I. Divergences: Despite their commonalities, modern texts differ on some important issues. Discuss these differences with regard to Discuss two of the following themes in relationship to Locke, Blake, Wordsworth, Marx, Darwin, and Freud. Again, you might find that some of these texts focus more on some themes rather than others.

A. Commercial society: Is the development of commercial society something to be enthusiastically welcomed? Or does it create serious problems for human beings?

1. Advantages of commercial society (Locke, Marx)

a. Human beings focused on the pursuit of economic well being through agriculture, manufacture, trade and finance contribute to human happiness.  

1) Commercial society dramatically improves the material standard of living of human beings (Locke)

2) Commercial society makes possible the end of alienated productive activity (Marx)

3) Commercial society civilizes human beings.

a) It diverts ambitious people from politics to economics where they can do good rather than harm

b) It encourages the spread of respect for others and good manners, since businessmen must win the confidence of those with whom they buy and sell

2. Disadvantages of commercial society (Blake, Wordsworth)

a. Commercial society encourages human beings to take an instrumental attitude towards other human beings and this leads to an tension and unpleasantness between human beings. (Wordsworth on the “sneers of selfish men”)

1) We think of them as means to our ends

a) When we want to sell them something

b) Or when we want to buy something

2) Thus

a) We cannot be honest and open with others when we take this attitude towards them

b) We don’t take into account the interests of others

c) We treat others inconsiderately or rudely

(1) When their failure to do exactly what we want when we want frustrates us

(2) When it serves our interests to do so

d) We often are trying to outdo others, both in the amount of wealth we accumulate and in the reputation or honors we accumulate

3) These phenomena are, of course, not new but they are exacerbated in commercial society

a) Human beings have always been dishonest, inconsiderate and rude and selfish

b) But in the pre-modern world, most people lived in settled, small communities

(1) They lived with the same, small number of people throughout their lives

(2) Because they had to continue to live with these people, they could not go too far in being dishonest, inconsiderate, rude or selfish

(a) They might be ostracized for continual behavior of this sort

c) In the modern world, we constantly interact with people we do not know and will not see again

(1) Thus there is much less incentive to be decent to others

b. The pursuit of economic advantage Leads us to live for others, not ourselves

1) In order to get a good job or get a contract to perform a service for others we have to sell ourselves

a) We have to make others believe that

(1) we will do the work just as they want us to do it

(2)  will devote ourselves wholly to their interests

(3) share their ideals

b) but we really don’t want to and can’t do all these things

(1) for we have our own interests, conception of what is important to us,  and ideals

2) thus to get work we have to pretend to be something other than what we are

a) we wear clothes, form relationships, act in ways that fit some model of what others want us to be

b) instead of living as we like

3) And, even worse, we might find that we lose any sense of own identity or of who we are. We so live to win the approval of others that we forget what we really want to be

4) Again, this phenomena is not new to commercial society but is exacerbated by it

a) In pre-modern societies people know each other well and are fairly similar to one another

b) They cannot easily pretend to be something other than what they are

c) There is more tolerance for small eccentricities and differences between people when we know them well

5) Of course, pre-modern societies also limit us in various ways

a) There is less opportunity to choose work that is different from what one’s father has done or that is different from the farming,  craftwork, and religious and political work found in small communities, choose

b) There is less opportunity to advance politically, socially, or economically. For example, religious and political leadership and the economic wealth that comes from trade or small scale manufacture is typically inherited in small pre-modern villages.

c) There is less opportunity to hear new and different ideas or experience a variety of artistic forms

6) Thus modern commercial society enables human beings to become much more different from one another.

a) Yet we have to hide those differences in many circumstances

c. The emphasis on industriousness and rationality and the self-restraint that comes along with it stifles spontaneity and passion

1) Enlightenment liberalism tells us to serve our long term self-interest by restraining our immediate pursuit of pleasure. (London, Tintern Abbey)

2) The rational and industriousness pursuit of wealth stifles the satisfaction of our deeper human desires

a) Stifles spontaneity

b) Leads us to play it safe all the time rather than to take risks (The Tyger)

c) Leads us to ingratitude, to forgetting how much we owe God or nature, other human beings (The Lamb, Tintern Abbey)

d) Leads us to stifle our sexual and aggressive desires (Freud)

e) Leads us to accept work that is alienating in order to attain good wages or to start a business that gives us wealth but no joy (Marx on alienation; Wordsworth on how getting and spending lays waste our powers.)

3) The pursuit of material well being becomes a substitute for the development of our abilities and capacities

a) We seek big houses, fancy cars, and the latest gadgets in order to give us a sense of accomplishment or mastery of the world because our work provides no such sense

b) Or we seek them to give us esteem or self-esteem because our work does not do so as well

c) But the pursuit of these things forces us to spend ever more time and effort in making money in ways that do not fulfill us (see 2 above.)

d) And they do not really fulfill us but create more needs than they fulfill

(1) Freud points out that we would not need telephones to keep in touch with distant relatives if we did not have means of transportation that enable

(2) Cars enable us to live in suburbs with single family homes. But the more of us live in such suburbs the harder it is for people to live without their own car (or washer / dryer). And the more we rely on cars, the more roads and parking lots we need and the more land is used which means that we need cars even more to drive long distances to get to open land.

(3) If they are not connected to the development of our abilities and faculties they don’t bring any real happiness (Marx)

4) The consequence of enlightenment liberalism is to flatten our desires, undermine our passionate commitment to our goals, to neglect the importance of satisfying certain desires for our happiness. For passionate commitments to certain ideas, people, a way of life, or a career

a) requires us to be ready to act spontaneously

b) can be very inconvenient and risky

c) They lead us to put our long term self-interest and safety aside.

d) requires some faith the world around us

e) Faith in the world is enhanced when we recognize what we owe to others and nature or God.

3. Among our texts

a. Locke is unambiguously in favor of commercial society

b. Wordsworth is unambiguously opposed

c. Blake, and to an even greater degree Marx thinks that the romantic ideal of creative and fulfilling work can be combined with the material richness of commercial society

d. Freud thinks that commercial society

1) Brings much less fulfillment then many of us think it does

2) Requires us to work harder than we would like

a) And thus requires the repression of our sexual drive

3) Brings us into contact with many others and thus requires us to broaden our moral concerns to people very different from ourselves

a) This, however, requires us to turn our aggressive drive back against our selves and leaves us feeling guilty and depressed

e. Darwin does not really speak to this issue.

B. Nature: What is the proper relationship between human beings and the natural world? Is nature primarily a resource to be made use of by human beings? Or is nature a refuge and guide for human life? Is nature ultimately a beneficial or malevolent force in our lives?

1. Locke / Marx

a. Nature is a resources for human beings.

1) It is the raw material of which we can take advantage

2) It is our inorganic body (Marx)

b. Nature by itself gives us little

1) We are born into a poor state (Locke)

2) Necessity is what creates private property and alienation (Marx).

c. Thus we should seek to conquer nature and use it for our purposes

2. Blake / Wordsworth

a. Nature can be different things for us, depending upon how we approach it

1) A forest can be a place for commercial development in the tree business or a place of natural beauty

b. Nature is a refuge: place to escape from busyness of modern life (Wordsworth)

1) It is a place of solitude and quite in which we can think without concern for others

2) It is a place where we can be alone yet not be lonely

c. Nature is place to get a sense of what is permanent and beyond us as opposed to what is transitory and our creation

1) Nature and natural beauty exists long before us and will exist long after we live.

2) It is a place where we can focus on what is permanently important not what is of transitory importance today

d. Reflecting on nature makes us recognize how beneficent it is and how much gratitude we should have (Blake, Wordsworth)

3. Darwin / Freud

a. Nature is not beneficent: struggle and aggression are part of nature

1) The Darwinian struggle for existence (and to reproduce) is the dominant force that shapes all life.

2) Humans all have an aggressive drive that is the product of our evolution. We have that drive because it is necessary if we are to survive.

b. Far more complicated than we had imagined

1) Natural things are the product of a complicated pattern of evolution in which there is a great deal of co-evolution: plants and animals evolve in ways that benefit other plants and animals

2) This leads us to have respect for interconnected character of nature

3) And it should also lead us not to rush in to change the natural world when we don’t understand its interdependent character.

C. Equality: To what extent and in what respect are human beings equal to one another? To what extent and in what respect should they be equal to one another in political and social life? Modern thought, in general, is more egalitarian than earlier political and moral thought.

1. This can be seen in Lockean liberalism, romanticism, and Marx. (See also notes on Locke and Marx.)

a. Lockean liberalism insists on the fundamental moral equality of human beings.

1) That moral equality justifies an equality of rights.

b. Romanticism, or at least Blake’s romanticism, and Marxism both seek a more radical equality in the conditions of human life.

c. There are differences with regard to how much equality these different views support.

1) Locke supports equality of rights, political equality

a) Lockean arguments can be given for inequality of wealth: inequality benefits not jus the wealthy but everyone as it is a product of the incentive to produce new goods, higher quality goods, and less expensive goods

b) Lockean arguments can also be given for equality of opportunity, that is, for insuring that everyone had the same opportunity to develop their productive capacity and thus their earnings.

2) Marx recommends a much greater equality of wealth

a) In the first stage of communism people are paid according to what they produce. But capitalist do not receive any return from their capital and everyone has an equal opportunity to develop their productive capacity.

2. Darwin / Freud partial exceptions.

a. Freud argues that human beings are unequal in many ways.

1) Freud argues that human beings have differing capacities for higher forms of sublimation of their sexual instinct in intellectual work.

2) He also holds that innate desires, eros and aggression makes it impossible to create a world without conflict

3) Even Freud, however, holds that inequality in wealth is far greater than necessary to encourage human productivity

b. Darwin struggle for existence presupposes that some are more capable than others

1) Social Darwinism said that rather than help the poor we should let the poor die out as their poverty is a product of their limited capacity.

2) Darwinian egalitarianism: if the poor are poor due to social not natural circumstances, then it is better for everyone if we create equality of opportunity. Equality of opportunity will enable us to take advantage of the talents that both the rich and poor have.

D. reconciliation?

1. Marx: commercial society creates the pre-conditions for freedom

2. Freud: always going to be a tension between reality and human desires

a. Want pleasure all the time

b. World demands that we deal with necessity

1) Human desires expand

3. Darwin

E. Human reconciliation: How far can the ends and goals of human beings be reconciled to one another? To what extent will we always live with tensions and disputes between one human being (or one group of human beings) and another?

1. Locke

a. We can live together peaceably as long as government fairly protects our rights to life, liberty, and property.

b. We will, however, continue to compete with one another economically.

2. Blake

a. Economic competition can lead to maltreatment of others

b. We need to throw off our mind for’gd manacles and all develop our faculties and capacity

3. Wordsworth

a. Wordsworth does not seem to place much hope in human reconciliation in general

b. He does place some hope in love, however. It is only in love that we can find some purpose in life.

4. Marx

a. Class struggle is the story of all human history until community. This is the fundamental tension between human beings.

b. Capitalism makes this struggle ever more serious. People no longer see the upper class—the capitalists—as somehow divinely anointed, like the old aristocratic class. Rather they are seen as just human beings who do well at the expesnse of workers.

c. With communism comes the end of this history. Once the proletariat becomes the dominant class, then they will sweep all other classes aside and the human reconciliation will finally be possible.

5. Freud

a. For Freud, Competition and strife between human beings is not due to class struggle but to the inherent human drives for aggressive and for sexual pleasure.

1) The pursuit of ever greater pleasures leads to conflict

2) Which is exacerbated by human aggression

b. Economic prosperity and aggression turned inwards can modify these tensions

c. But at the cost of greater instinctual repression and suffering

d. Freud sometimes suggests we would have been better off remaining in small communities that don’t produce that much and that have have small fights with one and thus do not need to repress our drives quite so much.