their business in different ways, and have differing methods. When it comes to valuing scientific and philosophical rigour, Hildebrand regards the form of exactness to be found in philosophy to be superior to that of science. Hildebrand recognises that this attitude toward rigour in philosophy raises a problem. If the highest quality philosophy really does proceed in such a rigorous way, why do so many philosophical questions remain mired in controversy? One would have thought that if the kind of rigour Hildebrand aspires to were attainable, then the field of philosophical knowledge would be expanding in much the same fashion, and with as little controversy, as mathematical and scientific knowledge. To be sure, controversies do arise from time to time in mathematics and science, but they are normally resolved relatively quickly. The situation is quite different in philosophy. In the course of Chapter 7, Hildebrand indicates three ways of defending himself against this objection. The first way is to argue that the view that philosophical debates seem to be intractably mired in controversy is excessively bleak. He contends that many important philosophical insights are completely uncontroversial. Examples of these are Augustine's "Si fallor, sum", Plato's distinction between a priori and empirical knowledge, and Kant's distinction between synthetic and analytic propositions. Such great philosophical discoveries are never "dethroned". This claim leads Hildebrand to suppose that there is no reason in principle why philosophical controversies should not be resolved satisfactorily, even Shum, P. (2022), Review of Dietrich von Hildebrand's What is Philosophy?, in Phenomenological Reviews, 18 March 2022. Page 14 of 21 if the time it might take for such controversies to be resolved should happen to be de facto longer than is the norm in mathematics and science. Hildebrand's second line of response is to argue that there are two special reasons peculiar to the way humans carry out philosophical activity that are conducive to controversies arising. Firstly, not everyone develops the requisite philosophical capacities properly. This can result in some so-called "philosophers" departing from the strict requirements of critical philosophy. Secondly, some philosophical truths are opposed because people have a subconscious reluctance to accept the implications of such truths for their personal and moral life. Hildebrand's third line of response is to suggest that science is more controversial than we might think. From an historical perspective, we find that science continually replaces one theory with another. So science is "controversial" in that sense. Hildebrand fails to note, however, that mathematics is not "controversial" in this sense. The Meaning of Philosophy for the Human Person In the concluding chapter of What is Philosophy?, Hildebrand makes the case for an especially central role for philosophy in human life, by arguing that philosophical knowledge has its climax in our knowledge of the existence and attributes of God. Philosophy is continuous with the pre-scientific view of the world, which is a naïve living contact. This means that instead of pulling the rug away from under the naïve understanding of the world, as science often seems to do, philosophy starts from, and clarifies what is already given in, our naïve living contact with the world. Philosophical enquiry is for this reason a more fundamental "position" of the human mind than the scientific attitude, and is able, furthermore, to grant the subject a participation in the being of its objects. Shum, P. (2022), Review of Dietrich von Hildebrand's What is Philosophy?, in Phenomenological Reviews, 18 March 2022. Page 15 of 21 Only from the philosophical standpoint does the real meaning of things become clear. This affects our understanding of their relative value and consequently shapes the human personality in accordance with philosophical truth. Grasping philosophical truth, or coming into contact in some way with others who have themselves grasped philosophical truth, helps the individual to maintain and deepen his living contact with the world. The complaint that philosophy may seem abstruse and disconnected from real life is therefore mistaken. Not everyone can be a philosopher. Hildebrand considers some ways in which the enormous benefits flowing from philosophical knowledge might be shared with those who lack the intellectual wherewithal to grasp it directly. The answer is to begin at the level of naïve living contact and then distil out of it the philosophical principle. Ordinary people rooted in a naïve living contact with reality are endowed with a latent sense for truth. Such non-philosophers have a "receptivity" to philosophical truth since it is continuous with their own naïve experience. This receptivity makes possible an encounter between the ordinary person and genuine philosophical findings. The bringing of philosophical truth to ordinary people is important in Hildebrand's eyes, since he regards philosophy as constituting the proper foundation for the formation of people's political views, and the foundation of a society's culture, art, and literature. Philosophy is thus capable of exerting a pervasive influence on the lives of ordinary people. The most important role that Hildebrand assigns to philosophy, however, is that it should be a preamble to faith. It orientates the mind toward the eternal, and prepares the soul for God's revelation. Yet it is worth noting that for a book stressing the foundational importance of philosophy for human life, the final chapter has a surprising claim embedded within it, for Hildebrand maintains that that which "[...] is Shum, P. (2022), Review of Dietrich von Hildebrand's What is Philosophy?, in Phenomenological Reviews, 18 March 2022. Page 16 of 21 disclosed by revelation remains beyond what is accessible to philosophy." This raises the problem of epistemological justification for what is putatively disclosed by revelation. Objection 1: The Question of Philosophical Rigour In support of his claim that philosophy is in the process of building up a generally accepted and uncontroversial body of knowledge, Hildebrand cites a number of important philosophical findings that attract few objections. This line of reasoning is not compelling for two reasons. Firstly, I note that the list of uncontroversial philosophical discoveries that Hildebrand cites is very short. Secondly, the premise that there exists a set of core philosophical discoveries that all or most philosophers can agree upon does not imply that the philosophers involved are working in a highly rigorous fashion. A group of art critics may agree, for example, that Shakespeare's King Lear and Mozart's The Magic Flute are indisputably great works of art, but it does not follow from this that the activity of art criticism is proceeding in a manner capable of building up a generally accepted and uncontroversial body of knowledge. One of the drawbacks of Hildebrand's intuitionism is that it can in itself be conducive toward philosophical controversy arising. If one philosopher affirms the intuitional self-evidence of X and another denies it, it is difficult to see how the matter can be settled, either by empirical evidence or the evidence of rational argumentation. Hildebrand's claim that some philosophers may be disinclined to accept self-evident moral truths due to a subconscious reluctance to accept the implications of such truths for their personal life seems speculative and unverifiable. It would have been more prudent of Hildebrand to investigate the reasons that such dissenters have provided for doubting the truth of such allegedly "self-evident" claims. Shum, P. (2022), Review of Dietrich von Hildebrand's What is Philosophy?, in Phenomenological Reviews, 18 March 2022. Page 17 of 21 Objection 2: Existence of God An important part of Hildebrand's overall philosophical system is the view that there are good grounds for believing in the existence of God, understood as an infinite person who is the ground and source of all existence. This premise is not treated as a given by Hildebrand, but instead is found to be amenable to investigation and justification by philosophical activity itself. This is why Hildebrand inserts into Chapter 4 a brief two page discussion supporting the validity of the Cosmological Argument for the existence of God [136-7]. I wish to suggest that Hildebrand's discussion of the Cosmological Argument is inadequate for a number of reasons. Firstly, I would have expected some response from Hildebrand to Kant's objection to the cosmological proof of God contained in his First Critique. Kant argues that the cosmological proof relies on an ill-founded concept, namely that of an absolutely necessary being. Kant also objects that the cosmological proof applies the category of causation beyond the realm of possible experience. More generally, Hildebrand must have been aware of the significant philosophical controversy that has built up over many centuries surrounding the Cosmological Argument. A twentiethcentury philosopher whose system relies heavily on the presumed existence of God cannot simply wind back the clock and pretend he is writing in the Middle Ages. Secondly, the God that Hildebrand believes in is a personal God, and the Cosmological Argument, even if valid, does not purport to show the existence of a personal God, merely a first cause. This is another reason why Hildebrand's decision to cite the Cosmological Argument in Chapter 4 is slightly puzzling, when alternative philosophical arguments exist in favour of the existence of a personal God. Thirdly, if there were a personal God, one would have thought that such a God would wish to make Himself accessible to us in the expressly intuitional fashion that Shum, P. (2022), Review of Dietrich von Hildebrand's What is Philosophy?, in Phenomenological Reviews, 18 March 2022. Page 18 of 21 Hildebrand places so much emphasis upon. I would have expected Hildebrand's argumentation in support of the existence of God to be intuitional and phenomenological, as opposed to cosmological. Objection 3: Colour The phenomenology of colour perception is a topic Hildebrand returns to on numerous occasions throughout this book. It is, however, not essential to the book's main theme, which is the perception of genuine essences. Hildebrand thinks colour in general, and individual colours, count as examples of genuine essences. I find Hildebrand's discussion of colour problematic for the following reasons. Firstly, there is the claim that one of the reasons God created electromagnetic waves was to make colours visible to humans. This is a speculative claim about the content of God's thoughts. No evidence, be it phenomenological, empirical, or rational, is provided to support it. The claim is philosophically baseless. Secondly, there is the claim that colours are among the phenomenal properties of an object capable of bearing the so-called "message" character, which consists in a colour appearing as if it were a message, ostensibly from God. This, in contrast to the claim about electromagnetic waves just discussed, is a phenomenological claim, but one which I believe is mistaken. I do not concur with it, on the grounds that an investigation into the phenomenology of colour perception could at best make the case for colours possessing an expressive quality, as opposed to a communicative quality. Communication is distinct from expression. Hence Hildebrand's claim about the communicative quality, or message characteristic, qua phenomenological claim, is in my opinion at odds with the descriptive facts. Objection 4: Ideal and Concrete Spheres Shum, P. (2022), Review of Dietrich von Hildebrand's What is Philosophy?, in Phenomenological Reviews, 18 March 2022. Page 19 of 21 One way of objecting to a metaphysical position is to point out that it raises a new problem, one which would not have arisen if a different metaphysical approach had been adopted. Hildebrand's metaphysical position is susceptible to this line of objection, for it raises the question of how the ideal realm of essences and the concrete realm of individuals are supposed to interact. If the essence of the colour red is metaphysically real, and a red rose is metaphysically real, then the nature of their interaction also becomes a metaphysical question. Hildebrand registers his awareness of this problem in at least two ways. One way is to claim that he wishes to avoid a two-world metaphysics. Another way is to concede that the nature of the interaction between the ideal and concrete spheres must be very mysterious, and that he is unable, in this book at least, to make much headway in explicating it. Objection 5: Purely Subjective Transcendence According to Hildebrand, there is an essence not only of triangle as such, but an essence of every triangle. I have a worry, however, that Hildebrand is overlooking the distinction between the existence of an essence of a triangle T, and there being a fact of the matter about the properties of the triangle T. Suppose T is the triangle whose vertices are at the points (2,1), (5,9), and (17,3) in the plane. Mathematicians are able to investigate and meaningfully discuss the properties of T because T is fully defined and there is a fact of the matter about its properties, such as the length of its sides, and the internal angles at its vertices. I am not free to imagine the properties of T being anything I like, but am instead constrained by the facts of the matter. This is to say that T is subjectively transcendent to my mind, or any other mind. There is no obvious reason to commit ourselves to the claim that T exists metaphysically or that the essence of T exists metaphysically. T is a construct of the mind, a purely notional thing. T is an idea, and hence ideal, but not real. There is no obvious reason to think Shum, P. (2022), Review of Dietrich von Hildebrand's What is Philosophy?, in Phenomenological Reviews, 18 March 2022. Page 20 of 21 that ideal things such as T are real. On the contrary, T is what Husserl would term irreal, that is, something that can be the object of meaningful intersubjective discussion and investigation, but which need not exist metaphysically. This line of reasoning seems to suggest that to assert that a genuine essence is real is metaphysically inflationary. Objection 6: Relation between philosophy and religion In Chapter 8, Hildebrand concludes his book's discussion by sharing with us his understanding of the relation between philosophy and religion. Man has an innate orientation toward God and the eternal. The overarching mission of philosophy is to be a "preamble to faith", by cultivating this orientation. This is what Hildebrand means when he refers to philosophy's obligation to prepare our souls "for the acceptance of the revelation of God". Yet what is disclosed by revelation remains "beyond what is accessible to philosophy." By this Hildebrand means that the contents of such revelation are not amenable to discovery by the modalities of enquiry discussed in earlier chapters of his book. There is a problem here. The truth of such putative revelation is treated by Hildebrand as a given. Revelation from God is held to be true on the grounds that God is the source of all truth. Yet even in theological circles, there is legitimacy in a discussion concerning how any putative revelation can be confirmed as genuine. It is not clear why Hildebrand would regard such a discussion as non-philosophical, and why he chooses not to include the premises and constraints of any such discussion within the parameters of his epistemology. This leads the reader to conclude, in particular, that the account of knowledge in general that is contained in Chapter 1 is incomplete. Conclusion Shum, P. (2022), Review of Dietrich von Hildebrand's What is Philosophy?, in Phenomenological Reviews, 18 March 2022. Page 21 of 21 From an historical perspective, Hildebrand's What is Philosophy? can be situated within the context of a twentieth-century realism-idealism controversy sparked by Husserl's turn toward a version of transcendental idealism. Realists like Hildebrand had previously seen Husserl's early phenomenology as offering a potential way of returning to a form of enquiry that might overcome the constraints placed by Kant upon the limits of metaphysical knowledge. Unfortunately Hildebrand's attempt to break out of the Kantian epistemological constraints turns out to be susceptible to the objections that I have detailed: (1) Hildebrand's advocacy of philosophical rigour is undermined by the conduciveness of his intuitionism toward controversy; (2) Hildebrand does not make a convincing philosophical case for the existence of a personal God; (3) Hildebrand's phenomenological claim about the communicative quality of colour is at odds with the descriptive facts; (4) Hildebrand does not provide an adequate metaphysical account of the supposed interaction between the ideal realm of essences and the concrete realm of individuals; (5) It is metaphysically inflationary to think that it follows from there being a fact of the matter about the properties of X that X exists metaphysically; (6) Any putative revelation from God remains liable to a confirmation condition, and Hildebrand fails to include a discussion of such a confirmation condition within his epistemology.