Existentialism

1. Key Themes of Existentialism

Although a highly diverse tradition of thought, seven themes can be identified that provide some sense of overall unity. Here, these themes will be briefly introduced; they can then provide us with an intellectual framework within which to discuss exemplary figures within the history of existentialism.

a. Philosophy as a Way of Life

Philosophy should not be thought of primarily either as an attempt to investigate and understand the self or the world, or as a special occupation that concerns only a few. Rather, philosophy must be thought of as fully integrated within life. To be sure, there may need to be professional philosophers, who develop an elaborate set of methods and concepts (Sartre makes this point frequently) but life can be lived philosophically without a technical knowledge of philosophy.  Existentialist thinkers tended to identify two historical antecedents for this notion. First, the ancient Greeks, and particularly the figure of Socrates but also the Stoics and Epicureans. Socrates was not only non-professional, but in his pursuit of the good life he tended to eschew the formation of a 'system' or 'theory', and his teachings took place often in public spaces. In this, the existentialists were hardly unusual. In the 19th and 20th centuries, the rapid expansion of industrialisation and advance in technology were often seen in terms of an alienation of the human from nature or from a properly natural way of living (for example, thinkers of German and English romanticism).

The second influence on thinking of philosophy as a way of life was German Idealism after Kant. Partly as a response to the 18th century Enlightenment, and under the influence of the Neoplatonists, Schelling and Hegel both thought of philosophy as an activity that is an integral part of the history of human beings, rather than outside of life and the world, looking on. Later in the 19th century, Marx famously criticised previous philosophy by saying that the point of philosophy is not to know things – even to know things about activity – but to change them.  The concept of philosophy as a way of life manifests itself in existentialist thought in a number of ways. Let us give several examples, to which we will return in the sections that follow. First, the existentialists often undertook a critique of modern life in terms of the specialisation of both manual and intellectual labour. Specialisation included philosophy. One consequence of this is that many existentialist thinkers experimented with different styles or genres of writing in order to escape the effects of this specialisation. Second, a notion that we can call 'immanence': philosophy studies life from the inside. For Kierkegaard, for example, the fundamental truths of my existence are not representations – not, that is, ideas, propositions or symbols the meaning of which can be separated from their origin. Rather, the truths of existence are immediately lived, felt and acted. Likewise, for Nietzsche and Heidegger, it is essential to recognise that the philosopher investigating human existence is, him or herself, an existing human. Third, the nature of life itself is a perennial existentialist concern and, more famously (in Heidegger and in Camus), also the significance of death.

b. Anxiety and Authenticity

A key idea here is that human existence is in some way 'on its own'; anxiety (or anguish) is the recognition of this fact. Anxiety here has two important implications. First, most generally, many existentialists tended to stress the significance of emotions or feelings, in so far as they were presumed to have a less culturally or intellectually mediated relation to one's individual and separate existence. This idea is found in Kierkegaard, as we mentioned above, and in Heidegger's discussion of 'mood'; it is also one reason why existentialism had an influence on psychology. Second, anxiety also stands for a form of existence that is recognition of being on its own. What is meant by 'being on its own' varies among philosophers. For example, it might mean the irrelevance (or even negative influence) of rational thought, moral values, or empirical evidence, when it comes to making fundamental decisions concerning one's existence. As we shall see, Kierkegaard sees Hegel's account of religion in terms of the history of absolute spirit as an exemplary confusion of faith and reason. Alternatively, it might be a more specifically theological claim: the existence of a transcendent deity is not relevant to (or is positively detrimental to) such decisions (a view broadly shared by Nietzsche and Sartre). Finally, being on its own might signify the uniqueness of human existence, and thus the fact that it cannot understand itself in terms of other kinds of existence (Heidegger and Sartre).

Related to anxiety is the concept of authenticity, which is let us say the existentialist spin on the Greek notion of 'the good life'. As we shall see, the authentic being would be able to recognise and affirm the nature of existence (we shall shortly specify some of the aspects of this, such as absurdity and freedom). Not, though, recognise the nature of existence as an intellectual fact, disengaged from life; but rather, the authentic being lives in accordance with this nature. The notion of authenticity is sometimes seen as connected to individualism. This is only reinforced by the contrast with a theme we will discuss below, that of the 'crowd'. Certainly, if authenticity involves 'being on one's own', then there would seem to be some kind of value in celebrating and sustaining one's difference and independence from others. However, many existentialists see individualism as a historical and cultural trend (for example Nietzsche), or dubious political value (Camus), rather than a necessary component of authentic existence. Individualism tends to obscure the particular types of collectivity that various existentialists deem important.

For many existentialists, the conditions of the modern world make authenticity especially difficult. For example, many existentialists would join other philosophers (such as the Frankfurt School) in condemning an instrumentalist conception of reason and value. The utilitarianism of Mill measured moral value and justice also in terms of the consequences of actions. Later liberalism would seek to absorb nearly all functions of political and social life under the heading of economic performance. Evaluating solely in terms of the measurable outcomes of production was seen as reinforcing the secularisation of the institutions of political, social or economic life; and reinforcing also the abandonment of any broader sense of the spiritual dimension (such an idea is found acutely in Emerson, and is akin to the concerns of Kierkegaard). Existentialists such as Martin Heidegger, Hanna Arendt or Gabriel Marcel viewed these social movements in terms of a narrowing of the possibilities of human thought to the instrumental or technological. This narrowing involved thinking of the world in terms of resources, and thinking of all human action as a making, or indeed as a machine-like 'function'.

c. Freedom

The next key theme is freedom. Freedom can usefully be linked to the concept of anguish, because my freedom is in part defined by the isolation of my decisions from any determination by a deity, or by previously existent values or knowledge. Many existentialists identified the 19th and 20th centuries as experiencing a crisis of values. This might be traced back to familiar reasons such as an increasingly secular society, or the rise of scientific or philosophical movements that questioned traditional accounts of value (for example Marxism or Darwinism), or the shattering experience of two world wars and the phenomenon of mass genocide. It is important to note, however, that for existentialism these historical conditions do not create the problem of anguish in the face of freedom, but merely cast it into higher relief. Likewise, freedom entails something like responsibility, for myself and for my actions. Given that my situation is one of being on its own – recognised in anxiety – then both my freedom and my responsibility are absolute. The isolation that we discussed above means that there is nothing else that acts through me, or that shoulders my responsibility. Likewise, unless human existence is to be understood as arbitrarily changing moment to moment, this freedom and responsibility must stretch across time. Thus, when I exist as an authentically free being, I assume responsibility for my whole life, for a ‘project’ or a ‘commitment’. We should note here that many of the existentialists take on a broadly Kantian notion of freedom: freedom as autonomy. This means that freedom, rather than being randomness or arbitrariness, consists in the binding of oneself to a law, but a law that is given by the self in recognition of its responsibilities. This borrowing from Kant, however, is heavily qualified by the next theme.

d. Situatedness

The next common theme we shall call ‘situatedness’. Although my freedom is absolute, it always takes place in a particular context. My body and its characteristics, my circumstances in a historical world, and my past, all weigh upon freedom. This is what makes freedom meaningful. Suppose I tried to exist as free, while pretending to be in abstraction from the situation. In that case I will have no idea what possibilities are open to me and what choices need to be made, here and now. In such a case, my freedom will be naïve or illusory. This concrete notion of freedom has its philosophical genesis in Hegel, and is generally contrasted to the pure rational freedom described by Kant. Situatedness is related to a notion we discussed above under the heading of philosophy as a way of life: the necessity of viewing or understanding life and existence from the ‘inside’.  For example, many 19th century intellectuals were interested in ancient Greece, Rome, the Medieval period, or the orient, as alternative models of a less spoiled, more integrated form of life. Nietzsche, to be sure, shared these interests, but he did so not uncritically: because the human condition is characterised by being historically situated, it cannot simply turn back the clock or decide all at once to be other than it is (Sartre especially shares this view). Heidegger expresses a related point in this way: human existence cannot be abstracted from its world because being-in-the-world is part of the ontological structure of that existence. Many existentialists take my concretely individual body, and the specific type of life that my body lives, as a primary fact about me (for example, Nietzsche, Scheler or Merleau-Ponty). I must also be situated socially: each of my acts says something about how I view others but, reciprocally, each of their acts is a view about what I am. My freedom is always situated with respect to the judgements of others. This particular notion comes from Hegel’s analysis of ‘recognition’, and is found especially in Sartre, de Beauvoir and Jaspers. Situatedness in general also has an important philosophical antecedent in Marx: economic and political conditions are not contingent features with respect to universal human nature, but condition that nature from the ground up.

e. Existence

Although, of course, existentialism takes its name from the philosophical theme of 'existence', this does not entail that there is homogeneity in the manner existence is to be understood. One point on which there is agreement, though, is that the existence with which we should be concerned here is not just any existent thing, but human existence. There is thus an important difference between distinctively human existence and anything else, and human existence is not to be understood on the model of things, that is, as objects of knowledge. One might think that this is an old idea, rooted in Plato's distinction between matter and soul, or Descartes' between extended and thinking things. But these distinctions appear to be just differences between two types of things. Descartes in particular, however, is often criticised by the existentialists for subsuming both under the heading 'substance', and thus treating what is distinctive in human existence as indeed a thing or object, albeit one with different properties. (Whether the existentialist characterisation of Plato or Descartes is accurate is a different question.) The existentialists thus countered the Platonic or Cartesian conception with a model that resembles more the Aristotelian as developed in the Nichomachean Ethics. The latter idea arrives in existentialist thought filtered through Leibniz and Spinoza and the notion of a striving for existence. Equally important is the elevation of the practical above the theoretical in German Idealists. Particularly in Kant, who stressed the primacy of the 'practical', and then in Fichte and early Schelling, we find the notion that human existence is action. Accordingly, in Nietzsche and Sartre we find the notion that the human being is all and only what that being does. My existence consists of forever bringing myself into being – and, correlatively, fleeing from the dead, inert thing that is the totality of my past actions. Although my acts are free, I am not free not to act; thus existence is characterised also by 'exigency' (Marcel). For many existentialists, authentic existence involves a certain tension be recognised and lived through, but not resolved: this tension might be between the animal and the rational (important in Nietzsche) or between facticity and transcendence (Sartre and de Beauvoir).

In the 19th and 20th centuries, the human sciences (such as psychology, sociology or economics) were coming to be recognised as powerful and legitimate sciences. To some extend at least their assumptions and methods seemed to be borrowed from the natural sciences. While philosophers such as Dilthey and later Gadamer were concerned to show that the human sciences had to have a distinctive method, the existentialists were inclined to go further. The free, situated human being is not an object of knowledge in the sense the human always exists as the possibility of transcending any knowledge of it. There is a clear relation between such an idea and the notion of the 'transcendence of the other' found in the ethical phenomenology of Emmanuel Levinas.

f. Irrationality/Absurdity

Among the most famous ideas associated with existentialism is that of 'absurdity'. Human existence might be described as 'absurd' in one of the following senses. First, many existentialists argued that nature as a whole has no design, no reason for existing. Although the natural world can apparently be understood by physical science or metaphysics, this might be better thought of as 'description' than either understanding or explanation. Thus, the achievements of the natural sciences also empty nature of value and meaning. Unlike a created cosmos, for example, we cannot expect the scientifically described cosmos to answer our questions concerning value or meaning. Moreover, such description comes at the cost of a profound falsification of nature: namely, the positing of ideal entities such as 'laws of nature', or the conflation of all reality under a single model of being. Human beings can and should become profoundly aware of this lack of reason and the impossibility of an immanent understanding of it. Camus, for example, argues that the basic scene of human existence is its confrontation with this mute irrationality.  A second meaning of the absurd is this: my freedom will not only be undetermined by knowledge or reason, but from the point of view of the latter my freedom will even appear absurd. Absurdity is thus closely related to the theme of 'being on its own', which we discussed above under the heading of anxiety. Even if I choose to follow a law that I have given myself, my choice of law will appear absurd, and likewise will my continuously reaffirmed choice to follow it. Third, human existence as action is doomed to always destroy itself. A free action, once done, is no longer free; it has become an aspect of the world, a thing. The absurdity of human existence then seems to lie in the fact that in becoming myself (a free existence) I must be what I am not (a thing).  If I do not face up to this absurdity, and choose to be or pretend to be thing-like, I exist inauthentically (the terms in this formulation are Sartre's).

g. The Crowd

Existentialism generally also carries a social or political dimension. Insofar as he or she is authentic, the freedom of the human being will show a certain 'resolution' or 'commitment', and this will involve also the being – and particularly the authentic being – of others. For example, Nietzsche thus speaks of his (or Zarathustra's) work in aiding the transformation of the human, and there is also in Nietzsche a striking analysis of the concept of friendship; for Heidegger, there must be an authentic mode of being-with others, although he does not develop this idea at length; the social and political aspect of authentic commitment is much more clear in Sartre, de Beauvoir and Camus.

That is the positive side of the social or political dimension. However, leading up to this positive side, there is a description of the typical forms that inauthentic social or political existence takes. Many existentialists employ terms such as 'crowd', 'horde' (Scheler) or the 'masses' (José Ortega y Gasset). Nietzsche's deliberately provocative expression, 'the herd', portrays the bulk of humanity not only as animal, but as docile and domesticated animals. Notice that these are all collective terms: inauthenticity manifests itself as de-individuated or faceless. Instead of being formed authentically in freedom and anxiety, values are just accepted from others because ‘that is what everybody does’. These terms often carry a definite historical resonance, embodying a critique of specifically modern modes of human existence. All of the following might be seen as either causes or symptoms of a world that is 'fallen' or 'broken' (Marcel): the technology of mass communication (Nietzsche is particularly scathing about newspapers and journalists; in Two Ages, Kierkegaard says something very similar), empty religious observances, the specialisation of labour and social roles, urbanisation and industrialisation. The theme of the crowd poses a question also to the positive social or political dimension of existentialism: how could a collective form of existence ever be anything other than inauthentic? The 19th and 20th century presented a number of mass political ideologies which might be seen as posing a particularly challenging environment for authentic and free existence. For example, nationalism came in for criticism particularly by Nietzsche. Socialism and communism: after WWII, Sartre was certainly a communist, but even then unafraid to criticise both the French communist party and the Soviet Union for rigid or inadequately revolutionary thinking. Democracy: Aristotle in book 5 of his Politics distinguishes between democracy and ochlocracy, which latter essentially means rule by those incapable of ruling even themselves. Many existentialists would identify the latter with the American and especially French concept of 'democracy'. Nietzsche and Ortega y Gasset both espoused a broadly aristocratic criterion for social and political leadership.

From homo sapiens to homo videns

Homo videns si  a discovery by the Italian sociologist, Giovanni Sartori. His book, Homo Videns: Teledirected Society, , and its Italian version sold out in a few months. Sartori’s thesi, deserves our attention. He argues that evolution has turned backward since the 1950s, since homo sapiens is being dethroned by homo videns. The former is characterized by a large brain, the ability to walk perfectly on two feet and work skillfully with hands, the use of language, the fantastic development of culture, and other aspects described by anthropologists. Sartori agrees with the philosopher Ernst Cassirer (1874-1945) in affirming that humans are essentially characterized by their symbolizing activity, “the ability to communicate by means of articulated sounds and meaningful signals.”2 From this it can be deduced that the human’s “thinking and knowing as a symbolizing being are built in language and through language.”3 So it is that spoken and written language are not only the base of culture but also the very essence of the nature of homo sapiens.

With the appearance of television in mid-century and the establishment of the television industry, Sartori maintains, human development was interrupted and reversed, for image perception began to replace abstract thinking. This process of involution was accentuated with the coming of cybernetics in the 1980s and with the appearance of the computer and multimedia technology. TV allows us to see at a distance things that are real, but the PC shows us virtual or simulated reality. Thus, seeing is privileged above speaking, the image is affirmed above the word. With the prevalence of vision, the symbolizing creature becomes the seeing creature.

Sartori declares that he doesn’t seek to attack TV as a means of communication (although he emphasizes all its weaknesses) or the computer as an efficient information storage and retrieval system. His concern is with our dependence upon them, which develops when book culture is neglected. He argues that television impoverishes and makes us “more credulous and naive”4 and inactive. It also atrophies the gift for abstraction and understanding of problems, as it stimulates the concrete thinking linked to the image on screen.

Images and concepts

One example that illustrates this is the classification of words in categories such as denotation and connotation. The first category includes words referring to observable things such as book, table, house, dog, tree, etc.—words that denote or point to specific objects or facts of which we have a mental image or representation. They are the basis for concrete thinking. Other words refer to ideas, such as nation, sovereignty, liberty, justice, etc. These expressions are not “visible,” but rather are concepts linked to abstract mental processes. Abstract language is responsible for the development of civilization and science over the centuries—that which really characterizes the human species. Sartori suggests that television “produces images and destroys concepts, and thus atrophies our capacity for abstraction.”

At the core of his argument is the “video-child.” Statistics suggest that TV has replaced the baby-sitter and has become the child’s primary school (an entertaining and interesting school as compared to the boring school in a building). Watching TV before learning to read and write produces a negative mind-set for school learning. In addition, undue early TV exposure engenders a phobia against school books and a tendency to respond only to shows, strident music, and the sensational. Children are dominated by impulse; they act before they think. TV, argues Sartori, “softens” the brain.

Reading, on the other hand, requires solitude, concentration, discriminating ability, appreciation for conceptualization, and reasoning. Homo videns “tires of reading, prefers the abbreviated flash of a synthetic image. It fascinates and seduces him. He renounces to logical links, reasoned sequence and reflection. By contrast, he yields to the immediate, heated, emotionally-involving impulse.”6 The TV addict rejects persistent effort, tenacious action, and research—in effect, the cultivation of one’s thoughts and actions.

One may think that these ideas are exaggerated and open to debate. Sartori replies: Look at the parts of the world where TV dominates, and what do you see? The dwindling of reading scores, the scarcity of critical thinking, the growing difficulty students experience in comprehension and composition. Logical reasoning on verbally postulated premises is no longer there. Thinking becomes dependent on the images received.

This image-based thinking has considerably increased with the introduction of the computer, the Internet, and the surfing of cyberspace, expanding the ranks of homo videns. As in the case of TV, the impact of the PC depends on the use made of it. Is it instrument, entertainment, pastime, or does it become a drug, a mania? Generally speaking, people who surf the Internet tend to passive dependence more than interactive, productive work. One must recognize that the information superhighways of the Internet not only transmit a great mass of useful information, but also a lot of trash and foolishness. Furthermore, recent research reveals that surfing the Internet increases the level of depression and loneliness.7

The culture of the spectacular

Homo videns dwells in the world of the spectacular, dominated by the famous. From Tokyo to Buenos Aires, from Moscow to Washington, from Paris to Kuwait, no matter how different the situation or the culture, popularity dominates the market; the rating rules. Why is success defined in almost the same way anywhere on the planet? How do we get the impression that TV is the same everywhere? As we near the end of the century, every country in the global village has converted society into an audience, and the population into couch potatoes hypnotized by the magic of the spectacular.

There are auditions, programs, magazines, newspapers, and supplements—ever more bulky—devoted to informing about and promoting the spectacular. Not long ago those supplements were published only on weekends instead of every day. They contain entertainment, artistic events, theater plays, movies, and the all-powerful TV programs, the stars that shine in the splendid firmament of popularity. The entertainment industry sells the products that are the fashion of the day. The market of notoriety absorbs ever more and more time, structuring the values of homo videns.

The industry of the spectacular is not only omnipresent, but omnipotent. It hoards, manages, directs, or manipulates everything. The economy is dependent on the media. A negative comment by some well-known journalist, whether or not he or she knows anything about the stock market, can cause the fall of stock values and the ruin of strong industries or business enterprises. Politics is also captive to ratings. The media may give wide publicity to scandal, as in the impeachment of Bill Clinton. Politicians must now be good TV actors if they want to get the votes. Even the world of art, the intellectual and scientific world, are sensitive to the opinion of the media. Everybody wants access to the wide stage of fame.

Often one sees people’s faces behind someone being interviewed on TV, hands raised to capture the attention, trying to get a piece of the action on the screen. In times past, people sought to cut a low profile and dresses were designed to disguise the shape of the body. But now fashion highlights the curves and the contours.

The law of the spectacular that comes to the fore in homo videns, rules at every level. The main object is to be an actor, to be seen, to pretend, to play a role, no matter what the arena. Charisma, loquacity, the histrionic touch, the magic of collective hypnotism constitute the key to success. The principal value is no longer morality, holiness, unselfishness, intelligence, or art—but fame. The famous who shine in the powerful spotlight of popularity can taste with satisfaction the honey of glory. In previous times, one had to do something for the public good, to discover, invent, or write something important. One no longer needs excellence, intelligence, wisdom, or even money. It’s enough to have an attractive figure, to seduce, make an impact, exhibit oneself on the stage of the communications media.

Hollywood was the first to discover the economic power that is built on fame, creating the celebrity industry. The fascinating power of fame transforms almost anything into something and moves fortunes. Models on the billboards, actors, singers, sports celebrities—anyone in the “fame sphere”—has become the advertising endorsement for consumer products. No matter the quality of the product, people will buy it because Claudia Shiffer, Michael Jordan, or Bruce Willis uses it. Ultimately, they themselves are the product. That’s why the famous are besieged. The TV industry, journalists, photographers, pursue them without mercy, as in the case of Princess Diana. Reporters write books about them, and industries are built on the foundation of their fame.

Epistemology and Descartes

Epistemology is the study of the nature, source, limits, and validity of knowledge. It is especially interested in developing criteria for evaluating claims people make that they "know" something. In particular, it considers questions such as: What is knowledge? What is the difference between knowledge and belief? If you know something, does that mean that you are certain about it? Is knowledge really possible?

Traditionally, philosophers have thought that if someone knows X, that means that he or she (1) believes that X is true, (2) X is, in fact, true, and (3) the person who claims to know X can give a justification or rationale for thinking that X is true. Such a justification can be given by appealing to intuition (immediate, personal certainty that X is true), reasoning (proving that X is true based on shared strategies of argumentation), or sense experience (public, repeatable, verifiable demonstration or experiment showing that X is true).

Despite the fact that intuition is a common phenomenon, philosophers have often been hesitant to identify it as a form of knowledge--primarily because there seems to be little way to determine whether it does, in fact, provide knowledge as opposed simply to lucky guesses. So most philosophers focus, instead, on reason and sense experience as the bases of knowledge. These two latter ways of approaching the question of knowledge are identified as rationalism and empiricism.

A rationalist epistemology claims that knowledge (as opposed to opinion) is possible only if it is based on self-evident and absolutely certain principles. Such principles are not learned through experience; instead, they are implicit in the very notion of reasoning (in Latin: ratio) itself. Sense experience cannot provide the certainty needed to guarantee that what we claim to know is true. So, like mathematicians, we have to rely on reason itself as the basis for determining whether our opinions are justified true beliefs (that is, knowledge).

Plato is an example of a rationalist. He says that sense experience fails to provide us with any guarantee that what we experience is, in fact, true. The information we get by relying on sense experience is constantly changing and is often unreliable. It can be corrected and evaluated for dependability only be appealing to principles that themselves do not change. These unchanging principles (or "Forms") are the bases of what it means to think or reason in the first place. So if someone can show that an opinion or belief he or she has is based on these undoubtable principles of thought, he or she has a firm foundation for the opinion. That foundation is what allows us to think of a belief as more than simply opinion; it is what allows us to identify the belief as justified and true, and that is what is meant by knowledge.

Knowledge for the rationalist is thus what can be deduced from principles that cannot be otherwise; they are undoubtable ("indubitable"). Examples of such principles include: "Bachelors are unmarried males," "A thing cannot be and not be at the same time in the same way," "Triangles have three sides," and "A whole is always greater than any one of its parts." These statements are known with certainty to be true because the very meaning of the terms involved (e.g., bachelors, triangles, things, wholes) requires that we think of them in certain ways (without relying on sense experience). We thus know about some things prior to any sense experience we have or could have. Such knowledge is called a priori. Any knowledge that relies on (that is, comes after or is posterior to) sense experience is called a posteriori.

Rene' Descartes (1596-1650) is another example of a rationalist. Instead of beginning philosophical inquiry (like the Milesians) with the study of the nature of reality, he suggests that we ask what it would mean to know about reality. To believe that reality is fundamentally water or the Indeterminate or whatever seems pointless, he claims, unless we know first whether our belief itself is justified. To determine whether our beliefs are justified, we have to be able to trace them back to a statement, belief, or proposition that cannot be doubted. Such a proposition could provide the firm foundation on which all subsequent beliefs could be grounded; it would guarantee that all subsequent claims based on it would be true.

In order to identify an ultimate principle of truth on which all other knowledge can be based, Descartes develops a method that suspends our confidence in what we have been taught, what our senses tell us, what we "think" is obvious--in short, in regard to everything we know. In order to determine whether there is anything we can know with certainty, he says that we first have to doubt everything we know. Such a radical doubt might not seem reasonable, and Descartes certainly does not mean that we really should doubt everything. What he suggests is that, in order to see if there is some belief that cannot be doubted, we should temporarily pretend that everything we know is questionable.

Since sense experience is sometimes deceiving, it is obvious to Descartes that a posteriori claims (e.g., that this milk tastes sour or that suit is dark blue) cannot be the basis for claims of knowledge. We do not know that what we experience through our senses is true; at least, we are not certain of it. So the best thing to do is to doubt our senses. Likewise, we cannot be sure that we really have bodies or that our experience of the world in general can be trusted; after all, we might be dreaming the whole thing. Next, we cannot even be sure that mathematical propositions such as 2+3=5 or that triangles always have three sides are true because some evil power might be deceiving us to think such things, when it is possible that even propositions that seem evident to us as true might themselves be really false. But even if an evil genie deceives us about all other beliefs, there is one belief that we cannot be mistaken about, and that is that we are thinking. Even to doubt this is to affirm it. Thinking proves that we exist (at least as minds or thinking things, regardless of whether we have bodies). The body is not an essential part of the self because we can doubt its existence in a way that we cannot doubt the existence of the mind.

So Descartes concludes that I know one thing clearly and distinctly, namely, that I exist because I think: "Cogito ergo sum," I think, therefore I exist. From this starting point I can begin to note other truths that I know clearly and distinctly, such as the principle of identity (A is A) and the notion that things in the world are "substances." Since identity and substance are ideas that are not based on sensation, they must be innate (that is, they must be implicit in the very act of thinking itself). Even sensible things (e.g., a block of wax) are knowable not based on sense experience but intellectually, insofar as we know them to be the same things even though their sensible appearances might change dramatically.

In order to be certain that we are not deceived when we claim to know something, Descartes must dispose of the evil genie. This is done by proving that an all-good, all-powerful God would not permit us to be deceived. If there is such a God, we can have knowledge. Since the senses cannot be trusted to provide a proof that God exists, only a proof based on the principle of the cogito ("I think, therefore I am") will work. That proof can be summarized in the following way:

I know I exist; but the "I" who exists is obviously imperfect; otherwise I would not have doubts about what I know in the first place. To know that I, an imperfect thing, exist means that I already know that a perfect thing must exist in terms of which my own existence is meaningful. I know what it means to be imperfect only if I already know what perfection is. But I do not know perfection in virtue of my self; therefore there must be a perfect substance (God) who exists in terms of which my own imperfect existence is intelligible. No perfect (all-good, all-powerful) being would deceive us into thinking that we know something with certainty when, in fact, we are mistaken about it. So if there is a God, then no evil genie could exist who tricks us regarding clear and distinct knowledge (such as mathematical reasoning).

We have a "great inclination" to believe that there are physical objects that are external to the mind. But since only those objects known in terms of mathematical properties--not those imagined by use of the senses--can be known clearly and distinctly, the only knowledge we can have of such objects is in terms of mathematical, quantifiable physics. The only real knowledge we can have, then, is of things understood as functions of laws of physics. The objects we see are not the objects we know, because what we know is intelligible only in terms of the clarity and precision of the formulae of physics. Information provided by the senses cannot therefore be the basis of knowledge.

Certitude is thus grounded in the knowledge of the self, which is itself intelligible only if there is a God who guarantees that we are not deceived about what we know of the world clearly and distinctly (i.e., mathematically). By appeal to reason alone, we are able to know: this is the main message of rationalism.

Objections to Rationalism:

    1. There is no agreement among philosophers or cultures about so-called self-evident ideas. Supposedly self-evident ideas have often been rejected at later times in history.

    2. Self-evident ideas provide no knowledge about the world. Though sense experience may not be certain, it provides us with information which is as reliable as we need. The fact that a belief is not absolutely certain should not disqualify it for knowledge. Why not say that something is known as long as there is no good reason to doubt it? Of course, that might mean that occasionally we would have to admit that what we thought we knew was something that we really didn't know. So what?

Plato: The Symposium

Overall Analysis and Themes

The prominent place the Symposium holds in our canon comes as much as a result of its literary merit as its philosophical merit. While other works among Plato's middle-period dialogues, such as the Republic and the Phaedo, contain more philosophical meat, more closely examining the Theory of Forms and intensely cross-examining interlocutors, none can match the dramatic force of the Symposium. It is lively and entertaining, with sharp and witty characterization that gives us valuable insight into the social life of Athenian intellectual circles.

From a philosophical standpoint, the Symposium is also far from bankrupt. Not only does it give us some insight into the Theory of Forms in Diotima's discussion of the Form of Beauty, but it also gives us a number of varying perspectives on love. Significantly, we see Plato rejecting the romanticization of sexual love, valuing above all an asexual and all-consuming passion for wisdom and beauty. Ultimately, he concludes, the philosopher's search for wisdom is the most valuable of all pursuits. In the Symposium, Plato values philosophy, as exemplified by Socrates, over a number of other arts which are given as points of comparison: medicine, as exemplified by Eryximachus, comedy as exemplified by Aristophanes, and tragedy as exemplified by Agathon.

The series of speeches in praise of Love are not simply meant as beating around the bush that leads up to the main event. They mirror Diotima's discussion of the mysteries, where she suggests that one can approach the truth only through a slow and careful ascent. Similarly, we can see each speech, with a few exceptions, as coming closer and closer to the truth. This suggestion is reinforced by the fact that Socrates alludes to all the foregoing speeches in his own speech, as if to suggest that his words could not be spoken until everyone else had said their piece. This staggered approach to truth is also reflected in the framing of the narrative, whereby we are only able to gain access to this story through a series of narrative filters.

We should note that Socrates is the exemplar of the lover of wisdom and the lover of beauty, but is neither wise nor beautiful himself. In this way, he best represents Love, which Diotima describes as a mediating spirit that moves between gods and men. Love himself never has anything, but is always desirous of happiness, beauty, and wisdom. The same is true with Socrates. Those who follow his lead will not necessarily attain wisdom, but will find fulfillment in a life-long pursuit of wisdom. The state of having attained wisdom is represented by Diotima, not Socrates, and she speaks through Socrates as a god-like and unapproachable figure.

There is also some discussion as to exactly what is being discussed in the Symposium. The Greek word eros leaves the matter ambiguous as to whether we are discussing love in the normal, human, sense of the word, or if we are discussing desire in a much broader sense. The later speeches in particular tend toward this broader interpretation. Diotima gives what is perhaps a satisfactory answer by suggesting that, while all kinds of desire might be considered love, we normally restrict use of that term to one particular kind of desire, the desire that exists between two human beings.

Philosophy aside, however, the Symposium still makes a terrific read. Aristophanes' myth is delightful, Alcibiades' drunken antics are entertaining, and the whole narrative shimmers with life. We also get a very clear sense of the dynamics of sexual attraction and courtship--both male-male and male-female--in ancient Athens, and we are given a beautiful portrait of one of the high-points of the Athenian scene: the symposium.

N.B.: There are no natural breaks in the text as Plato wrote it, so these notes on the text have been divided artificially, sections beginning or breaking off where a new theme or topic is introduced or dropped. Because page numbers may vary from edition to edition, these sections have been demarcated according to the Stephanus numbers, the page numbers from the 1578 complete works edited by Henri Estienne ("Stephanus" in Latin). The Stephanus numbers are the standard page references in scholarly work on Plato, and most editions of his work contain the Stephanus numbers along the margins.

Summary

The dialogue opens with Apollodorus agreeing to tell an unnamed companion who is a rich businessman the famous story of the party held in honor of Agathon to celebrate the success of his first tragedy. Apollodorus retells the account he gave to Glaucon (Plato's half-brother and main interlocutor of the Republic) who had in turn heard of the party from some other, less reliable source. Glaucon had thought Apollodorus had been in attendance, but Apollodorus points out that the party took place many years ago, when he and Glaucon were just children. Apollodorus had heard the story from Aristodemus, one of the guests at the party, and had also checked some of the facts with Socrates himself.

The story begins with Aristodemus encountering Socrates, who has recently bathed and put on sandals--things he rarely does. Aristodemus inquires as to why Socrates is all dressed up, and Socrates answers that he is going to dinner at Agathon's. Agathon's tragedy won him first prize at the Lenaean festival the previous day, and while Socrates shunned the large crowds of yesterday's celebrations, he promised to join Agathon today. Socrates invites Aristodemus to join him, and while Aristodemus is at first hesitant about dropping in uninvited, Socrates persuades him that he must come.

Aristodemus and Socrates head off toward Agathon's together, but Socrates keeps falling behind, lost in thought. Socrates urges Aristodemus to go ahead, saying he will catch up. As a result, Aristodemus arrives at Agathon's without Socrates and is welcomed in alone. Agathon is delighted to see him, saying that he was looking for him yesterday so as to invite him. Aristodemus explains that he came upon Socrates' invitation, and is surprised to find that Socrates has not caught up with him. Agathon sends out a slave to find him, and the slave returns, reporting that Socrates is standing on a neighbor's porch and will not come in. Agathon orders the slave to go and fetch him in, but Aristodemus insists that Socrates be left alone: he will come of his own accord when he has finished thinking.

Aristodemus joins the other guests and they begin eating. Among those assembled, there is the young Phaedrus, Agathon's life-partner Pausanias, a doctor named Eryximachus, and the great comic playwright Aristophanes. The meal is halfway over by the time Socrates finally appears. Agathon encourages Socrates to join him on his couch so that he may share in the wisdom that came to Socrates on the neighboring porch. Socrates remarks that if wisdom could flow freely from the wiser to the less wise, Socrates should be the one benefiting from sitting near Agathon. Noting the mocking tone in Socrates' voice, Agathon suggests they might test one another's wisdom later that evening.

After dinner, Pausanias takes responsibility for organizing the drinking. All the guests but Socrates have participated in the wild revelry of the previous night and are feeling rather hung over. Eryximachus recommends that they not drink too much this evening in the interests of their health. He suggests further that they send away the flute-girl, who was to be their entertainment, and engage instead in conversation. He had been speaking recently to Phaedrus, who had lamented that the poets compose songs of praise to all the gods but Love. Consequently, Eryximachus recommends that each person present, starting with Phaedrus, make the finest speech he can in praise of Love.

Commentary

The "symposium," translated literally as "drinks-party," was a central and highly ritualized part of Greek social practice. The party takes place in a square room, the andron, which is the main room in the men's part of the house. Guests at the symposium, who are always freeborn adult males, recline on couches, two to a couch, arranged in a square that allows easy conversation. The party is sharply divided into two parts. First, there is the meal, which is not a particularly ritualized affair. Once the meal is done, the drinking begins. First, the guests are cleaned and perfumed by attendant slaves, and then unmixed wine is poured out and tasted, while the guests sing hymns in honor of the gods. One member of the party--Pausanias in this case--is appointed "symposiarch," and determines in consultation with the other guests exactly how much wine will be drunk and to what extent the wine should be mixed with water. Normally, the subsequent drinking is accompanied by conversation, singing, and speeches. Male and female slaves provide music and other entertainment, and serve as "escorts," flirting with, though rarely having sex with, the guests. That Eryximachus sends away the flute-player suggests that this party will be more serious than normal, and philosophical discussion will take the place of erotic stimulation.

The Symposium is framed by several levels of narrative distancing. Apollodorus tells the story to his companion, but the story he tells is actually a retelling of the story he told Glaucon. This story has in turn been gleaned from Aristodemus, and confirmed by Socrates. Glaucon also notes that he has heard a version of the story. Plato, the actual writer of the dialogue, is nowhere found in this cast of characters, so there must be a further level of retelling by which Plato himself learns the story. All this framing serves two immediate purposes. One is to suggest the extreme importance of this dialogue. It is being discussed years after the fact, there are many versions floating about, and everyone wants to hear the story told. The other purpose is to distance the narration from the events themselves, suggesting that Plato's dialogue is not a direct transcription of factual events so much as an imaginative retelling that is probably more fiction than fact. The characters in the dialogue are celebrating a victory for the dramatist, Agathon, and the dialogue itself is a drama, though it treats of philosophy rather than tragedy. This framing also reflects another theme of the dialogue, which is the difficulty of attaining the truth. There are several layers of narrative, and in the story itself we get several different speeches. In both cases, we are given the sense that truth is not something we can be given, but something that must be sifted through, something we must work to acquire.

Agathon's victory comes at the Lenaean festival, one of the dramatic festivals that were so central in Ancient Greek society. Tragedians such as Aeschyllus, Sophocles, and Euripides competed in these festivals presented in honor of Dionysus, the god of wine, fertility, and ritual dance, and patron of drama and poetry (Plato, too, wrote some plays, though none of them survive). The winner of the festival became a major celebrity, and was widely celebrated.

Plato was generally skeptical about poetry, and we find expression of this mistrust in Socrates' sarcastic remark to Agathon about his great wisdom. Tragedy purports to lay wisdom upon great crowds of people directly and immediately. As this dialogue and its framing devices suggest, Plato is of a mind that wisdom is something that must be worked toward, not something that can be given easily. Socrates suggests that wisdom is not something one can gain by osmosis, simply by sitting near someone wiser than oneself. Implicit in this suggestion is the claim that tragedy does not transmit wisdom, and that only careful philosophical thinking can be a successful teacher.

We find further evidence of this claim in Socrates' delay in arriving at the party. He gets lost in thought and must stand still where he is and think until he has worked his way through a problem. This kind of inner dialectic is clearly common with Socrates, as Aristodemus is already familiar with it. We might liken Socrates' behavior with that of the stereotypical "absent-minded professor" who cannot deal with day-to-day activities as a result of being so caught up in intellectual pursuits. Socrates does not feel compelled to abide by social norms, valuing philosophy over propriety.

MENCIUS, THE MOST FAMOUS CONFUCIAN PHILOSOPHER

Better known in China as “Master Meng” (Chinese: Mengzi), Mencius was a fourth-century BCE Chinese thinker whose importance in the Confucian tradition is second only to that of Confucius himself. In many ways, he played the role of St. Paul to Confucius’ Jesus, interpreting the thought of the master for subsequent ages while simultaneously impressing Confucius’ ideas with his own philosophical stamp. He is most famous for his theory of human nature, according to which all human beings share an innate goodness that either can be cultivated through education and self-discipline or squandered through neglect and negative influences, but never lost altogether. While it is not clear that Mencius’ views prevailed in early Chinese philosophical circles, they eventually won out after gaining the support of influential medieval commentators and thinkers such as Zhu Xi (Chu Hsi, 1130-1200 CE) and Wang Yangming (1472-1529 CE). (See Romanization systems for Chinese terms.) Today contemporary philosophical interest in evolutionary psychology and sociobiology has inspired fresh appraisals of Mencius, while recent philological studies question the coherence and authenticity of the text that bears his name. Mencius remains a perennially attractive figure for those intrigued by moral psychology, of which he was the foremost practitioner in early China.

1. The Mencius of History

Like the historical Confucius, the historical Mencius is available only through a text that, in its complete form at least, postdates his traditional lifetime (372-289 BCE). The philological controversy surrounding the date and composition of the text that bears his name is far less intense than that which surrounds the Confucian Analects, however. Most scholars agree that the entire Mencius was assembled by Mencius himself and his immediate disciples, perhaps shortly after his death. The text records several encounters with various rulers during Mencius' old age, which can be dated between 323 and 314 BCE, making Mencius an active figure no later than the late fourth century BCE.

The other major source of information about Mencius' life is the biography found in the Shiji (Records of the Grand Historian) of Sima Qian (c. 145-90 BCE), which states that he was a native of Zou (Tsou), a small state near Confucius' home state of Lu in the Shandong peninsula of northeastern China. He is said to have studied with Confucius' grandson, Zisi (Tzu-ssu), although most modern scholars doubt this. He also is thought to have become a minister of the state of Qi (Ch'i), which also was famous as the home of the Jixia (Chi-hsia) Academy. The Jixia Academy was a kind of early Chinese "think tank" sponsored the ruler of Qi that produced, among other thinkers, Mencius' later opponent Xunzi (Hsun-tzu, 310-220 BCE).

Mencius was born in a period of Chinese history known as the Warring States (403-221 BCE), during which various states competed violently against one another for mastery of all of China, which once was unified under the Zhou dynasty until its collapse, for all intents and purposes, in 771 BCE. It was a brutal and turbulent era, which nonetheless gave rise to many brilliant philosophical movements, including the Confucian tradition of which Mencius was a foremost representative. The common intellectual and political problem that Warring States thinkers hoped to solve was the problem of China's unification. While no early Chinese thinker questioned the need for autocratic rule as an instrument of unification, philosophers differed on whether and how the ruler ought to consider moral limitations on power, traditional religious ceremonies and obligations, and the welfare of his subjects.

Into the philosophical gap created by a lack of political unity and increasing social mobility stepped members of the shi ("retainer" or "knight") class, from which both Confucius and Mencius arose. As feudal lords were defeated and disenfranchised in battle and the kings of the various warring states began to rely on appointed administrators rather than vassals to govern their territories, these shi became lordless anachronisms and fell into genteel poverty and itinerancy. Their knowledge of aristocratic traditions, however, helped them remain valuable to competing kings, who wished to learn how to regain the unity imposed by the Zhou and who sought to emulate the Zhou by patterning court rituals and other institutions after those of the fallen dynasty.

Thus, a new role for shi as itinerant antiquarians emerged. In such roles, shi found themselves in and out of office as the fortunes of various patron states ebbed and flowed. Mencius' office in the state of Qi probably was no more than an honorary title. While out of office, veteran shi might gather small circles of disciples - young men from shi backgrounds who wished to succeed in public life - and seek audiences with rulers who might give them an opportunity to put their ideas into practice. The text of the Mencius claims to record Mencius' teachings to his disciples as well as his dialogues with the philosophers and rulers of his day.

 2. The Mencius of the Text

Mencius inherits from Confucius a set of terms and a series of problems. In general, one can say that where Confucius saw a unity of inner and outer - in terms of li (ritual propriety), ren (co-humanity), and the junzi (profound person)-xiaoren (small person) distinction - Mencius tends to privilege the inner aspects of concepts, practices, and identities. For Mencius, the locus of philosophical activity and self-cultivation is the xin (hsin), a term that denotes both the chief organ of the circulatory system and the organ of thought, and hence is translated here and in many other sources as "heart-mind." Mencius' views of the divine, political organization, human nature, and the path toward personal development all start and end in the heart-mind.

Mencius' philosophical concerns, while scattered across the seven books of the text that bears his name, demonstrate a high degree of consistency unusual in early Chinese philosophical writing. They can be categorized into four groups:

•Theodicy

•Government

•Human Nature

•Self-Cultivation

3. Theodicy

Again, as with Confucius, so too with Mencius. From late Zhou tradition, Mencius inherited a great many religious sensibilities, including theistic ones. For the early Chinese (c. 16th century BCE), the world was controlled by an all-powerful deity, "The Lord on High" (Shangdi), to whom entreaties were made in the first known Chinese texts, inscriptions found on animal bones offered in divinatory sacrifice. As the Zhou polity emerged and triumphed over the previous Shang tribal rule, Zhou apologists began to regard their deity, Tian ("Sky" or “Heaven”) as synonymous with Shangdi, the deity of the deposed Shang kings, and explained the decline of Shang and the rise of Zhou as a consequence of a change in Tianming ("the mandate of Heaven"). Thus, theistic justifications for conquest and rulership were present very early in Chinese history.

By the time of Mencius, the concept of Tian appears to have changed slightly, taking on aspects of "fate" and “nature” as well as "deity." For Confucius, Tian provided personal support and sanction for his sense of historical mission, while at the same time prompting Job-like anxiety during moments of ill fortune in which Tian seemed to have abandoned him. Mencius' faith in Tian as the ultimate source of legitimate moral and political authority is unshakeable. Like Confucius, he says that "Tian does not speak - it simply reveals through deeds and affairs" (5A5). He ascribes the virtues of ren (co-humanity), yi (rightness), li (ritual propriety), zhi (wisdom), and sheng (sagehood) to Tian (7B24) and explicitly compares the rule of the moral king to the rule of Tian (5A4).

Mencius thus shares with Confucius three assumptions about Tian as an extrahuman, absolute power in the universe: (1) its alignment with moral goodness, (2) its dependence on human agents to actualize its will, and (3) the variable, unpredictable nature of its associations with mortal actors. To the extent that Mencius is concerned with justifying the ways of Tian to humanity, he tends to do so without questioning these three assumptions about the nature of Tian, which are rooted deep in the Chinese past, as his views on government, human nature, and self-cultivation will show.

 4. Government

The dependence of Tian upon human agents to put its will into practice helps account for the emphasis Mencius places on the satisfaction of the people as an indicator of the ruler's moral right to power, and on the responsibility of morally-minded ministers to depose an unworthy ruler. In a dialogue with King Xuan of Qi (r. 319-301 BCE), Mencius says:

The people are to be valued most, the altars of the grain and the land [traditional symbols of the vitality of the state] next, the ruler least. Hence winning the favor of the common people you become Emperor…. (7B14)

When the ruler makes a serious mistake they admonish. If after repeated admonishments he still will not listen, they depose him…. Do not think it strange, Your Majesty. Your Majesty asked his servant a question, and his servant dares not fail to answer it directly. (5B9)

Mencius' replies to King Xuan are bracingly direct, in fact, but he can be coy. When the king asks whether it is true that various sage kings (Tang and Wu) rebelled against and murdered their predecessors (Jie and Zhou), Mencius answers that it is true. The king then asks:

"Is it permissible for a vassal to murder his lord?"

Mencius replied, "One who robs co-humanity [ren] you call a `robber'; one who robs the right [yi] you call a `wrecker'; and one who robs and wrecks you call an `outlaw.’ I have heard that [Wu] punished the outlaw Zhou - I have not heard that he murdered his lord. (1B8)

In other words, Wu was morally justified in executing Zhou, because Zhou had proven himself to be unworthy of the throne through his offenses against ren and yi - the very qualities associated with the Confucian exemplar (junzi) and his actions. This is an example of Mencius engaging in the "rectification of names" (zhengming), an exercise that Confucius considered to be prior to all other philosophical activity (Analects 13.3).

While Mencius endorses a "right of revolution," he is no democrat. His ideal ruler is the sage-king, such as the legendary Shun, on whose reign both divine sanction and popular approval conferred legitimacy:

When he was put in charge of sacrifices, the hundred gods delighted in them which is Heaven accepting him. When he was put in charge of affairs, the affairs were in order and the people satisfied with him, which is the people accepting him. Heaven gave it [the state] to him; human beings gave it to him. (5A5)

Mencius proposes various economic plans to his monarchical audiences, but while he insists on particular strategies (such as dividing the land into five-acre settlements planted with mulberry trees), he rejects the notion that one should commit to an action primarily on the grounds that it will benefit one, the state, or anything else. What matters about actions is whether they are moral or not; the question of their benefit or cost is beside the point. Here, Mencius reveals his antipathy for - and competition with – philosophers who followed Mozi, a fifth-century BCE contemporary of Confucius who propounded a utilitarian theory of value based on li (benefit):

Why must Your Majesty say "benefit" [li]? I have only the co-humane [ren] and the right [yi]. (1A1)

In the end, Mencius is committed to a type of benevolent dictatorship, which puts moral value before pragmatic value and in this way seeks to benefit both ruler and subjects. The sage-kings of antiquity are a model, but one cannot simply adopt their customs and institutions and expect to govern effectively (4A1). Instead, one must emulate the sage-kings both in terms of outer structures (good laws, wise policies, correct rituals) and in terms of inner motivations (placing ren and yi first). Like Confucius, Mencius places an enormous amount of confidence in the capacity of the ordinary person to respond to an extraordinary ruler, so as to put the world in order. The question is, how does Mencius account for this optimism in light of human nature?

 5. Human Nature

Mencius is famous for claiming that human nature (renxing) is good. As with most reductions of philosophical positions to bumper-sticker slogans, this statement oversimplifies Mencius' position. In the text, Mencius takes a more careful route in order to arrive at this view. Following A. C. Graham, one can see his argument as having three elements: (1) a teleology, (2) a virtue theory, and (3) a moral psychology.

 6. Teleology

Mencius' basic assertion is that "everyone has a heart-mind which feels for others." (2A6) As evidence, he makes two appeals: to experience, and to reason. Appealing to experience, he says:

Supposing people see a child fall into a well - they all have a heart-mind that is shocked and sympathetic. It is not for the sake of being on good terms with the child's parents, and it is not for the sake of winning praise for neighbors and friends, nor is it because they dislike the child's noisy cry. (2A6)

It is important to point out here that Mencius says nothing about acting on this automatic affective-cognitive response to suffering that he ascribes to the bystanders at the well tragedy. It is merely the feeling that counts. Going further and appealing to reason, Mencius argues:

Judging by this, without a heart-mind that sympathizes one is not human; without a heart-mind aware of shame, one is not human; without a heart-mind that defers to others, one is not human; and without a heart-mind that approves and condemns, one is not human. (2A6)

Thus, Mencius makes an assertion about human beings - all have a heart-mind that feels for others - and qualifies his assertion with appeals to common experience and logical argument. This does little to distinguish him from other early Chinese thinkers, who also noticed that human beings were capable of altruism as well as selfishness. What remains is for him to explain why other thinkers are incorrect when they ascribe positive evil to human nature - that human beings are such that they actively seek to do wrong.

 7. Virtue Theory

Mencius goes further and identifies the four basic qualities of the heart-mind (sympathy, shame, deference, judgment) not only as distinguishing characteristics of human beings - what makes the human being qua human being really human - but also as the "sprouts" (duan) of the four cardinal virtues:

A heart-mind that sympathizes is the sprout of co-humanity [ren]; a heart-mind that is aware of shame is the sprout of rightness [yi]; a heart-mind that defers to others is the sprout of ritual propriety [li]; a heart-mind that approves and condemns is the sprout of wisdom [zhi]…. If anyone having the four sprouts within himself knows how to develop them to the full, it is like fire catching alight, or a spring as it first bursts through. If able to develop them, he is able to protect the entire world; if unable, he is unable to serve even his parents. (2A6)

Now the complexity of Mencius' seemingly simplistic position becomes clearer. What makes us human is our feelings of commiseration for others' suffering; what makes us virtuous - or, in Confucian parlance, junzi - is our development of this inner potential. To paraphrase Irene Bloom on this point, there is no sharp conflict between "nature" and “nurture” in Mencius; biology and culture are co-dependent upon one another in the development of the virtues. If our sprouts are left untended, we can be no more than merely human - feeling sorrow at the suffering of another, but unable or unwilling to do anything about it. If we tend our sprouts assiduously -- through education in the classical texts, formation by ritual propriety, fulfillment of social norms, etc. - we can not only avert the suffering of a few children in some wells, but also bring about peace and justice in the entire world. This is the basis of Mencius' appeal to King Hui of Liang (r. 370-319 BCE):

[The king] asked abruptly, "How shall the world be settled?"

"It will be settled by unification," I [Mencius] answered.

"Who will be able to unify it?"

"Someone without a taste for killing will be able to unify it…. Has Your Majesty noticed rice shoots? If there is drought during the seventh and eighth months, the shoots wither, but if dense clouds gather in the sky and a torrent of rain falls, the shoots suddenly revive. When that happens, who could stop it? … Should there be one without a taste for killing, the people will crane their necks looking out for him. If that does happen, the people will go over to him as water tends downwards, in a torrent - who could stop it? (1A6)

Mencius devotes some energy to arguing that "rightness" (yi) is internal, rather than external, to human beings. He does so using examples taken from that quintessentially Confucian arena of human relations, filial piety (xiao). Comparing the rightness that manifests itself in filial piety to such visceral activities as eating, drinking, and sexual intercourse, Mencius points out that, just as one's attraction or repulsion regarding these activities is determined by one's internal orientation (hunger, thirst, lust), one's filial behavior is determined by one’s inner attitudes, as the following imaginary dialogue with one of his opponents shows:

[Ask the opponent] "Which do you respect, your uncle or your younger brother?" He will say, "My uncle.” “When your younger brother is impersonating an ancestor at a sacrifice, then which do you respect?" He will say, "My younger brother.” You ask him, “What has happened to your respect for your uncle?" He will say, "It is because of the position my younger brother occupies." (6A5)

In other words, the rightness that one manifests in filial piety is not dependent on fixed, external categories, such as the status of one's younger brother qua younger brother or one’s uncle qua one's uncle. If it were, one always would show respect to one’s uncle and never to one's younger brother or anyone else junior to oneself. But as it happens, shifts in external circumstances can effect changes in status; one's younger brother can temporarily assume the status of a very senior ancestor in the proper ritual context, thus earning the respect ordinarily given to seniors and never shown to juniors. For Mencius, this demonstrates that the internal orientation of the agent (e.g., rightness) determines the moral value of given behaviors (e.g., filial piety).

Having made a teleological argument from the inborn potential of human beings to the presumption of virtues that can be developed, Mencius then offers his sketch of moral psychology - the structures within the human person that make such potential identifiable and such development possible.

 8. Moral Psychology

The primary function of Mencius' moral psychology is to explain how moral failure is possible and how it can be avoided. As Antonio S. Cua has noted, for Mencius, moral failure is the failure to develop one's xin (heart-mind). In order to account for the moral mechanics of the xin, Mencius offers a quasi-physiological theory involving qi (vital energy) - "a hard thing to speak about" (2A2), part vapor, part fluid, found in the atmosphere and in the human body, that regulates affective-cognitive processes as well as one's general well-being. It is especially abundant outdoors at night and in the early morning, which is why taking fresh air at these times can act as a physical and spiritual tonic (6A8). When Mencius is asked about his personal strengths, he says:

I know how to speak, and I am good at nourishing my flood-like qi. (2A2)

It is interesting to note the apparent link between powers of suasion - essential for any itinerant Warring States shi, whether official or teacher - and "flood-like qi." The goal of Mencian self-cultivation is to bring one's qi, xin, and yan (words) together in a seamless blend of rightness (yi) and ritual propriety (li). Mencius goes on to describe what he means by "flood-like qi":

It is the sort of qi that is utmost in vastness, utmost in firmness. If, by uprightness, you nourish it and do not interfere with it, it fills the space between Heaven and Earth. It is the sort of qi that matches the right [yi] with the Way [Dao]; without these, it starves. It is generated by the accumulation of right [yi] - one cannot attain it by sporadic righteousness. If anything one does fails to meet the standards of one's heart-mind, it starves. (2A2)

It is here that Mencius is at his most mystical, and recent scholarship has suggested that he and his disciples may have practiced a form of meditative discipline akin to yoga. Certainly, similar-sounding spiritual exercises are described in other early Chinese texts, such as the Neiye ("Inner Training") chapter of the Guanzi (Kuan-tzu, c. 4th-2nd centuries BCE). It also is at this point that Mencius seems to depart most radically from what is known about the historical Confucius' teachings. While faint glimpses of what may be ascetic and meditative disciplines sometimes appear in the Analects, nowhere in the text are there detailed discussions of nurturing one's qi such as can be found in Mencius 2A2.

In spite of the mystical tone of this passage, however, all that the text really says is that qi can be nurtured through regular acts of "rightness" (yi). It goes on to say that qi flows from one's xin (2A2), that one’s xin must undergo great discipline in order to produce "flood-like qi" (6B15), and that a well-developed xin will manifest itself in radiance that shines from one's qi into one’s face and general appearance (7A21). In short, here is where Mencius' case for human nature seems to leave philosophy and reasoned argumentation behind and step into the world of ineffability and religious experience. There is no reason, of course, why Mencius shouldn't take this step; as Alan K. L. Chan has pointed out, ethics and spirituality are not mutually exclusive, either in the Mencius or elsewhere.

To sum up, both biology and culture are important for Mencian self-cultivation, and so is Tian. "By fully developing one's heart-mind, one knows one's nature, and by knowing one’s nature, one knows Heaven." (7A1) One cannot help but begin with "a heart-mind that feels for others," but the journey toward full humanity is hardly complete without having taken any steps beyond one's birth. Guided by the examples of ancient sages and the ritual forms and texts they have left behind, one starts to develop one's heart-mind further by nurturing its qi through habitually doing what is right, cultivating its "sprouts" into virtues, and bringing oneself up and out from the merely human to that which Tian intends for one, which is to become a sage. Nature is crucial, but so is nurture. Mencius' model of moral psychology is both a "discovery" model (human nature is good) and a "development" model (human nature can be made even better):

A person's surroundings transform his qi just as the food he eats changes his body. (7A36)

 9. Key Interpreters of Mencius

Detailed discussion of Mencius' key interpreters is best reserved for an article on Confucian philosophy. Nonetheless, an outline of the most important commentators and their philosophical trajectories is worth including here.

The two best known early interpreters of Mencius' thought - besides the compilers of the Mencius themselves - are the Warring States philosophers Gaozi (Kao-tzu, 300s BCE) and Xunzi (Hsun-tzu, 310-220 BCE). Gaozi, who is known only from the Mencius, evidently knew Mencius personally, but Xunzi knew him only retrospectively. Both disagreed with Mencius' views on human nature.

Gaozi's dialogue with Mencius on human nature can be found in book six of the Mencius, in which both Mencius' disciples and Gaozi himself question him on his points of disagreement with Gaozi. Gaozi - whom later Confucians identified, probably anachronistically, as a Daoist -- offers multiple hypotheses about human nature, each of which Mencius refutes in Socratic fashion. Gaozi first argues that human nature is neither bad nor good, and presents two organic metaphors for its moral neutrality: wood (which can be carved into any object) and water (which can be made to flow east or west).

Challenging the carved wood metaphor, Mencius points out that in carving wood into a cup or bowl, one violates the wood's nature, which is to become a tree. Does one then violate a human being's nature by training him to be good? No, he says, it is possible to violate a human being's nature by making him bad, but his nature is to become good. As for the water metaphor, Mencius rejects it by remarking that human nature flows to the good, just as water's nature flows down. It is possible to make people bad, just as it is possible to make water flow up - but neither is a natural process or end. "Although man can be made to become bad, his nature remains as it was." (6A2)

Like Mencius, Xunzi claims to interpret Confucius' thought authentically, but leavens it with his own contributions. While neither Gaozi nor Mencius is willing to entertain the notion that human beings might originally be evil, this is the cornerstone of Xunzi's position on human nature. Against Mencius, Xunzi defines human nature as what is inborn and unlearned, and then asks why education and ritual are necessary for Mencius if people really are good by nature. Whereas Mencius claims that human beings are originally good but argues for the necessity of self-cultivation, Xunzi claims that human beings are originally bad but argues that they can be reformed, even perfected, through self-cultivation. Also like Mencius, Xunzi sees li as the key to the cultivation of renxing.

Although Xunzi condemns Mencius' arguments in no uncertain terms, when one has risen above the smoke and din of the fray, one may see that the two thinkers share many assumptions, including one that links each to Confucius: the assumption that human beings can be transformed by participation in traditional aesthetic, moral, and social disciplines. (Gaozi's metaphor of carved wood, incidentally, is one of Xunzi's favorites.) Through an accident of history, Mencius had no occasion to meet Xunzi and thus no opportunity to refute his arguments, but if he had, he might have replied that Xunzi cannot truly believe in the original depravity of human beings, or else he could not place such great faith in the morally-transformative power of culture.

Later interpreters of Mencius' thought between the Tang and Ming dynasties are often grouped together under the label of "Neo-Confucianism." This term has no cognate in classical Chinese, but is useful insofar as it unites several thinkers from disparate eras who share common themes and concerns. Thinkers such as Zhang Zai (Chang Tsai, 1020-1077 CE), Zhu Xi (Chu Hsi, 1130-1200 CE) and Wang Yangming (1472-1529 CE), while distinct from one another, agree on the primacy of Confucius as the fountainhead of the Confucian tradition, share Mencius' understanding of human beings as innately good, and revere the Mencius as one of the "Four Books" -- authoritative textual sources for standards of ritual, moral, and social propriety. Zhang Zai's interest in qi as the unifier of all things surely must have been stimulated by Mencius' theories, while Wang Yangming’s search for li (cosmic order or principle) in the heart-mind evokes Mencius 6A7: "What do all heart-minds have in common? Li [cosmic order] and yi [rightness]." Both thinkers also display a bent toward the cosmological and metaphysical which disposes them toward the mysticism of Mencius 2A2, and betrays the influence of Buddhism (of which Mencius knew nothing) and Daoism (of which Mencius indicates little knowledge) on their thought.

During the Qing (Ch'ing) dynasty (1644-1911 CE), late Confucian thinkers such as Dai Zhen (Tai Chen, 1724-1777 CE) developed critiques of Xunzi that aimed at the vindication of Mencius' position on human nature. Kwong-loi Shun has pointed out that Dai Zhen's defense of Mencius actually owes more to Xunzi than to Mencius, particularly in regard to how Dai Zhen sees one's heart-mind as learning to appreciate li (cosmic order) and yi (rightness), rather than naturally taking pleasure in such things, as Mencius would have it. Although Dai Zhen shares Mencius' view of the centrality of the heart-mind in moral development, in the end, he does not ascribe to the heart-mind the same kind of ethical directionality that Mencius finds there.

More recently, the philosophers Roger Ames and Donald Munro have developed postmodern readings of Mencius that involve contemporary developments such as process thought and evolutionary psychology. Although their philosophical points of departure differ, both Ames and Munro share a distaste for the prominence of Tian in Mencius' thought, and each seeks in his own way to separate the "essence" of Mencian thought from the “dross.” For Ames, the "essence" - although, as a postmodern thinker, he rejects any notion of "essentialism" - is Mencius' “process” model of human nature and the cosmos, while the "dross" is Mencius' understanding of Tian as transcendent, which (in Ames' reading) undermines human agency. For Munro, the "essence" is Mencius’ grounding ethics in inborn nature, while the "dross" is Mencius' appeals to Tian as the author of that inborn nature. Their work is an attempt to make Mencius not only intelligible, but also valuable, to contemporary Westerners. At the same time, critics have noted that much of the authentic Mencius may be discarded on the cutting room floor in this process of reclaiming him for contemporary minds. One thinks of David Nivison's warning to philosophers, past and present, not to indulge in "wishful thinking" and excise or explain away what one does not wish to see in the Mencius.

This cursory review of some important interpreters of Mencius' thought illustrates a principle that ought to be followed by all who seek to understanding Mencius' philosophical views: suspicion of the sources. Almost all of our sources for reconstructing Mencius' views postdate him or come from a hand other than his own, and thus all should be used with caution and with an eye toward possible influences from outside of fourth century BCE China.

The Analects of Confucius

 The Analects of Confucius is an anthology of brief passages that present the words of Confucius and his disciples, describe Confucius as a man, and recount some of the events of his life. The Analects includes twenty books, each generally featuring a series of chapters that encompass quotes from Confucius, which were compiled by his disciples after his death.

Book I serves as a general introduction to the various disciples in the work. Book II deals largely with issues of governance. Books III and IV are seen as the core texts, outlining Confucius's ideology. Much of the work concerns itself with the concept of the Tao or the Way, the chun-tzu or the gentleman, Li or ritual, Te or virtue, and Jen or goodness. There are additional terms in the work, but these comprise the core concepts. Taken together they form the backbone of Confucian ideals.

The Tao, or the Way, refers to a literal path or road. In the context of the work it refers to the manner in which anything is done; a method or doctrine. Confucius speaks often about the Tao under Heaven, meaning a good way or path to achieving morally superior ends. This could include self-conduct or how a kingdom is ruled.

The Analects of Confucius is an anthology of brief passages that present the words of Confucius and his disciples, describe Confucius as a man, and recount some of the events of his life. The Analects includes twenty books, each generally featuring a series of chapters that encompass quotes from Confucius, which were compiled by his disciples after his death.

Book I serves as a general introduction to the various disciples in the work. Book II deals largely with issues of governance. Books III and IV are seen as the core texts, outlining Confucius's ideology. Much of the work concerns itself with the concept of the Tao or the Way, the chun-tzu or the gentleman, Li or ritual, Te or virtue, and Jen or goodness. There are additional terms in the work, but these comprise the core concepts. Taken together they form the backbone of Confucian ideals.

The Tao, or the Way, refers to a literal path or road. In the context of the work it refers to the manner in which anything is done; a method or doctrine. Confucius speaks often about the Tao under Heaven, meaning a good way or path to achieving morally superior ends. This could include self-conduct or how a kingdom is ruled.

Jen is most often translated as "goodness" or "humanity". The gentleman, or chunt-tzu, possesses this quality. Its translation is a bit difficult to represent exactly in English, but the text provides a good deal of context when discussing the gentleman and goodness. It is helpful not to simply think of the term as meaning "goodness" but also to see how its juxtaposition with the other terms forms a greater picture of how Confucius defined goodness and other positive human qualities. For example, words like "altruistic" or "humane" are useful in understanding this term.

Te corresponds most closely to the word "virtue", although you may encounter some disagreement among scholars regarding this translation. A better definition, some scholars say, is to think of it as "character" or "prestige", an attribute that would have been desirable in a human being.

The gentleman or chun-tzu is the central term in The Analects and the other terms are generally used in reference to this persona. For this reason it is difficult to summarize the gentleman easily, but considering the term in the light of the other ideas in the text is helpful. The gentleman is one who follows the Way and acts according to a system of morals and beliefs that are not common amongst other individuals. The use of the term "gentleman" to describe the chun-tzu is itself problematic, as it can conjure images related to an aristocratic existence. Some scholars see a similarity between the term and Nietzsche's concept of the Ubermensch, although there is dispute over this idea as well. A "superior man" is another suggested translation of the term. Taken in consideration with the other terms presented, a more complete concept of the chun-tzu emerges.

Li, or ritual, is another core concept in the text. Although the work does not go into great detail on what ritual traditions actually entailed, their importance is presented as paramount in the cultivation of te and an understanding of the Tao. The general principles of conduct comprise much of what this term encompasses. Here, moral initiatives outweigh pure historical knowledge. In other words, practicing what we might call good manners and conducting oneself in a moral and fair affectation were considered characteristic of a gentleman. An appropriate attitude was also necessary: one of reverence and respect for one's elders and for rites and cultural norms that had been handed down by past generations.

Also important to consider in reading The Analects is the historical context in which Confucius lived and the events that surrounded his struggle to spread his doctrine. During the Sixth century, powerful warlords and families gained control of the state of Lu, gradually undermining and marginalizing the ducal house. Consequently, the normal structure and function of government and social rituals were altered, much to the dismay of Confucius. Confucius sought a revival of the Chou traditions that once had been the norm in Lu. He saw these ways as legitimately bettering society. The term li fits best in understanding the Chou traditions that Confucius so eagerly wished to reinstate.

Eventually, Confucius and his disciples sought an audience with various leaders in Lu to help bring these traditions back. Confucius's plan failed, however, and he left Lu after becoming convinced that the sort of rulers he needed to enlist to his side were not present there. So began a long period of traveling around to neighboring states seeking out such a ruler. Some of this period is captured in the text. Confucius eventually returned to Lu upon the invitation of Jan Ch'iu and lived out his days teaching young men about the Chou traditions. However, he was not able to set up a state based on the teachings he held so dear.

The structure of The Analects can make it a difficult work to comprehend. On first reading, the passages can appear to be quite haphazard in their arrangement. From an academic standpoint there is more disagreement than agreement over how best to translate and represent the text for a modern reading audience.