IMAGINING OTHER
How Enlightened was the
Enlightenment?
Links: Imagining Other
Index page
Week 9: Politics Part (iii) -
problematic issues for the Enlightenment:
1. Exploration and cross-cultural contacts
2. American Indians (the race issue)
3. Slavery
4. Women
5. Key Female figures:
(i)
Olympe de Gouges, women and slavery:
(ii)
Mary Wollstonecraft, women and gender
6. Radicalism: William Godwin and anarchism – or next
week?
Introduction – tensions, ambiguities and polarities:
There seem to me to be, in
Enlightenment thinking, a number of central tensions/polarities: this was
clearly a period of transition, and an important question to ask is how far these tensions were
resolved?
- universal and
particular/’different’
- reason and feeling (the
politics of liberty and the sociology of virtue, for Himmelfarb)
- nature and civilisation
(esp. women = nature)
- public and private (esp.
separate spheres for women)
1. Exploration, cross-cultural contacts, and race:
Natural man as the ‘ultimate
other’ (Outram)
- Outram ch 4 is on
cross-cultural contacts: exploration
especially of the Pacific, was for
knowledge, not primarily for conquest and trade
- extreme difficulties of
cross-cultural contact, given the lack of mutual understanding, unknown
languages, and different cultures
Idealising:
- Porter: (p 56) 1768 Louis Bougainville (French naval
commander) landed on Tahiti – wrote account saying was like the Isle of the Blessed as evoked by
writers of antiquity – ease, peace and plenty, no private property and no
sexual taboos…
- Diderot added to text of his Voyage that here was ‘no king, no
magistrate, no priest, no laws, no ‘mine’ and ‘thine’ – all held in common
including
women (i.e. free love) –
tried to show was not what Christian writers would have predicted, and how the
lack of prohibitions produced ‘noble savages’…
- Outram: Rousseau and the argument that ‘natural
man’ had qualities that had been lost in an over-artificial civilisation
Outram: - large audience for
books on voyages (e.g. Cook, Bougainville), and public’s need to believe these
were utopias – peaceful, natural and pure, without intrusive govt, and with no
great distinctions of wealth or social status – projection space for European
hopes, frustrations and desires
- Outram: conflict in France
at the time between royal govt and ‘privileged law courts, widely interpreted
as a struggle between royal despotism and personal liberties’
- Tahitians ‘closer to the
origin of the world’ – simple natural culture like the heroic age of Greece and
Rome - ‘civic spirit, self-control,
self-sacrifice and stoicism in the face of pain and danger’… (Rousseau here,
rather than Condorcet who believed history showed progressive advancement of
humanity)
- these societies the
‘ultimate opposite or other’ and a replication of Europe’s origins
- beauty of Pacific islands appreciated
at time when beauty sought in European landscapes, and à travel literature, stage plays, artists traveling to
Tahiti etc, images of plants, engravings… (Outram p 52)
Cook:
- Outram: Cook took issue, and said it was an
insult to the Tahitians to portray them as so primitive – they did, for
example, have property such as trees; he also challenged the idea that
Tahitians/Polynesians were sexually any different from Europeans
- but this is not just a
contrast between empiricism and enlightenment ideology: Cook’s views were part
of a belief (an Enlightenment belief, shared with Hume, Voltaire) that human
nature and behaviour were uniform in different parts of the world – and the
same for private property and social stratification, which must be (according
to Scottish economists) common to and complex society
- if there were differences
of culture etc this did not make them inferior (Cook would have agreed with
Terence: homo sum et nihil humanum
alienum a me puto) – Cook’s approach similar to Montesquieu: consider
contexts…
- Outram ch 4 Cook (like Rousseau) aware of how they
affected the peoples of the New World (p 53 quote): corrupting them with new
wants (‘inauthentic desires’ which also propelled European economies) &
causing the wish for luxury…
Race:
- all this led to debates on
the nature of race: Buffon argued that the human race is a unity, and it is
environment and climate that change people’s appearance
- but Linnaeus divided man
into four groups – white Europeans, red American Indians, black Africans, brown
Asians (1740) – and he later added other groups (pygmies and giants)
- while Lord Monboddo
(Scottish jurist) argued orang-outans were human because used tools and seemed
to have a language
- i.e. the Enlightenment was
confused about race – consequently only some of the arguments used led to
opposition to slavery
Colonialism:
- likewise, there were
arguments both ways about colonialism,
with Cook saying that the natives gained little, and Rousseau opposing both
slavery and colonialism, while others argued it was our duty to exploit the
earth, and that commerce (including the slave trade) was beneficial
- Raynal and Diderot 1770
wrote on commerce in the West Indies (Outram p 57 quote) questioning whether change was for the better or whether it would
simply lead to more and more change
- but ideas are confused: the
peoples were simpler, happier and more moral etc, but European culture was
beneficial to them, and justified by their innocence
- the same ambivalence existed
over slavery – although by end of 18th c were organisations opposing
it: French Society for the Friends of Black People, British Society for the
Abolition of the Slave Trade – but they still had ‘primitivist’ views of native peoples
- danger of view that all
humanity same and progressing in same kind of development: not recognizing
difference, legitimizing exploitation… (‘called on to solve European problems’)
(- also by end of century
attitudes changed: Cook was murdered 1779 on Hawaii, French were in crisis over
economic problems and South Seas no longer seen as utopia, European diseases
were destroying them)
************
2. American Indians and the American Enlightenment
(an ‘unenlightened race’ for
Washington)
The American Enlightenment – more conservative, less
compassionate?
- Himmelfarb p 217… notes
that American Enlightenment lacked
the scepticism and anti-religious sentiment of the French (last week: ‘was more conservative’) and was more
influenced by British moralists. However, because of immediate
practical/political concerns, was more concerned with politics of liberty than
‘sociology of virtue.’
- also America was not a poor
country, she argues, so there was not so much concern over poverty - in fact
some thought luxury more of a social problem than poverty… So there wasn’t so
much philanthropy etc as in
- for example, John Adams disliked the call for equality
and the belief in perfectibility of Rousseau and Helvetius… “I have never read
reasoning more absurd, sophistry more gross… than the subtle labours of
Helvetius and Rousseau to demonstrate the natural equality of mankind. Jus cuique, the golden rule, do as you
would be done by, is all the equality that can be supported or defended by
reason or common sense” (Himmelfarb p 216) [actually, jus cuique means ‘to each
his own’ and is not the same as ‘do as you would be done by’ – to me, at
least!]
The intractable problem of the Indians:
- but (Himmelfarb argues)
America did have two problems other countries did not: Indians and slavery, both ‘very nearly intractable’. ‘The
displacement of the Indians was the precondition for the very existence of the
settlers.’ (219)
- subsistence farming, she
says, was not compatible with ‘more sophisticated agricultural economy, to say
nothing of industry and commerce…’
Different attitudes to the problem:
- Americans regarded themselves as superior… the Declaration of Independence includes:
“the merciless Indian savages, whose known rule of warfare is an
undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions”
- Jefferson blamed the British for “seducing” the Indians to massacre
the whites, and for the consequent “brutalization if not extermination of this
(the Indian) race in America”
- so, and because of superior
agricultural techniques etc, settlers entitled to take land
- John Jay however, was concerned that the treatment of the Indians
was reducing his countrymen to ‘white savages’ – and urged the more gradual
extension of settlers’ land.
- Washington thought the Indians’ land should be bought from them
rather than driving them off it, describing them as an ‘unenlightened race’.
Later, in a speech to the Cherokees before he retired form public life,
Washington said the Indians should retire
as a nation and assimilate.
*************
3. Slavery:
Freedom was ‘a long time coming’:
Although attitudes changed
during the Enlightenment, actual emancipation was a long time coming:
- Outram: Montesquieu
attacked the institution in Esprit de Lois 1748
From 1770s Societe des Amis
des Noirs – but this an elite organisation and no mass emancipation in
- American Quakers – gradual
emancipation began in Pennsylvania 1780, some other states in 1788 banned
participation in slave trade.
- first large-scale
liberation: St Domingue in Caribbean, 1792 – 1804. Legislation 1794 in France
ending slavery was soon revoked (1803) and slavery restores in colonies e.g.
Guadeloupe.
- 1807: trade legally banned
in England, 1834 banned from English possessions in
- US: 13th
amendment 1865, - Brazil: 1888.
Ambivalence and tensions:
Reason or compassion?
- movement against slavery,
in Britain, was based not on reason but compassion and humanitarian zeal (Hfb p
234)
- however, in France the philosophes
vigorously opposed slavery and the slave trade, and most called for the
immediate emancipation of slaves, others for gradual abolition of slavery (Hfb
p 169) [so does it matter what the
grounds were?]
A lamentable but necessary evil:
- many believed slavery was a
‘lamentable evil’ but that it was impractical (inconvenient!) to abolish it
Racial inferiority:
- and in
Black Christians?
- Methodist congregations
included many blacks (because worked with the poor). Note, as Outram points
out, that this had produced an inconsistency:
can Christians be held as slaves? And this led to Methodism opposing slavery.
(Link with question of equality for women: if equal members of congregation…)
Christianity divided on the issue:
- Methodists in 1780: slavery
is ‘contrary to the laws of God, man,
and nature, and hurtful to society, contrary to the dictate of conscience and
pure religion.’ (Hfb p 222) Methodist preachers freed their own slaves and
called on their parishioners to do so (presumably Quakers never had any!) In
11784 they banned slave-owners form congregations.
- William Wilberforce, an
Evangelical, and friend of the Wesleys, - see Himmelfarb p 129… (more here on
Methodism…)
- however, when Quakers
petitioned Congress after the adoption of the Constitution, didn’t have any effect, and the only
name that had impact was Benjamin Franklin [then aged and ailing] and Quakers
were suspect because they had not fought in the war
- also, on the ‘other side’:
Old Testament had many examples of patriarchs having slaves – no discussion of
the issue in the New Testament. Thus (Outram) although Methodists used
Christianity to oppose slavery, the
- Outram: Methodism and
Quakers, and Protestant ‘witnessing’ churches (Moravians and Quakers) – but
(established churches): Dutch Calvinists, French Catholics, Protestant Southern
states of
Obstacles:
Economic:
- Outram: difficulties of
opposing because so essential to increasingly integrated world economy, and so
impossible to remove slavery without (it seemed) dismantling the whole economic
system, and profits enabling governments to grow (ch 3) ‘primed the economic
pump’ which enabled the industrial revolution.
- Outram: peak time for
slavery in
Political:
- no movement on slavery
issue during the war of independence (would have been divisive)
-though the constitution
declared all men are created equal, it also had clauses that perpetuated slavery:
five slaves were counted as equivalent to three white men for the purposes of
taxation (I have seen this defended as simply acknowledging that slaves were
more poor…); it allowed the importation of slaves for 20 more years (defended
by Madison as better than not putting a time limit); and it required the return
of escaped slaves to their owners…
- note how the Constitution
avoids the word ‘slave’ (rather: ‘other persons’ than free person; ‘person held
in service’ for fugitive)
- how to give everyone equal
and universal rights in face of institutions, economic and political forces and
needs, and in face of the ‘facts’ of ‘difference’? (Outram)
Attitudes:
- Jefferson proposed whites
induced to emigrate into America to replace blacks sent away – because there
were prejudices against blacks, and because of the ‘physical and moral’
qualities of blacks which would always divide the races and ‘produce
convulsions which will probably never end but in the extermination of the one
or the other race’. Repeated this in
his Autobiography 40 yrs later (p 224).
- opponents not using
distinct enough ideas to the supporters of the trade – moral ambiguity e.g.
Jefferson (quote Outram p 70) saw blacks as inferior, while trying to get
slavery banished - because of its bad
effects on the owners, rather than for the sake of the slaves… Use of ‘science’
to make a case, but this can go either way (as with Bible!)… he also argued
that once freed they should be deported, and not allowed to mix (whereas slaves
in Roman times had not been of a different race, so could mix) – Note this
means he saw blacks as same species (because can interbreed) but still doesn’t want mixing – confused?! He also
continued to own slaves.
- so, the ‘politics of
liberty clashed with the sociology of virtue’ over this issue – (225) maybe the
founders hoped that by establishing liberty the problem of slavery would
eventually be solved – but it was a long time coming, and the Civil War was
bloody and traumatic ‘the most cataclysmic event in American history’ – Lincoln
fought to preserve the union, it might be said, in order to abolish slavery)
Race and difference:
- Outram: a central concern
in the Enlightenment was the ‘meaning and manipulation of difference’ (p 74) –
which was at the heart of the problem of slavery
- towards end of century race
came to be used more in the argument (black slaves a different race) – see
Montesquieu’s ironical comment Outram p 67. Problem of taxonomy: where to draw
line between humans and animals etc?
- Descartes et al: God
created (‘pre-formed’) different races – superceded by Montesquieu and Buffon
who argued man had a single origin (though white!), and climate etc changed
races – at end of century anatomists found differences in skeleton and cranium
– this linked to women (smaller cranial cavities…)
- ‘natural’ emerged as moral
category, and so easy to move from is to ought – natural (as in Aristotle) =
naturally barbarian/naturally slaves
Slavery and property (Outram p 72):
- Property holding and
liberty were connected in the Enlightenment. (Rousseau was an exception in his
argument against property). So the attack on slavery was seen as undermining
property.
- In doing this the
anti-slavery stance was also consequently seen as strengthening government
(which expanding and taxing more during Enl because of international competition…),
also because only government can order and organise the emancipation of slaves
– but increased power to government meant an attack on the rights and liberties
of subjects.
The ending of slavery:
- Outram notes that the
anti-slavery issue came later than other issues in the Enlightenment such as
opposition to torture, tax inequality, and for civil rights for Protestants in
Catholic countries, for the end of villeinage, and against the power of the
Catholic Church…
- she asks: did it end because
of the Enlightenment, or because slavery had become so widespread it forced
intolerable paradoxes into the open?
- what were the causes of the change in opinion that
occurred: Christianity? But it was split on the issue(as above).
- were ideologies of
sentiment, humanity and benevolence more important than religious or economic
motives?
*************
4. Women:
Porter:
The enlightenment left an ambiguous legacy for women – it
valued reason, but helped to launch a cult of idealized motherhood (private
virtue, modesty, domesticity, child-rearing) à 19th c ‘separate spheres’ notion.
However, there were women who played a part in the
movement:
- Outram points out that
women played important roles in the Enlightenment: they were more independent
as ‘free intellectuals’ (Mary
Wollstonecraft), painters etc - in
fact many attacks on women could be due to men fearing they were being
displaced (or turned into ‘women’!) - Rousseau’s attitude was echoed by
philosophes who feared women meddling in public affairs
- (Porter gives as examples):
the Marquise de Chatelet, Voltaire’s companion (well versed in Newtonian
science)
- Sophie Volland, Diderot’s
mistress (highly intelligent, cultured and articulate)
- Mme de Charriere (Belle de
Zuylen) a talented literary lady who rejected the sexual double standards of
the time
- Elizabeth Montague and Mrs.
Chapone ‘held court’ in
- the grandes dames who ran
the salons (see below) – salons were key sites for exchange of enlightenment
views
- but no women of ‘front-rank’
emerged before Mary Wollstonecraft, and Mme de Stael (later)
- the Church had female
saints and mystics
- there were prominent royal
and noble women: Maria Theresa, Catherine the Great… Diderot visited her and
argued that
Women also ran salons:
- the origins of salons can
be found in 17th c
- in the 18th c
salons moved out of court society, becoming more middle class
- hostesses were e.g. Mme du
Tencin, d’Alembert’s mother (novelist), and Mme du Deffand, wife of a
financier. Diderot joined a salon
- salons gave writers an
audience for their work, and helped them move into the social and intellectual
elite
- this was a way for women to
play their role as ‘agents and bearers of the civilised state’ (see below) –
like the muses
- the salons also enabled
more women to become writers
- Rousseau was against them!
He saw feminine dominance as wrong, and saw salons as still having links with
court culture which he thought was corrupting.
- Rousseau’s attitude fed
into the antipathy towards Marie Antoinette…
Louis was seen as being
corrupted by women…
- finally, whilst women
themselves complained against prejudice and injustice, hardly any thought in
terms of enfranchisement or political participation, or professional jobs for
women
The philosophes (apart from Rousseau):
- on the other hand,
Voltaire, Montesquieu and Diderot commented on the discrepancy between the
existing legal codes (which deprived women of power) and the power women could
(in practice) actually wield
- Diderot and Voltaire also
played down the difference between men and women, by seeing maternity as a
temporary stage rather than as marking women for life (but see next point:
women rational but not equal)
- Mary Wollstonecraft
challenged the role the philosophes gave themselves: what right did they have
to criticise society if they did not include women in their role as social
critics?
Women, science, industrialisation, and what is
‘natural’?
- Outram: Former stereotypes
of women (shrews, harlots, amazons) were replaced by attempts to explain scientifically the difference
between the sexes – again, to define what is ‘natural’
- the word ‘natural’ means many things – not socially
defined, not artificial, based on the external physical world, so women could
be: closer to nature, or determined
by nature (physiologically), or
analogous to the external world and (?) to be manipulated by man
- so the word was used
loosely to legitimise social arrangements
- so, being ‘natural’ did not bring equality, rather ‘otherness’
– something that ‘has to be defined’ because society has made everything
artificial… in other words, defining femininity challenged Enlightenment
assumptions about what is natural (another ambiguity/tension)… e.g. Isaac Newton (perhaps our greatest scientist) saw
sexual temptation as a threat (Easlea 1981)…
- philosophes argued women
were rational (Locke, because mind is tabula
rasa and hence had no sex) but did not support equality
- women were
seen (especially by Rousseau) as, by nature,
because of their physical make-up: ‘emotional, credulous incapable of objective
reasoning’ - almost a separate species, defined by reproduction, and their
sexuality often denied or repressed.
and:
in their family role: mothers, carriers within the family of a new morality through which the
unnaturalness of civilisation could be brought back (or on) to a natural order
(transcendence) – see the Magic Flute, Paul et Virginie (Outram p 81). They
were custodians of morality and religion in the home.
and:
- in her social role as consumer:
this definition was (Outram argues) a result of industrialisation, which needed
a sexual division of labour – women
(middle-class women) to consume what men produced. Nancy Armstrong says the
first truly modern economic person was a female, because first to have their
role described in terms purely of economic function
- also note how working women were not seen as physically distinct (not soft, and frail!)
- in other words, the
attitude to women was not new, but the means of supporting the argument that
women are different was new i.e. by science viz. biology and medicine (rather than divinely ordained hierarchies
etc) – biology seen as making woman what
she is.
Enlightenment inconsistencies:
- when it came to gender: there
were demands for rights and autonomy for
men, but dependency for women –
Wollstonecraft pointed out these inconsistencies: if reason was innate, why not in women?
- she also pointed out the different meaning of ‘virtue’ used at
the time: she argued that if ‘virtue’ has a different meaning for men and for
women (if you ‘give a sex to morals’) you are moving towards moral relativism:
‘virtue has one eternal standard’ and (even) if women are inferior to men their
virtue should still be the same – and for both sexes derived from reason. If
God is one, eternal and rational, then virtue (which grows from God) must be
the same for all humans
- the Enlightenment project
aimed to bring emancipation through universal value systems based on reason and
virtue - but it had difficulty incorporating groups such as women, lower social
classes, other races… It also created ‘fractures’ in the ‘republic of letters’
and ‘public opinion’ by problematising the position of women.
5. Key female figures (i) Olympe de Gouges and the
anti-slavery movement:
- in
the 17th and 18th centuries, women played important roles
in revolts against slavery in
- written
after the revolution of 1789, it expresses the disillusion that was growing
among women with the male-oriented new regime – despite its dedication to
‘liberty equality and fraternity’. The Declaration includes the view that: “ignorance, omission or scorn for the
rights of woman are the only causes of public misfortunes and of the corruption
of governments…”.
- Article 10 states that “woman has the right to mount the scaffold
[i.e. to be guillotined!], she must equally have the right to mount the rostrum…”
– women should have the same share of jobs, official positions etc as men.
- the following Article
declares that women should have the right to identify the father of their
child, and not be forced to hide the truth – clearly the latter must have been
a common practice at the time.
- Article 17: “Property
belongs to both sexes…” and no-one can be deprived of it without due legal
process.
For the full text go to:
http://www.pinn.net/~sunshine/book-sum/gouges.html
Kate Millett notes that the first female
anti-slavery convention in America took place in 1837 and says that the Abolition Movement gave women their first
taste of political organisation, and it provided the methods women would
use for the rest of the 19th century: petitions, and agitation to
educate the public ((Sexual Politics p 66, 80).
- she also notes that not all
Abolitionists were in favour of women’s emancipation – and in London at the
World Anti-Slavery Convention, 1840, two women were excluded, including
Lucretia Mott (a Nantucket Quaker) who went on to found the first women’s
Anti-Slave Society.
- but, she asks, did the fact
that women first joined together to fight a cause other than their own simply
indicate that they were still operating under the ‘service ethic’ of women?
5. Key female figures (ii) Mary Wollstonecraft (1759 – 1797):
- (Outram) - began as teacher
and headmistress, realised girls being educated to inferior position, wrote
Thoughts on the Education of Daughters, 1787 – Enlightenment ideals demanded
that women be given a decent education
- became a governess to Lord
Kingsborough, then went to
- back in
- wrote Vindication of the
Rights of Men, 1790, attacking Burke (wrote it in few weeks after Burke’s
Reflections) – (Himmelfarb p 110) though four years later in history of the
French Revolution she criticised the ‘rabble’ and their ‘barbarity’ – esp. the
women [quote?] - just as Burke would
have…
- wrote her Vindication of the
Rights of Woman in 1792
- Himmelfarb: this is mostly an attack
on Rousseau, not systematic or cohesive, and criticised women for allowing
themselves to be placed in a subservient (domestic, family) role – wanted women
to become like (the best kind of) men – rational, independent, above all
educated.
- she also attacked Bacon: "He that hath wife and children hath given hostages to fortune;
for they are impediments to great enterprises, either of virtue or
of mischief. Certainly the best works, and of greatest for
the public, have proceeded from the unmarried or childless men."
Bacon - Quoted by Mary
Wollstonecraft, see Ball and Dagger 1991 p 342. Mary adds "I say the same of
women".
- argued that women (a) have the
ability to reason but (b) have been prevented from developing and using it by
being expected to be merely "beautiful": they are told their main
value is in their beauty – they are praised for this to ‘compensate’ for their
treatment as inferior beings
- "the distinction of sex
(i.e. gender) [should be] confounded in society, unless where love animates the
behaviour" – her perspective was a ‘liberal’ one, i.e. social attitudes
needed to change (not a radical/socialist perspective), and she minimises the
difference between men and women (other feminists acknowledge there are
differences, but re-write them/reverse the value-judgments that go with them)
- "Pleasure is the business
of woman's life, according to the present modification of society; and while it
continues to be so, little can be expected from such weak beings. Inheriting ... the sovereignty of beauty -
they have, to maintain their power, resigned the natural rights which the
exercise of reason might have procured them, and chosen rather to be
short-lived queens than labour to obtain the sober pleasures that arise from
equality. Exalted by their inferiority... they constantly demand homage as
women...
Why do they not discover that
they are treated like queens only to be deluded by hollow respect, till they
are led to resign, or not assume, their natural prerogatives?... It is true they
are provided with food and raiment, for which they neither toil nor spin; but
health, liberty and virtue are given in exchange.
I lament
that women are systematically degraded by receiving the trivial attentions
which men think it manly to pay the sex, when in fact, they are insultingly
supporting their own superiority."
6. A radical in the Age of Enlightenment:
William Godwin and Anarchism [not covered in the WEA course at
Rayleigh...]
- (Himmelfarb p 110): -
Godwin is best known for writing a work – Political Justice 1793 – which
argues:
- for the abolition of
government, law, property and political economy, and for a reformed humanity…
i.e. the Enlightenment idea of the
perfectibility of human beings. Published at an ‘inauspicious time’ when
- it sold 3,000 copies at 3
guineas a time (PM Pitt thought it could do no harm to those who didn’t have
enough money to buy it, and so didn’t proscribe it)
- Wordsworth, Southey and
Coleridge declared their support for Godwin’s views
- Godwin was not happy with
the term ‘anarchy’ though he said it had ‘the likeness, a distorted and
tremendous likeness, of true liberty’
- what he wanted was ‘a well conceived
form of society without government.’ Even anarchy was better than despotism, as
at least in anarchy people can think for themselves, whilst under despotism
“mind is trampled into an equality of the most odious sort”
- the following year 1794 he
published Caleb Williams, portraying similar ideas – it was also
enthusiastically received.
- a few years later (because
of his private life as well as the situation with
- as with Richard Price (1757
book…) and Joseph Priestley, Godwin was taking up an extreme position on the
supremacy of reason (that was ‘far removed from’ (Hfb p 93) the Scottish writer
Francis Hutcheson’s idea of a moral sense)
- Price: ‘reason alone, did
we possess it in a higher degree’ was the basis for human relations. “There
would be no need of the parental affection were all parents sufficiently
acquainted with the reasons for taking upon them the guidance and support of
those whom nature has placed under their care, and were they virtuous enough to
be always determined by those reasons.”
- cf. Paine: “society is
produced by our wants and government by our wickedness”
- also: that emotions and
sexuality were irrational and immoral (Condorcet wrote a similar book: Sketch
for a Historical Picture of the Human Mind – also advocating that men will
‘overcome their sensuality’)
[note Himmelfarb puts this
account of Godwin’s ideas after the story, below, of his personal life saying
it may distract attention from the true drama of Political Justice’ – but that
surely was her intention!]
– but when Godwin met Mary
Wollstonecraft he wrote her sentimental love letters; and he married her when
she became pregnant – she died when she gave birth.
- Godwin remarried,
‘acquiring a family and considerable financial obligations that involved him in
several unsuccessful publishing ventures…
- he doted on his and Mary’s
daughter Mary, and was angry when she ran off with Shelley (who was an admirer of
Godwin) even though the latter was acting on Godwin’s professed principles,
against marriage and for freedom of the individual (Shelley left his pregnant
wife for Mary)
- Shelley and Mary had three
children, but Godwin refused to see his grandson (? sic, according to
Himmelfarb) until Shelley married Mary
- when Shelley’s wife
committed suicide he agreed to marry Mary; Godwin declared that he was happy
that she was now ‘respectable, virtuous, and contented.’
- Godwin also wrote a
four-volume history of
Godwin represents for
Himmelfarb (p 114) ‘the romance of reason’ – along with Wordsworth, Southey and
Coleridge who romanticized the French Revolution. For Wordsworth Reason was the
“prime enchantress” liberating mankind from “the meagre, stale, forbidding ways
/ Of custom, law and statute.”
For Himmelfarb the moral philosophers
wanted reform, the humanising of
(Note: Himmelfaarb makes no
mention of Blake…)
O’Hara (p112):
- Godwin blends Lockean
empiricism with utilitarianism – all government is bad because founded on
opinion, and valued by people only in so far as they were weak and ignorant;
evil is basically ignorance, caused by faulty education, perpetuated by tyranny
and greed
- a moral code should be
based on reason not on subjective feelings: one should save e.g. the poet and
theologian Fenelon from a fire before one saved one’s own mother, because
Fenelon was more use to mankind.
- Godwin didn’t accept
Rousseau’s idea of the general will, or society as a moral individual. He only
defended representative republican democracy in so far as it might prevent some
evils – however, he said that the truth of a matter cannot be arrived at by a
vote… A public vote could be subverted, and a private/secret vote facilitated
hypocrisy. Communication was the essence of liberty
- a number of other
commentators note that Godwin wrote against the institution of marriage, only
to marry Mary Wollstonecraft, and also that he insisted that Shelley should not
just cohabit with their daughter Mary but marry her (e.g. Porter p 23) – is
this, though, an ad hominem argument?