“From Hegel to Nietzsche: The Revolution in Nineteenth-Century Thought” by Karl Lowith (translated by David E. Green)

Lowith’s book recapitulates nineteenth-century German philosophy using Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel as the intellectual jumping-off point. In fact, Lowith stresses that all continental philosophy after Hegel is best seen through his thought—either in agreeing with him or pushing against him, but always in conversation with Hegel. Lowith first introduces Hegel in comparison with his slightly older contemporary, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, perhaps the only German of the early nineteenth century who could be considered his intellectual superior. Lowith compares the similarities between Hegel and Goethe, two men who respected and were in correspondence with each other, while each recognizing their own superiority in their respected fields of talent. “Both attempted the “adventure of reason” by placing themselves—disregarding discursive understanding—in the middle between personal existence and the existence of the world. The difference between their ways of mediation resides in the fact that Goethe sees the unity from the point of view of nature as it is perceived, but Hegel from the point of view of the historical spirit…. In each case, it lies in the fact that the affairs of men are subordinated to the service as a whole…. When Goethe speaks of nature, trusting that it also speaks through him, he means the reason behind everything that lives, just as the primary phenomena are themselves a kind of reason, more or less permeating all created things. When Hegel speaks of spirit, confident that it also speaks through him, he understands thereby nature as otherness of the idea, while the spirit is a “second nature.””

Hegel saw philosophy as progressing through time.  He wrote, “As concerns the individual, each is a son of his time; and philosophy is their time comprehended in thought. It is just as foolish to imagine that some philosophy transcends its present world as to imagine that an individual can transcend his time.” Lowith expounds, “The absoluteness of his system would then consist in an absolute relativism, because Hegel—in contrast to Kant—represents the absolute as an ever-present spirit, immanent in reality…. A basic evaluation of Hegel’s meaning for the present has to proceed from the fact that he was the first to make philosophy aware of itself as the thought of time…. By viewing the past as having an effect on the future, philosophy becomes the consciousness of the age, and continuity becomes the principle of the historical process.”

Lowith later relates Hegel’s philosophy of history, “Hegel delivered his lecture on the philosophy of history in the years 1822-23 and 1830-31. The introduction explains the principle of his study: the unfolding of the spirit, and also of freedom, in stages. The spirit, which, as world spirit dominates history, is negative vis-a-vis nature; that is, progress in the unfolding of the spirit towards freedom is progress in liberation from subjection to nature. In Hegel’s philosophy, therefore, nature as such has no independent positive significance…. Furthermore, the everyday life of mankind is without substantial significance for Hegel’s idea of world history…. World history moves upon a higher plane than that of everyday life, whose ethical criteria do not obtain for political events…. Within the movement which involves the “world as a whole,” individuals are only means to the end of this whole.”

Another of Hegel’s primary goals was to preserve Christian religion within the framework of the primacy of the bourgeois State. “Thus [Hegel] sees Jesus as a “man who sought to restore man in his totality” by combining within himself, the God-man, both human and the divine…. The outcome of this absorption of religion into philosophy is Hegel’s philosophy of religion.” Hegel explains, “If there is to be no knowledge of God, the only realm which remains to interest the spirit is the realm of the ungodly, the limited, the finite. Of course man must be content with the finite; but it is an even higher necessity that he have a Sabbath in his life, in which he may transcend his workaday affairs, in which he may devote himself to what is truly genuine and come into awareness of it…. The object of religion, as of philosophy, is the eternal truth of its own objectivity.” Lowith concludes with Hegel’s attempted reconciliation between Athens and Jerusalem, “Hegel still belongs to the “Old Testament” of philosophy, for his philosophy is still based on the standpoint of theology. His philosophy of religion is the last great attempt ever made to “resolve” (ambiguously) the conflict between Christianity and paganism, between Christian theology and Greek philosophy. Hegel is the culmination of the ambiguity of the modern age, which equates the negation of Christianity with Christianity.”

Lowith explains how Hegel’s followers, on both the German left and right, tried to espouse his logic, even while vehemently disagreeing with their master. “It is the task of the progressive spirit of the age to free Hegel’s philosophy from itself by means of the dialectic method. According to Hegel’s statement that “the present is uppermost,” it is the absolute right of the age which superseded him to defend his system critically against himself, in order to accomplish the principle of unfolding and freedom.” The neo-Hegelian Johann Scholz posited, “Prior to Hegel, no great thinker dared so courageously to put philosophy into the stream of life. They all stood on the bank, thinking it their job to build a bridge across it, for eternity.”

Perhaps the philosopher who took Hegel’s philosophical system most-beyond what was originally intended was Karl Marx. “Marx’s criticism of the existing order is not motivated by mere “desire for change.” It has its roots in a Promethean rebellion against the Christian order of creation. Only the atheism of man with faith in himself must also see to the creation of the world…. For [Marx], Epicurus is the greatest representative of the Greek enlightenment. He was the first among mortal men to dare to defy the gods of heaven…. The destruction of the Christian religion is the prerequisite for the construction of a world in which man is his own master.” Marx claimed, “It is therefore the duty of history, the beyond of truth having vanished, to establish the truth of this world. Philosophy is in the service of history.” Lowith explains, “Criticism of heaven is transformed thereby into criticism of earth, criticism of religion into criticism of right, criticism of theology into criticism of politics.” The political sphere has replaced the religious as the space in which man interacts with his fellows in Marx’s system. Politics has been elevated to the supra-position in society. However, Marx’s communism is placed squarely within the structures of Hegel’s system. Communism “is intended as the realization of the dialectical unity between independent action and depersonalization which is the outcome of Hegel’s history of philosophy. It is the practical way in which man, living in society, keeps the entire objective world in subjection, as self-generated, and also remains himself in his otherness. Thus according to Marx’s idea, it is not only the expropriation of private property, but also the “vindication of real human life as man’s property,” a total return to himself of man who has become a stranger to himself within the objective world which he has generated…. True communism… as Marx, the Hegelian, conceives it, is a reappropriation of human nature at the stage of development which civilization has attained in capitalism. Within this context, it is the “genuine resolution of the conflict between… existence and essence, between depersonalization and independent activity, between freedom and necessity, between individual and species. It is the riddle of history solved.”” Lowith concludes by describing the new Marxian man, “The man who lives in a communistic society does not possess objective reality in the form of ownership common to private capital, but rather through the fact that all objects are for him a positive, depersonalized objectification of himself. He is the man to whom the world indeed belongs, because its manner of production does not alienate him, but establishes him.”

Another later philosopher who interacted with Hegel was the Dane, Soren Kierkegaard, who looked inward towards the individual man, instead of out to the society of men. Kierkegaard complains, “Spoiled by continuous converse with the historical, man seeks solely that which is significant, man concerns himself solely for what is accidental, the historical issue, rather than what is essential, what is innermost, freedom, morality.” Lowith contrasts, “The Hegelian refuses to be content with the subjectivity of existing.” For Kierkegaard, everything rests upon the individual at base. “What is an individual existing man? Yes, our age knows only too well how little he is; but this is the peculiar immortality of the age…. Without ethical or religious enthusiasm, a man must despair upon finding himself an individual man—but not otherwise.”

For Lowith, this epoch of German philosophy, in which every new thought was in response to Hegel, ends with Friedrich Nietzsche. “Nietzsche’s actual thought is a thought system, at the beginning of which stands the death of God, in its midst the ensuing nihilism, and at its end the self-surmounting of nihilism in eternal recurrence…. The problem of eternity, how it comes to mean eternal recurrence, is found in the way by which Nietzsche surmounted “time” with “man.” It is a way of escape from the history of Christianity.” Nietzsche did not place much faith in bourgeois society, “The center of gravity of necessity belongs among the mediocre: mediocrity, as the surety and vehicle of the future, consolidates its position against the rule of the mob and the eccentrics (both usually in league). This produces a new opponent for the exceptional man, or a new temptation.” Nietzsche concludes with his own prophetic warning, “Who still desires to rule? Who to obey? Both are too burdensome. One herd, without a shepherd! Everyone wants the same thing, everyone is equal: if anyone feels differently, he goes of his own accord to the madhouse.”

“The Crisis of Modernity” by Augusto Del Noce (translated by Carlo Lancellotti)

Del Noce was an anti-fascist Catholic philosopher from Turin, Italy. This collection of essays spans themes of Christianity, politics, technology, Marxism, revolution, nihilism, Gnosticism, secularization, authority, the Enlightenment, and man’s progress. He was solidly anti-modernist, but with a nuanced view of traditionalism. His writings make frequent references to the Italian intellectuals Benedetto Croce, Giovanni Gentile, Antonio Rosmini, and Antonio Gramsci, as well as more well known philosophers like Hegel, Kierkegaard, and Nietzsche.

Del Noce first tackles modernity’s preeminent positioning of reason in the social hierarchy. “For rationalists, certainty about an irreversible historical process toward radical immanentism has replaced what for medieval thinkers was faith in revelation.” He approvingly quotes Emanuele Severino’s take on modernity’s fetishization of technology, “The history of the West is the history of technology. In Greek-Christian culture God is the supreme technician. In modern culture Man is the supreme technician—who by now plans the production and destruction of the totality of things…. In spite of the backwardness of the ancient world’s technological capabilities, Western theology possessed from its beginning all the essential features of the civilization of technology; and in spite of the fact that this civilization rejects God most radically, contemporary technology maintains the theological character of its origins…. In its essential meaning, the critique of the civilization of technology by secular or religious humanism is nothing but the protest by losing violence against triumphing violence.”

Modernity’s association with violence is another topic Del Noce expounds on. “From the viewpoint of revolutionary violence, what matters is that even the memory of the old man must vanish; there must be a change without conversion; the past must be erased, and thus even repentance. In short, the annihilation of memory…. Revolutionary violence cannot be discussed in terms of morality or immortality. The ethical dimension and revolutionary thought are absolutely incompatible.” Revolution is not evolution and, therefore, must be a complete break from all that came before. The revolution is beyond all ethics. The Revolution is, by definition, the new (and only) religion. “Precisely the historical outcome of the revolution, viewed as man’s great attempt to deny his own limitations, creates the conditions to reopen theological discourse…. Recognizing the philosophical power of the two great atheists Marx and Nietzsche is the condition for a renewal of religious thought.” Modernity attempts to secularize all of reality, leaving no sphere for the transcendent. “The term secularization attains its full meaning if we think of it in connection with what we can call the Marxist counter-religion: namely, Marx wants to achieve the complete rejection of any dependence of man on God…. The rejection of the dependence on God the Creator goes hand in hand with an extreme interpretation of the aspect of religion as liberation and redemption. The Marxist revolution keeps the appearance of a religion because it requires a conversion, since it marks a transition to a higher reality and to a reality that is totally “other,” even if absolutely not transcendent or supernatural.”

One esoteric concept that Del Noce grapples with repeatedly is the idea of Gnosticism. “Today’s historical situation should be described as the full revelation of the opposition between Christianity and Gnosticism, after the meaning of the latter became fully manifested in the wake of classical German philosophy.” He continues, “Ancient gnosis atheizes the world (by denying that it was created by God) in the name of divine transcendence. Post-Christian gnosis atheizes it in the name of radical immanentism…. In both cases what is being sought are rules to escape from the world as it is. However, whereas in ancient gnosis this is achieved by destroying the spirit of power within oneself, and by freeing the soul from the world, in post-Christian gnosis the exact opposite takes place…. Post-Christian immanentism searches for rules to build an absolutely new world…. A system which begins by projecting the ideal city into the world, as a reality that can be built by man, can only logically conclude to the divinization of man himself.”

Modern man has become a cultural and moral relativist. There are no eternal truths. “The bourgeois regards everything as relatively good because everything can be useful…. But precisely because he thinks of everything as relatively good, there is no Truth, there is no Good; a reality in which everything is “useful” excludes the possibility of absolutes. On the one hand, then, the bourgeois cannot but profess to be democratic; on the other he is radically anti-Platonic. For him the transcendent must be brought down to man’s level.” Del Noce contrasts this with the words of Plotinus, “Those who do not participate in virtue have nothing to carry them from this world to the one beyond.”

Del Noce’s pet peeve was modernity’s turn towards scientism. “Scientism cannot present itself to the awareness of its own advocates as a rational truth, i.e., as susceptible of an irrefutable proof. It is, literally, a resolution of the will: the resolution to accept as real only what can be verified empirically by everyone….The essence of scientism is hatred for religious transcendence…. The transition from science to scientism is not just an illegitimate intellectual extension but a voluntary and completely a priori rejection of religious transcendence. Such a rejection without a reason, on the part of those who want to subordinate everything to reason, seems to be a repetition of original sin and a proof of its effects.” He continues, “If science is neutral with respect to ideals and values, the same cannot be said about scientism, which suppresses metaphysics and claims to make science the exhaustive knowledge of reality.” For modern man, science has become the only truth. “Having accepted the collapse of metaphysical-religious tradition, only science remained standing, as mankind’s only salvation, symbol of modernity, and pillar of the new civilization. But science, at least in its modern sense, studies reality as a system of forces, not of values. It provides instruments but it does not determine goals. From the perspective of those who regard science as the only valid form of knowledge, one can speak of only one goal: incrementing vitality.”

For Del Noce, the problem with modernity is its total disregard for tradition and past knowledge. For modernity, the only truth that is real is that which is current. Truth is the ever-changing present, which feeds upon itself. “What is new is legitimate because it is new, because it does not respect anything and devalues everything. It is the legitimacy of a raging process which produces directly and automatically an ideological superstructure as it produces itself…. Revolution means replacing meta-physics with the ideal of meta-humanity, in which mankind will acquire those powers that it already possesses potentially, but from which it alienated itself during the development of history, projecting them outside of itself in the act of creating God…. As a consequence, the total revolution can be carried out only by history (all sides are de-sacralized, i.e., they are relative to a given historical situation.)” Politics replaces religion as the meta-structure for modern man. Ethics is completely subsumed within political action. “The revolutionary idea started from the negation of the doctrine of original sin, inasmuch as it claimed that it could substitute politics for religion in the liberation of man.” Del Noce concludes with a plea to return to the eternal values. In a piece written in 1970 titled “A “New” Perspective on Left and Right,” Del Noce presciently warns of today’s relativist culture overwhelming all facets of society. “If by “right” we mean faithfulness to the spirit of tradition, meaning the tradition that talks about an uncreated order of values, which are grasped through intellectual intuition and are independent of any arbitrary will, not even the divine one; and if by “left” we mean, on the contrary, the rejection not merely of certain historical superstructures but of those very values, which are “unmasked” to show their true nature as oppressive ideologies, imposed by the dominant classes in order to protect themselves, well, then it seems to me that in no other historical period has the left advanced so dramatically as during the last quarter century.”

“City of God Against the Pagans” by Augustine of Hippo (translated by R.W. Dyson)

Augustine’s treatise was started shortly after the sack of Rome in 410 AD. It combines ancient history, theology, a defense of Christianity against the charges by pagans that impiety was the cause of the Visigoth invasion, and speculative eschatology designed to bolster the contemporary faithful. Augustine is constantly in conversation with Roman pagans, classical Greek philosophers, Neo-Platonists, Manichaeans, Gnostics, Arians, and various other contemporary heretic sects of Christianity floating around North Africa. Throughout his densely meandering twelve hundred page exposition, Augustine’s scope broadens and narrows dramatically. He deals repeatedly, and in detail, with the concepts of faith, grace, mercy, sin, and death.

First, Augustine defends the paradox of humanity’s free will with the concept of God’s omniscient foreknowledge. “It is not true, then, that, because God foreknew what would be within the power of our wills, nothing therefore lies within the power of our wills. For when He foreknew this, He did not foreknow nothing. Therefore, if He who foreknew what would lie within the power of our wills did not foreknow nothing, but something, then clearly something lies within in the power of our wills even though God has foreknowledge of it. We are, then, in no way compelled either to take away freedom of will in order to retain the foreknowledge of God, or (which is blasphemous) to deny that He has foreknowledge of things to come in order to retain freedom of the will. Rather, we embrace both. Faithfully and truly do we confess both: the former that we may believe well, and the latter that we may live well.”

Much of Augustine’s work is a juxtaposition between the eternal City of God and the temporal City of Man. In Augustine’s treatise, the preeminent City of Man is often held to be Babylon, whereas Jerusalem stands for the City of God. However, Rome is also often held up as a paragon of the worldly virtues. “But the heroes of Rome were members of an earthly city, and the goal of all the services which they performed for it was its security. They sought a kingdom not in heaven, but upon earth: not in the realm of life eternal, but in that region where the dead pass away and are succeeded by the dying. What else were they to love, then, but glory, by which they sought to find even after death a kind of life in the mouths of those who praised them?” Augustine quotes Virgil, “Let other men with gentler touch fashion bronze into lifelike forms, and bring forth living faces from marble, and plead cases with more skill, and map the paths of heaven, and tell of the rising and falling of the stars. But thou, O Roman, remember that thy task is to subject peoples to thy sway. These arts are thine: to establish ways of peace, to spare the fallen and subdue the proud.” For Augustine, the Christian life and its purpose, even while on earth, was diametrically different. “Thus, when the apostle has exhorted us to present our bodies as a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, our reasonable service, and not to be conformed to this world, but to be transformed in the renewing of our mind, that we might prove what is that good, and acceptable, and perfect will of God, that is, the true sacrifice of ourselves…. This is the sacrifice of Christians: ‘We, being many, are one body in Christ.’”

Next, Augustine tackles the concept of human reason and how right reason leads naturally to a profession of faith. “But just as the sentient nature, even when it suffers pain, is superior to that of a stone which cannot suffer pain, so the rational nature is more excellent even when it is miserable than is that from which reason or sensation is absent, and which can therefore experience no misery. Since this is so, then, it is clearly a fault in such a rational nature if it does not cleave to God. For it has been created with an excellence such that, though mutable in itself, it can nonetheless achieve its blessedness by cleaving to the immutable Good, the supreme God.”

Augustine explicitly spells out the dichotomy between the earthly and heavenly cities. “Two cities, then, have been created by two loves: that is, the earthly by love of self extending even to contempt of God, and the heavenly by love of God extending to contempt of self. The one, therefore, glories in itself, the other in the Lord; the one seeks glory from men, the other finds its highest glory in God, the Witness of our conscience. The one lifts up its head in its own glory; the other says to its God, ‘Thou art my glory, and the lifter up of mine head.’ In the Earthly City, princes are as much mastered by the lust of mastery as the nations which they subdue are by them; in the Heavenly, all serve one another in charity, rulers by their counsel and subjects by their obedience. The one city loves its own strength as displayed in its mighty men; the other says to its God, ‘I will love Thee, O Lord, my strength.’ Thus, in the Earthly City, its wise men, who live according to man, have pursued the goods of the body or of their own mind, or both…. In the Heavenly City, however, man has no wisdom beyond the piety which rightly worships the true God, and which looks for its reward in the fellowship not only of holy men, but of angels also, ‘that God may be all in all.’”

Augustine continues with theological history. “Now Cain was the first son born to those two parents of the human race, and he belonged to the City of man; the second son, Abel, belonged to the City of God…. So it is that each man, because he derives his origin from a condemned stock, is at first necessarily evil and fleshly, because he comes from Adam; but if, being reborn, he advances in Christ, he will afterwards be good and spiritual. So it is also with the whole human race. When those two cities began to run through their course of birth and death, the first to be born was a citizen of this world, and the second was a pilgrim in this world, belonging to the City of God. The latter was predestined by grace and chosen by grace; by grace he was a pilgrim below, and by grace he was a citizen above…. As I have already said, man is first reprobate. But though it is of necessity that we begin in this way, we do not of necessity remain thus; for later comes the noble state towards which we may advance, and in which we may abide when we have attained it. Hence, though not every bad man will become good, it is nonetheless true that no one will be good who was not originally bad…. It is written, then, that Cain founded a city, whereas Abel, a pilgrim, did not found one. For the City of the Saints is on high, although it produces citizens here below, in whose persons it is a pilgrim until the time of its kingdom shall come.” Augustine later expands, “Therefore the place of this promised peaceful and secure habitation is eternal, and rightly belongs eternally to Jerusalem the free mother, where the true people of Israel shall dwell; for the name Israel is interpreted as ‘Seeing God’. It is in the desire of this reward that we are to lead a godly life through faith during this miserable pilgrimage.”

Next, Augustine circles back to theological questions. He expounds on the nature of the Supreme Good in the life of man. “If, therefore, we are asked what response the City of God makes when questioned on each of these points, and, first what it believes concerning the Final Good and Evil, we shall reply as follows: that eternal life is the Supreme Good…. For this reason it is written, ‘The just man lives by faith.’ For we do not yet see our good, and hence we must seek it by believing. Moreover, we cannot live rightly unless, while we believe and pray, we are helped by Him Who has given us the faith to believe that we must be helped by Him.”

In seeking the virtuous life on earth, Augustine returns to the personal life. It is through faith, trust, and hope that man can reach his highest virtues. “True virtues, however, can exist only in those in whom there is true godliness; and these virtues do not claim that they can protect those in whom they are present against suffering any miseries. True virtues are not such liars as to claim such a thing. They do, however, claim that, though human life is compelled to be miserable by all the great evils of this world, it is happy in the hope of the world to come, and in the hope of salvation…. ‘For we are saved by hope. Now hope which is seen is not hope; for what a man seeth, why doth he yet hope for? But if we hope for that we see not, then do we with patience wait for it.’ As, therefore, we are saved by hope, it is in hope that we have been made happy; and as we do not yet possess a present salvation, but await salvation in the future, so we do not enjoy a present happiness, but look forward to happiness in the future, and ‘with patience’. We are in the midst of evils, and we must endure them with patience until we come to those good things where everything will bestow ineffable delight upon us, and where there will no longer be anything which we must endure. Such is the salvation which, in the world to come, will also itself be our final happiness.” Finally, Augustine returns to the beneficence of the City of God. “The Supreme Good of the City of God, then, is eternal and perfect peace. This is not the peace which mortal men pass through on their journey from birth to death. Rather, it is that peace in which they rest in immortality and suffer adversity no more.”

“On What Matters: Volume 1” by Derek Parfit

This is the first volume of Parfit’s three-part concluding life’s work, published just before he died. He is an objectivist. “Objectivists appeal to normative claims about what, after ideal deliberation, we have reasons to choose, and ought rationally to choose…. Subjectivists appeal to psychological claims about what, after such deliberation, we would in fact choose…. We ought, I believe, to reject all subjective theories, and accept some objective theory. Our practical reasons are all object-given and value-based…. What we want is often something that is worth doing or achieving. In such cases, these two kinds of theory at least partly agree, since we have value-based object-given reasons to try to fulfill such desires…. Second, we often have such desires because we believe that we have such reasons. We are often motivated by the belief that some act or outcome would be good or best, in the reason-implying sense…. Third, some people accept desire-based theories about well-being. According to some of these theories, the fulfillment of some of our present desires would be in itself good for us…. Fourth, we can rightly appeal to our desires or aims when we describe our motivating reasons, or why we acted as we did. This may lead us to assume that our desires or aims can also give us normative reasons.” What Parfit is after, however, is a theory that is substantively rational, not just procedurally rational. “According to objective theories, we all have decisive reasons to have certain desires, and to be substantively rational we must have these desires. These reasons are given by the intrinsic features of what we might want, or might want to avoid. We have such a decisive object-given reason to want to avoid all future agony. If we did not have this desire, we would not be fully substantively rational, because we would be failing to respond to this reason…. On subjective theories, we have no such object-given reasons, not even reasons to want to avoid future agony. Deliberative Subjectivists appeal to what we would want after deliberation that was merely procedurally rational…. There are no telic desires or aims that we [as Subjectivists] are rationally required to have. We can be procedurally rational whatever else we care about, or want to achieve…. Our preferences draw arbitrary distinction when, and because, what we prefer is in no way preferable. It is arbitrary to prefer one of two things if there are no facts about these things that give us any reason to have this preference.” For Objectivists, on the other hand, there are always chains of reason. “We have instrumental reasons to want something to happen, or to act in some way, when this event or act would have effects that we have some reason to want. As that claim implies, every instrumental reason gets its normative force from some other reason. This other reason may itself be instrumental, getting its force from some third reason. But at the beginning of any such chain of reasons, there must be some fact that gives us a reason to want some possible event as an end, or for its own sake. Such reasons are provided by the intrinsic features that would make this possible event in some way good. It is from such telic value-based object-given reasons that all instrumental reasons get their normative force…. Subjective theories are built on sand. Since all subject-given reasons would have to get their normative force from some desire or aim that we have no such reason to have, and such desires or aims cannot be defensibly claimed to give us any reasons, we cannot be defensibly claimed to have any subject-given reasons.” Parfit concludes, “On the best objective theories, the fact that we have some reason is an irreducibly normative truth. Of those who accept subjective theories, many are Metaphysical Naturalists, who believe that there cannot be such facts or truths.”

Parfit next tackles rationality. “What makes our desires rational or irrational is not the rationality of the beliefs on which these desires causally depend, but the content of these beliefs, or what we believe…. The rationality of our beliefs depends on whether, in having these beliefs, we are responding well to epistemic or truth-related reasons or apparent reasons to have these beliefs. The rationality of our desires and acts depends on whether, in having these desires and acting in these ways, we are responding well to practical reasons or apparent reasons to have these desires and to act in these ways…. Practical and epistemic reasons support answers to different questions, and cannot possibly conflict…. Reasons are, I believe, fundamental. Something matters only if we or others have some reason to care about this thing…. Morality might have supreme importance in the reason-implying sense, since we might always have decisive reasons to do our duty, and to avoid acting wrongly. But if we defend morality’s importance in this way, we must admit that the deepest question is not what we ought morally to do, but what we have sufficient or decisive reasons to do…. According to some writers, we ought to do certain things, such as keeping our promises, saving people’s lives, and doing what would make things go expectably-best. According to some other writers, we ought to try to do these things. We ought, I believe, to make both of these claims.”

From here on in, Parfit gets deep into the weeds comparing and contrasting Kantian contractualism with different consequentialist philosophies, also occasionally alluding to Sidgwick and Scanlon, among others. He begins by building on and parsing out Kant. For Kant, other human beings are always ends in and of themselves, never just means. “We treat someone merely as a means if we both use this person in some way and regard her as a mere tool, someone whose well-being and moral claims we ignore, and whom we would treat in whatever way would best achieve our aims. We do not treat someone merely as a means, nor are we even close to doing that, if either (1) our treatment of this person is governed in a sufficiently important way by some relevant moral belief, or (2) we do or would relevantly choose to bear some great burden for this person’s sake…. It is wrong to regard anyone merely as a means. But the wrongness of our acts never or hardly ever depends on whether we are treating people as a means…. We can deserve many things, such as gratitude, praise, and the kind of blame that is merely moral dispraise. But no one could ever deserve to suffer.”

Korsgaard claims that Kant’s “standard of conduct… is designed for an ideal state of affairs: we are always to act as if we were living in the Kingdom of Ends, regardless of possible disastrous results.” Parfit adds to that what he calls, “the Kantian Contractualist Formula: Everyone ought to follow the principles whose universal acceptance everyone could rationally will.” Parfit then defends Kant against Rawls’ veil, “Rawls’s veil of ignorance is in part intended to eliminate inequalities in bargaining power. The Kantian Formula achieves this aim in a better way. Since there is no need to reach agreement, there is no scope for bargaining, so no one would have greater bargaining power. When we ask which principles everyone could rationally choose, we can therefore suppose that everyone knows all of the relevant, reason-giving facts, and could therefore respond to all these reasons.” Parfit continues on with Kant, “For the Kantian Formula to succeed, what we can call its uniqueness condition must be sufficiently met. It must be true that, at least in most cases, there is some relevant principle, and only one such principle, that everyone could rationally choose.” Expanding to Contractualism more broadly, “When we apply some Contractualist formula, such as the Kantian and Scanlonian Formulas, we don’t consider particular acts on their own. We ask which are the principles that everyone could rationally choose, or that no one could reasonably reject, if we were choosing the principles that everyone would accept. In answering this question, we must take into account the effects of everyone’s accepting, and being known to accept, these principles.”

Parfit next tries to bring Kant in agreement with Consequentialist principles. “Kantians could claim: (A) Everyone ought to follow the principles whose universal acceptance everyone could rationally choose, or will. (C) There are some principles whose universal acceptance would make things go best. (F) Everyone could rationally will that everyone accepts these principles. (H) These are the only principles whose universal acceptance everyone could rationally will. Therefore UARC [Universal-Acceptance Rule Consequentialism]: These are the principles that everyone ought to follow…. This argument’s premises are not, however, Consequentialist. The argument assumes that outcomes can be better or worse in the impartial reason-implying sense…. This argument also assumes that there are some principles whose universal acceptance would make things go best…. Consequentialists appeal to claims about what would be best in the impartial-reason-implying sense…. Contractualists appeal to the principles that it would be rational for everyone to choose, if we were all choosing in some way that would make our choices sufficiently impartial.” Parfit continues to attempt to square the circle, “Kantians, I have claimed, can argue: KC [Kantian Contractualism]: Everyone ought to follow the principles that everyone could rationally will to be universal laws. (J) There are certain principles whose being universal laws would make things go best. (K) These are the only principles that everyone could rationally will to be universal laws. Therefore RC [Rule Consequentialism]: Everyone ought to follow these optimific principles. KC and RC are the most general statements of Kantian Contractualism and Rule Consequentialism.” Parfit sums it up with “Kantian Rule Consequentialism: Everyone ought to follow the optimific principles, because these are the only principles that everyone could rationally will to be universal laws.”

Parfit concludes by reiterating that the differences in these moral philosophies are really not as extreme as initially thought. “Of our reasons for doubting that there are moral truths, one of the strongest is provided by some kinds of moral disagreements…. These disagreements are deepest when we are considering, not the wrongness of particular acts, but the nature of morality and moral reasoning…. If we and others hold conflicting views, and we have no reason to believe that we are the people who are more likely to be right, that should at least make us doubt our view…. It has been widely believed that there are such deep disagreements between Kantians, Contractualists, and Consequentialists. That, I have argued, is not true. These people are climbing the same mountain on different sides.” Parfit summarizes the conclusions on what he takes from the best of Kant. “Kant’s most important claims are these: (R) Everyone ought to treat everyone only in ways to which they could rationally consent. (S) Everyone ought to regard everyone with respect, and never merely as a means. Even the morally worst people have as much dignity or worth as anyone else. (T) If all of our decisions are merely events in time, we cannot be responsible for our acts in any way that could make us deserve to suffer, or to be less happy. (U) Everyone ought to follow the principles whose being universal laws would make things go best, because these are the only principles whose being universal laws everyone could rationally will. We ought, I believe, to accept (S) and (T), and we have strong reasons to accept (R) and (U).” Parfit concludes on a note of cautious optimism, “Some of our descendants might live lives and create worlds that, though failing to justify past suffering, would give us all, including those who suffered, reasons to be glad that the Universe exists.”

“A Passage to India” by E.M. Forster

Forster completed this novel in 1924, having, himself, first set foot in India in 1912. The novel is all about colonial and native relations and the massive gulf that divided even the most enlightened on both sides. At the center of the plot is Miss Quested, brought out to India as a possible bride by Mrs. Moore, the mother of an Anglo-Indian, Ronny, a magistrate stationed in Chandrapore. “In front, like a shutter, fell a vision of her married life. She and Ronny would look into the club like this every evening, then drive home to dress; they would see the Lesleys and the Callendars and the Turtons and the Burtons, and invite them and be invited by them, while the true India slid by unnoticed. Colour would remain—the pageant of birds in the early morning, brown bodies, white turbans, idols whose flesh was scarlet or blue—and movement would remain as long as there were crowds in the bazaar and bathers in the tanks. Perched up on the seat of a dogcart, she would see them. But the force that lies beyond colour and movement would escape her even more effectually than it did now. She would see India always as a frieze, never as a spirit.” Though it often looked this way to the British, India’s indigenous residents were by no means a homogenous monolith. “Hamidullah had called in on his way to a worrying committee of notables, nationalist in tendency, where Hindus, Moslems, two Sikhs, two Parsis, a Jain, and a Native Christian tried to like one another more than came natural to them. As long as someone abused the English, all went well, but nothing constructive had been achieved, and if the English were to leave India, the committee would vanish also.” Turton, the District Collector, advises a British newcomer, “I have had twenty-five years’ experience of this country…. And during those twenty-five years I have never known anything but disaster result when English people and Indians attempt to be intimate socially. Intercourse, yes. Courtesy, by all means. Intimacy—never, never.”