With all of our discussions of philosophy, we've neglected to focus on perhaps the branch of philosophy that became the most pervasive and important to our current age: political economy (yes, economics was part of philosophy just 100 years ago). And, it is the 19th century political economist's thoughts that reign supreme today. There has been no real attack upon them, no revision, even an acceptance of them by their would be reformers (Marx, socialists, anarchists, libertarians etc).
The following is an excellent essay written some 80 years ago by Sir Charles Frederick Harrold on Carlyle's attack of Western Society and its slavery to economics some 170 years ago:
According to the new hedonistic calculus of Bentham and Mill (and Utilitarianism), the sovereign masters of man's conduct, pleasure and pain, may be quantitatively measured, and they alone determine the moral quantity of an act. The criterion of the goodness of a law or act is the principle of Utility, the measure in which it sub-serves the happiness of the individual, which is the proper aim of life. The motive of our acts is always self-interest; and the welfare of society may be best promoted by permitting the free-play and mechanical adjustment of social individuals in their pursuit of happiness. What Carlyle called the "mysterious Self-impulse of the whole man," or the dynamic unity of the self, prompted by duty, was fast disappearing from current discussions of human nature. And in the same fashion, what Carlyle had regarded as the “mystic miraculous unfathomable Union” of man in society, now became a mechanical, quite fathomable aggregate of social atoms, or individuals, each seeking his own separate end. As the individual had lost his inner unity in a mechanism of association—his mind or soul being now the sum of sensations and ideas received from external nature—so now society was losing its inner spiritual unity in a mechanism of “sanctions,” “motives,” “rewards,” and “punishments.” Instead of religion, and the old ideals of reverence, obedience, obligation, and pious labor, as the cement of society, he now found a system of checks and balances, reforms, suffrages, and organizations, as the means by which society was to be held together, even refashioned.
The business of government was to promote the greatest happiness for the greatest number, by rewarding or punishing. In the sphere of economics, it was to observe the principle of laissez-faire, by which the people were theoretically to be the judges and determinants of their own interests. In practice, this resulted in the refusal, by responsible authority, through indifference or timidity, to intervene on behalf of the weak, in the cause of social justice. Both theory and practice soon became an irresistible pattern: the laws of economics increasingly took on the semblance of natural law, even of divine ordinance. Malthus had shown that the poor increase faster than the food supply; the enthusiasts for laissez-faire had shown that industry can flourish only when its laws are permitted to operate without interference; and economic practice had shown an unparalleled production of wealth. All classes except the poor benefited by these conclusions, and Christian religion followed suit. For there rose at this time that phenomenon that Carlyle satirized: “respectability,” the compromise between precept and practice, between the pursuit of success and the profession of Christian virtues. “Respectability with a thousand gigs” became the symbol of the hollowness and concealed brutality of the mechanical age.
Indeed from Carlyle’s point of view, the evil of the age was summed up in the overwhelmingly mechanistic character of its standards. All the problems were to be solved by “machinery” physical or intellectual. The world would become an age of mechanistic rather than moral reform. The rise of new problems in industry, society, religion, and thought was met by purely external treatment. Carlyle could find little tendency to penetrate into the inner, dynamic, and vital sources of those problems. And he observed the peculiarly modern habit is to path up the old or invent new mechanical methods without examining the reality beneath, to believe that all problems are material, that the “garment” is the man. This was the purport of mechanism, and at last, metaphysics itself is reduced to a mechanical level.
The proper question that arises from this passage is whether Carlyle was correct in his observation of Western Society? Are many of our social, economic, and government problems caused by our attachment to this hedonistic calculus of the 19th century? And as the mechanistic character of our society has been replaced by the advanced science/technology/computers character of our society, is it indeed true, that instead of confronting the multitude of problems and finding out why they were caused, and how they can be addressed, we instead rely on a scientific or technological solution?
(This is perhaps a proper revisting of my previous Carlyle-like threads of Moral Progress, and the Superficiality of America, and many others).
The following is an excellent essay written some 80 years ago by Sir Charles Frederick Harrold on Carlyle's attack of Western Society and its slavery to economics some 170 years ago:
According to the new hedonistic calculus of Bentham and Mill (and Utilitarianism), the sovereign masters of man's conduct, pleasure and pain, may be quantitatively measured, and they alone determine the moral quantity of an act. The criterion of the goodness of a law or act is the principle of Utility, the measure in which it sub-serves the happiness of the individual, which is the proper aim of life. The motive of our acts is always self-interest; and the welfare of society may be best promoted by permitting the free-play and mechanical adjustment of social individuals in their pursuit of happiness. What Carlyle called the "mysterious Self-impulse of the whole man," or the dynamic unity of the self, prompted by duty, was fast disappearing from current discussions of human nature. And in the same fashion, what Carlyle had regarded as the “mystic miraculous unfathomable Union” of man in society, now became a mechanical, quite fathomable aggregate of social atoms, or individuals, each seeking his own separate end. As the individual had lost his inner unity in a mechanism of association—his mind or soul being now the sum of sensations and ideas received from external nature—so now society was losing its inner spiritual unity in a mechanism of “sanctions,” “motives,” “rewards,” and “punishments.” Instead of religion, and the old ideals of reverence, obedience, obligation, and pious labor, as the cement of society, he now found a system of checks and balances, reforms, suffrages, and organizations, as the means by which society was to be held together, even refashioned.
The business of government was to promote the greatest happiness for the greatest number, by rewarding or punishing. In the sphere of economics, it was to observe the principle of laissez-faire, by which the people were theoretically to be the judges and determinants of their own interests. In practice, this resulted in the refusal, by responsible authority, through indifference or timidity, to intervene on behalf of the weak, in the cause of social justice. Both theory and practice soon became an irresistible pattern: the laws of economics increasingly took on the semblance of natural law, even of divine ordinance. Malthus had shown that the poor increase faster than the food supply; the enthusiasts for laissez-faire had shown that industry can flourish only when its laws are permitted to operate without interference; and economic practice had shown an unparalleled production of wealth. All classes except the poor benefited by these conclusions, and Christian religion followed suit. For there rose at this time that phenomenon that Carlyle satirized: “respectability,” the compromise between precept and practice, between the pursuit of success and the profession of Christian virtues. “Respectability with a thousand gigs” became the symbol of the hollowness and concealed brutality of the mechanical age.
Indeed from Carlyle’s point of view, the evil of the age was summed up in the overwhelmingly mechanistic character of its standards. All the problems were to be solved by “machinery” physical or intellectual. The world would become an age of mechanistic rather than moral reform. The rise of new problems in industry, society, religion, and thought was met by purely external treatment. Carlyle could find little tendency to penetrate into the inner, dynamic, and vital sources of those problems. And he observed the peculiarly modern habit is to path up the old or invent new mechanical methods without examining the reality beneath, to believe that all problems are material, that the “garment” is the man. This was the purport of mechanism, and at last, metaphysics itself is reduced to a mechanical level.
The proper question that arises from this passage is whether Carlyle was correct in his observation of Western Society? Are many of our social, economic, and government problems caused by our attachment to this hedonistic calculus of the 19th century? And as the mechanistic character of our society has been replaced by the advanced science/technology/computers character of our society, is it indeed true, that instead of confronting the multitude of problems and finding out why they were caused, and how they can be addressed, we instead rely on a scientific or technological solution?
(This is perhaps a proper revisting of my previous Carlyle-like threads of Moral Progress, and the Superficiality of America, and many others).
