I. Commonalities: Certain ideas are central to modern thought, although these ideas are given a different shape by the various authors we have studied.

Modern world is a revolutionary world: Modern thought rejects much that was believed by the Greeks and by Biblical religion

1. This is true not just for those thinkers we typically label revolutionary, such as Marx, Darwin, and Freud but also for the thinker who begins the course John Locke.

2. John Locke is so dominant a figure in our lives that we don’t see how revolutionary he was I his own time.

a. His political views shape our own.

b. His understanding of Christianity has shaped our view of Biblical religion, which is different from the view of Biblical religion that went before it.  

A. Human Nature and Individuality:

1. For the Greek and Biblical thought

a. There is a best way of life that is connected to

1) For the Greeks, the kind of beings we are, that is, to our human nature.

2) For Biblical thought, both our nature and the being who created our nature, God

b. We have to discover that best way of life, either by means of reason or revelation

c. We have to model ourselves after some ideal that is beyond our selves in two senses

1) First, it is beyond what we would choose to do if we had not been instructed or trained to recognize that ideal

2) Second, the ideal goes beyond our own internal desires. This ideal only makes sense in the context of a world that has a certain shape or nature

a) For Greek thought, this is a world that human beings can rationally understand

b) For Biblical thought, this is a world created by God

d. Human beings have the capacity rationally to choose between one kind of life and another.

1) While we all have certain individual desires, these desires are particular exemplifications of more general desires common to all human beings.

2) And  the desires to which we are initially socialized may not be the best way to satisfy our more general desires.

3) We can criticize our particular desires by evaluating the best way to satisfy the more general desires that underlie them.

4) Education is the process by which we come to more deeply understand the kind of creatures we are and the best way in which we can satisfy our more general desires.

5) We evaluate the different kinds of life open to us in terms of how we can best satisfy the deepest ends we share with other human beings. And each kind of life can only be understood in terms of some connection to one or another aspect of the world around us.

e. Different versions of pre-modern thought.

1) For Plato, the best among us discover their fundamental aim, philosophy or the pursuit of knowledge, in large part, by being helped to break free from the cave of opinion. In the process, we begin to recognize the kind of pleasure open to human beings in the pursuit of knowledge. But, at the same time,  we come to recognize that this pleasure is the result of our connection to something outside ourselves, the forms. Moreover, the our very activity also enables us to compare the philosophic life to other kinds of lives and recognize that the philosophic life best is that most likely to make us independent of fortune or chance

2) For Biblical religion, our own deepest purposes are revealed by God’s revelation to us, which tells us of our deepest aims and ends. And those purposes essentially involve standing in the right relationship to God.

2. For moderns,

a. The ways we differ from one another are as important as the ways in which we are similar to one another

b. Our fundamental aims and purposes as human beings are discovered by looking inwards at our wants rather than outwards towards some conception of the cosmos as a whole and our place in it.

1) Happiness consists in satisfying our wants, whatever they happen to be.

2) Our deepest and most important ends are the particular desires

a) we discover by looking inside ourselves or

b) we invent for ourselves

3) Some moderns, such as Locke, deny that there any more general desires common to all human beings. All insist that it is our particular desires that are most important to us and that we can only reluctantly and with difficulty give up.

4) The different kinds of lives open to us are defined by the particular desires we have, not by some connection to one or another aspect of the world outside us.

c. For Locke, we discover our desires by looking inside and seeing what makes us uneasy. Anything can make us uneasy. And our own uneasiness may have a very different source from that of other people. Our happiness is not connected in any essential way to an order in the world outside ourself.

d. For Blake, our fundamental desire is to express the kind of energy found within us. This energy is a force that seeks to give shape to itself. That is, it an energy that encourages us to find individual and unique ways of developing and expressing our capacities and abilities. This energy may have a particular bent to it, that leads us to express it in one direction rather than another. And they way we express this energy gives further shape to it. Thus we partly discover  and partly invent the particular bent or aim of our own energy by trying to free ourselves from the mind forg’d manacles of the political and moral ideals of our times.

e. For Wordsworth, we have the capacity to detach ourselves from our own ends and goals and float about our own lives. In doing so, we delight in our freedom and gain a path to independence from the troubles of everyday life. At the same time, we suffer from our own detachment. We can reattach ourselves to life through love.

1) In describing all of these moments of the soul, Wordsworth seems to be close to some ancients ways of thought.

2) Yet, despite his affinity for Plato, Wordsworth does not identify any common ends outside ourselves that we seek when we are either standing apart from or reconnecting to the life of human beings.

a) Detachment, for Plato, is primarily important because it brings our soul in contact with the forms and the good.

b) Detachment, for Wordsworth, brings us most in contact with the powers of the human soul and with some vague sense of something beyond us, which may, in fact be only the power of the soul.

c) Reattachment, for Plato, is connected to finding an individual who exemplifies a good human soul.

d) Reattachment, for Wordsworth is tied to an individual whose particular life and experience he has shared.

f. Marx takes us part way back to the ancient world in that  he hold that all human beings have some general end, for unalienated labor and for the freedom to labor as we choose.

1) Yet while Marx’s account does enable us to develop a criticism of capitalism, it does not really enable us to discover how we should live our own lives.

a) For, on the one hand, unalienated labor is such a general end that what is most important for us can only be the continuing exercise of the particular skills and abilities we have developed during our life.

b) And Marx assumes that, come communism, all of the tensions of human life—between human beings and nature, and between one human being and another—can be eliminated.

c) Thus there is no basis in the analysis of human nature and political and social life to say that one way of life—or one kind of unalienated labor—is better or worse than another.

2) Darwin breaks down the notion of a general path to a best life in more general terms as he breaks down the fixed and rigid idea we had of individual species

3) One species is not as sharply divided from another as we had previously thought

4) And within any one species, there are many varieties

5) Part of the genetic inheritance of human beings is some kind of variety: we may not all have the same desires or desires to the same to degree by nature

6) Another part of the genetic inheritance of human beings is the capacity for cultural development

a) Which give us evolutionary advantages because it proceeds much faster than biological evolution

b) And, at the same time, enables human beings (and political communities) to develop in more various ways

g. Freud

1) Freud presents the most highly developed general theory of human nature found in Modern thought. There is a general trajectory in the development of our most important desires for sexual expression. So, he is in some ways a return to Greek though

2) Freud is similar to Plato in that both have a general theory of the human mind and both seek to explain the source of the desires of particular people

3) But there is little or no basis in Freud for criticizing our particular desires from the standpoint of their connection to something higher than or outside ourself.

4) But Freud does point out that certain ways of pursuing the satisfaction of our basic desires are better or worse,

a) because they allow for a greater degree of instinctual satisfaction.

b) or because they make us more or less independent of the outside world and thus of  fortune, luck, and chance

5) And some of our desires are more or less compatible with civilized life.

a) Freud does also raise the question of whether the repression of desires required by civilization is always to the good.

6) Freud differs from the Ancients is in two respects.

a) First, Freud emphasizes  the ways in which we come to have unique and distinctive sexual (and other) desires. Our happiness is only possible if we can satisfy those desires. 

b) Second, he insists that we can explain what even he calls our higher ends (love, intellectual work) in terms of our lower ends (sex). (But, even Freud wavers on this point in his later account of eros.)

B. Structure:

1. Ancient and Biblical texts evaluate the character and quality of human life largely in terms of the moral qualities of the individuals that make up a political community.

a. Good political communities, on this view, are the product of good human beings.

b. Improvement (and dissolution) in political and social life largely comes about by means of education and conversion; by teaching and preaching

c. Change comes about

1) When a great teacher come along to give us a new way of living or recall us to some older way

2) And we respond to him or her

d. We have the power to choose and must exercise that choice in the right way

2. Modern texts are more likely to emphasize the way in which political and social life is determined by processes that are far larger than the choices of human beings

a. Structures: interactions between human beings or human beings and their natural environment create outcomes that no one intends

1) Unintended consequences

a) Person A does and action

b) Gives person B a reason to act

c) Gives person C a reason to act

d) Leads to a result no one intendeds

2) Example: An arms race

a) Imagine there are two sides

b) Neither wants an arms race

c) Neither wants to get ahead

d) But neither wants to fall behind

e) And not quite sure how many arms the other side has and how good they are

f) So just to be safe, each one has an estimate of the level of the arms of the other that is a bit high.  

g) By trying to match that estimate, each side ratchets up the arms race just a bit.

3) We can get greater power over the world if we come to recognize the importance of structures and change them

a) We can create circumstances under which human action, and political and social life, improve by changing the pattern of interaction that creates the structural features of our lives

b. Locke: What makes people good or bad is not their intrinsic nature or the moral choices they make but the circumstances in which the find themselves.

c. The state of nature is originally peaceful

1) There is no opportunity or reason to steal

d. Invention of money leads to inequality and

1) possibility of theft

2) possibility of disagreement over our rights, particularly our property rights

a) Example: who pays to clean up a tree that has fallen from your neighbors property on to your own

b) Example: Who inherits the money of a rich person who dies without a will

e. In the state of nature we lack

1) Settled, standing laws

2) Fair, unbiased judiciary

3) Powerful executive

f. Disputes between people over property rights can involve many people and lead to violent conflict

g. If violent conflict becomes general, what Hobbes called a war of all against all might arise

1) The strongest seek to get others under their power

h. If we create government that is strong enough

1) People will respect the rights of others

2) Peace will be created

3) Economic growth with develop as people turn from politics to economics and business as a way of satisfying their desires

4) Economic growth reduces tensions between rich and poor

i. We can become more powerful as a species or community by understanding these structural features of our lives. For we can change and modify them by understanding them

3. Blake and Wordsworth

a. Closest to ancient and Biblical ways of thought in that they point to the importance of our own ideals and ways of thought and life.

b. But both of them explain our problems less by emphasizing human responsibility and more by pointing to the changing circumstances in which we live

c. Mind forg’d manacles are not forged by individuals for themselves but by groups of people acting together

1) Church

2) State

d. Blake: Conditions of freedom cannot be created by individuals but concerted action.

e. Wordsworth:  Freedom is not really possible unless we basically drop out of political and social life and retreat to our minds

4. Marx

a. Changes from one political and social order to another are not the product of human choice

1) No one desire or decides to create capitalism or communism

2) They are the unintended product of human interaction

b. We can recognize this process and help it along

1) The Communist Manifesto points out that one part of bourgeoisie recognize this process and offers a theoretical  account of it.

2) This is Marx’s account of his own activity

3) By developing this theoretical account, we can make the transition to communism easier

c. The transition to communism for the first time creates conditions for human freedom.

1) By understanding the structural features of human life we can master our fate both as individuals and members of a collectivity

5. Darwin

a. It is not just human individual achievement that is diminished and replaced by understanding the unintended consequences but the achievement of God as well

b. The individual species are not the product of design by God but of evolutionary processes that are entirely unintended. They are the result of structural processes that have no larger purpose.

c. If we recognize we are the product of evolution we can, perhaps gain greater control over our future by

1) Understanding our nature by better understanding what produced it

2) Or perhaps by shaping the processes by which we evolve in the future, either biologically or culturally

6. Freud

a. Freud is a Darwinian: He holds that human nature is the product of evolution

b. We are not wholly in control over ourselves but are to a large extent controlled by psychic forces we had not previously recognize

1) The structures that shape our lives are not just outside ourselves but within us: The interaction between the id, ego, and super-ego.

2) Our higher attainments and desires—love, art, philosophy—are the product of lower desires for sex and aggression.

c. Political and social evolution has also have produced changes in us

1) Civilization leads to

a) Limits on the satisfaction of our sexual desires and aggressive desires.

b) Aggression is turned inwards as our conscience and sense of guilty becomes heightened. Aggression turned inwards controls both our sexual drive desire and prevents the aggressive drive from being expressed outwards against others

2) Restraints on sexuality are necessary to

a) Preserve the family by restrict incest, adultery

b) Force human beings to work rather than take pleasure in their bodies

c) Create emotional ties between members of a political community that are a kind of displaced sexuality

3) Restraints on aggression are necessary to keep people and groups of people from destroying one another

4) The result of these restraints, however, is discontent, unhappiness, malaise in civilization.

d. Can we learn to modify our lives to deal with these structural features?

1) As individuals can understand sources of our misery and to some extent modify our psyches.

2) Perhaps as a political community we can learn to reduce the restrictions on sexual desire that are no longer necessary

a) Contraceptives can reduce the necessity for sexual restraint

b) Economic growth can

(1) enable more people to find work that is more fulfilling

(2) thus less sexual repression may be necessary to get us to work hard

C. Freedom

1. For the ancients the truth that sets us free is the that which reveals our true nature to us. While the ancients valued other freedoms and, especially for philosophers, the freedom to pursue knowledge, the removal of external constraints is valuable only in so far as it removes the constraint of lack of knowledge of what we truly are.

2. For moderns: Given our inability to reason about what a good, the diversity of human endeavors and actions shows us that human beings may have very different wants from one another. Thus a good polity and society must allow room for a great deal of diversity and freedom. Moreover, freedom consists in removing constraints on the satisfaction of our wants, rather than in discovering our true nature or place in the cosmos. These constraints may include: (i) government restrictions on our choice of what desires to seek to satisfy; (ii) social mores, expectations, and conceptions of how it is best for us to live; (iii) lack of political and economic resources; (iv) natural necessity; and (v) our own irrationality.

a. Locke is mostly concerned with external constraints on our freedom. These external constraints take away our lives, property, or freedom to live or speak as we wish.

1) External constraints come from the actions of those who violate our rights to life, liberty, and property

2) External constraints can be placed on us both by

a) Individuals

b) Governments

3) It is the proper role of government to protect us from those individuals who violate our rights without itself violating those rights

b. For Blake  and Wordsworth, freedom from conventional opinions, from “mind forg’d manacles” is necessary if we are to discover or create our own individual way of life.

1) Thus they are mostly concerned with internal constraints that are the product of the way we think and desire

a) Free expression of our desires which are constrained by moral and religious teachings of the past

2) Our task, then is to make ourselves free by learning to think for and be ourselves

3) Blake also points to the importance of political and economic resources in order to be free.

c. For Marx, freedom is not really possible until we each have control over the means of production and thus have the possibility of living an unalienated life.

1) Marx wants to attain the romantic ideals of creating ourselves and freeing ourselves from past ideals

2) It requires not just individual freedom but

a) An enormous increase in our productive capacity

(1) Freedom requires the conquest of nature and the end of necessity. That is, freedom is only possible when we do not have to labor to survive but only labor for the joy of developing and exercising our faculties and capacities.

(2) Which is created by capitalism

b) The collective freedom that comes with radical democracy and control over the means of production.

3) Marx also returns to some extent to the ancient view when he holds that freedom involves knowledge of our true nature. He says that one kind of alienation is alienation from specie-being, that is, misunderstanding of our nature. And he holds that, come communism, everyone will understand that our prime want is for unalienated labor.

a) For Marx, freedom in the sense of self-knowledge is only possible at the end of history, when the trajectory of human history becomes evident.

b) Not something we accomplish on our own

d. Darwin says little that is directly relevant to the issue of freedom.

e. Freud

1) Returns even more than Marx to the ancient view, at least in some respects. For the ultimate lack of freedom for Freud is human irrationality as seen in neurotic symptoms.

a) Neurosis makes us incapable of understanding or controlling what we do. It is, however, only the most extreme kind of internal lack of freedom.

b) For Freud, knowing ourselves—knowing the nature and source of our own desires—is necessary for the fullest freedom to rationally shape our own lives.

2) Where Freud differs from the ancients is

a) precisely in that he also would insist on the importance of the characteristically modern kinds of freedom (i) to (iv) above because it is important that we be free to pursue

b) Freud also recognizes the important of us finding our own individual path to happiness. He is an defending of enlightenment liberalism

(1) He sees benefits in our expanded capacity for production

(2) Although he also points out that this capacity also creates problems for us, especially since we are better able to kill each other

(3) And he would criticize Marx for thinking that the removal of economic constraints will lead to human reconciliation and solidarity. The fundamental division for Freud is not the product of disputes about control of the means of production but are, rather the result of our aggressive nature

c) Freud also shares the romantic ideal of questioning constraints:

(1) Like romantics he questions inherited constraints on our sexual desires

D.  Reason: For the Ancients the main purpose of human reason is to discover the proper ends of human kind. And for Biblical texts, human reason was subordinate to revelation from God, which set out the proper way in which human beings should live. Modern texts, on the other hand, deemphasize the role of reason in determining the fundamental goals we should pursue. Instead, they emphasize the capacity of human beings to understand the natural world around them. They often see that capacity as, itself, an outgrowth of the natural processes in the world.

1. For the Greeks and Biblical thought reason is substantive. It tells us what human nature is, what common ends we share with other human beings, and the extent to which one kind of life or another will enable us to be fulfilled or satisfied. Biblical religion supplements reason with revelation. But while that revelation tells us certain things that reason cannot clearly establish on its own, it is meant to be consonant with the discoveries of reason.

2. For moderns, reason is instrumental not substantive. Reason does not tell us what a good life is, that is, what wants or fundamental aims to have if we want to be fulfilled or happy. Rather it (i) tells us how to satisfy each of our wants, (ii) tells us how to organize our lives to satisfy as many of our wants as possible, and, for some moderns, (iii) tells us what moral constraints apply to our pursuit of our happiness. These moral constraints, however, derive from our obligation to respect the rights of others, not from some substantive account of our own well-being.

a. For Locke, the great power of reason are (1) our ability to conquer nature and increase the productive capacity of mankind and (2) our ability to discover the law of nature and create a political community that allows us to protect our rights. Reason has no role to play in discovering our ends.

b. For Blake, in some of his writings, reason has a somewhat greater role to play, in addition to the role Locke allows it.

1) Reason, it seems, gives some shape or definition to the energy that we share with other human beings. But this kind of reason is not fully substantive in the way found in ancient thought.

2) For there does not seem to be a particularly right or wrong way to express our energy. The only important consideration beyond our own happiness seems to be to respect other human beings. In other of his writings, however, Blake gives a more definite understanding of the kind of life that is valuable to us. For example, The Lamb and The Tyger point us to the importance of gratitude and daring in living a good life.

c. For Wordsworth  the power of reason seems to be the power of the human soul for memory and reflection.

1) Our capacity for reflection and distance from ourselves does enable us to see that certain of our desires are more or less likely to be satisfied.

2) But reflection does not seem to give us new desires different from the ones we already start with. Indeed, on problem with reflection that Wordsworth points to is that it leaves us so distant from our own lives that nothing seems important to us. So, for the Wordsworth of Tintern Abbey reason does not seem able to tell us what ends to follow. It is in love of others that we find a purpose to our lives.

d. For Marx, reason is more powerful than it is for early moderns.

1) Reason creates the human capacity to conquer nature

2) And it can give us an understanding of the direction of history as a whole. But, while it tells us that communism is the ideal form of political and social life, it does not tell us in detail what kind of life would be best for us.

e. For Darwin reason is a part of nature.

1) Reason evolved in human beings because it enables us to survive and reproduce. It is natural faculty of mankind not something that links us to higher ideals or forces or God as it is for the Greeks or for Biblical thought.

2) Reason is best understood as our means of coping with our environment.

f. Freud again returns part way to the ancient world. He does show us how reason can give us an understanding of human nature. And through psychoanalysis, reason can help us understand our own particular nature and the best way for us to seek happiness.

1) But reason is not a complete guide to human happiness. The different paths our instinctual drives take is something that we mostly have to accept, without reason.

E. God: Does it still make sense to think of God as the creator and guide of our lives?

1. Ancient Greek and Biblical Thought.

a. Biblical thought presupposes that the world was created by a good and all-powerful God. Much, although not all, ancient Greek thought held that there was a divine element in the world.

b. Popular Greek religion held that there were many Gods, which were associated with both natural forces (e.g. thunder) and human practices (e.g. love and war).

c. Some Greek philosophers suggested that the human soul can come into harmony with a quasi-divine element in the world. It is this harmony that makes for our understanding of the world around us.

d. In all of these lines of thought, the notion of divinity helps us explain such phenomena as

1) Where the world came from

2) Why the world has a certain order or form that seems to be is fitted to human life and / or human understanding

a) Why there is some design to nature in which different species of plants and animals seem to have their assigned place.

b) Or why there is some incompatibility between complete human happiness and the natural world in which we live, a view that can be found in the Iliad and, on some interpretation, Plato

2. The modern thinkers we have read do not directly disprove the notion that there is a God or gods. (It is not clear that disproof of this or other notions is possible.) But they do call into question, to one degree or another, the Biblical and, especially, Christian picture of our place in the world.

3. Locke’s view of Christianity is somewhat ambiguous.

a. At times he claims to find Biblical support for his views:

1) He says that the Law of nature is God’s law.

2) He tells us that we should respect the rights of others because God created us.

3) He talks about human beings descending from Adam in the Garden of Eden.

4) He calls us God’s property

5) Locke’s law of nature initially sounds like the golden rule.

b. Yet

1) He also says that the law of nature is the law of reason which we discover not by revelation but by reason.

2) He tells us we should respect the rights of others because we all desire the rights to life, liberty, and property.

3) He tells us that we are born into a poor state and have to make our own way in the world as opposed to the Biblical claim that human beings originally live in the Garden of Eden.

4) He seems to deny that there is original sin. Human desires are not problematic for Locke but necessary if we are to survive and be fulfilled.

5) Locke’s morality is different from the Golden Rule.

a) It is more limited: Rather than telling us to help others it tells us not to violate their rights.

b) It protects our freedom. Christianity teaches that certain actions are wrong and should be punished even if they hurt no one but ourselves. And, in pre-Lockean times, Christianity taught that certain ideas should be restrained by government, especially those that lead people to question their religious beliefs.

c) Locke, on the other hand, calls for freedom of thought and action.

c. Lockean thinking transformed Christianity. Today most Christians accept Locke’s conception that human rights are God given and reject the Christian arguments for intolerance.

4. Blake’s view is also ambiguous

a. Blake writes many things that call into question the Christianity of his day.

1) His account of human action rejects the Augustinian picture of conflict between reason and spirit on the one hand and body and desire, on the other.

2) His denial of the notion of original sin

3) His criticism of the use of the idea of heaven to reconcile people to the injustice they suffer (The Chimneysweeper)

4) His criticism of sexual constraints (London).

b. Yet at the same time Blake seems attracted to religion and Christianity:

1) The Lamb presents Christian symbolism in an attractive light

2) In the Marriage of Heaven and Hell Blake seems to be trying to redirect our understanding of God not reject the notion of God. The energy he finds in us may perhaps be connected to a larger energy that animates the world—and this might be a new understanding of God

5. Wordsworth: We have not poems by Wordsworth that address this issue in depth. We did see, however, that in Tintern Abbey, Wordsworth points to a

A motion and a spirit, that impels
All thinking things, all objects of all thought,
And rolls through all things.

Perhaps this passage Wordsworth points to a notion of God as a force in our lives.

6. Marx

a. Marx rejects the notion of God. God, Marx, is a projection of the power and capacity that human beings potentially have to shape and change both ourselves and the world in which we live by means of productive activity. We don’t recognize this power and capacity because we are alienated, especially from our species being. So we invent the notion of God and attribute to him all the powers and abilities that we ourselves potentially have. Marx expected that the idea of God would fade away after the communist revolution.

b. The Christian God is a dangerous idea, according to Marx, because it reconciles us to our oppression. By promising a reward in heaven for our suffering in this world, Christianity teaches us to live with oppression. That is why Marx calls religion the opium of the masses. (Compare his views to those of Blake in The Chimney Sweeper.)

7. Darwin

a. Darwin does not directly address religion in The Origin of the Species. But his argument undermines both the philosophical argument for design and the larger picture of the universe of which it is a part.

b. The argument from design claims that we can know God exists from the evidence of order and design in the world we see. That animals and plants are fitted to their environment shows us that some conscious power must have created them.

1) The argument from design is part of the view of the universe as a ordered, hierarchical, and good world created by God.

c. Darwin vs the Argument from Design

1) Darwin shows us that the adaptations of plants and animals to their environment could have come about not through the conscious design of a designer but through mindless process of natural selection.

2) Darwin shows us that natural selection works by means of conflict and violence between and among species. This calls into question just how good the world is.

8. Freud argues that belief in God is a product of our infantile wishes.

a. God as a projection of a good Father

1) As children our parents are our whole world. We count on them for protection and sustenance. As we grow older we discover that the world is a difficult and dangerous place and wish for the same kind of support we had as children. This wish is satisfied by the belief that there is a God who protects and sustains us.

b. God and the oceanic feeling. For some people—although Freud says not for himself—religious feelings are the product of a wish to restore our infantile primary narcissism, our senses that we are fundamentally connected to or apart of the world. This sense of connection goes back to the earliest  stages of our life in which the distinction between self and other, that is between ourselves and the world around us, has not yet arisen.

F. Growth and change: Ancient and Biblical texts point to a world that is fundamentally static and unchanging except where there is divine intervention. Modern texts point to the possibility of change in the way human beings live and, in particular, growth in our control over the material world.

1. Locke points to the different stages of human political and moral life.

a. The earliest state of nature, in which we have no private property

b. The invention of private property

c. The invention of trade and then money

d. The invention of government

2. Blake: looks ahead to

a. a new religion that replaces / modifies Christianity

b. a time in which we will be free of our mind forg’d manacles

3. Wordsworth points to changes in our lives that come from developments in our consciousness or spirit that may or may not be the result of some divine source (see above on God).

4. Marx

a. gives great emphasis to the historical changes in

1) The mode of production: The ways in which human beings engage in productive activity

2) The class structure: The different ways in which one group gains control over the means of production and oppresses another group which has no such control

b. Marx explains the transitions from feudalism to capitalism and then, eventually to communism.

5. Freud

a. Gives us an account of the development of civilization. Civilization brings about

1) Technical advance

2) Advances in cleanliness, orderliness and the development of a sense of beauty

3) Restrictions on the degree to which human beings can legitimately injure one another, that is, an enlarged sense of justice.

b. Freud calls into question whether civilization brings additional happiness (see above).