The Interdependence of Literature Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century Philosophy byCurtis, Georgina Pell
Eighteenth century philosophy in France, Germany and England was
a very different thing from the philosophy of the Ancients. The
latter, says a profound German writer, "recognized in time and
space an endless theatre for the display of the eternal, and of
the living pulsation of eternal love. By the contemplation of
such things, however imperfect, the natural, even the merely
sensible man, was affected by a stupendous feeling of admiration,
well calculated to prepare the way for religious thoughts. It
extended and ennobled his soul to thus regard the past, present,
and future."
French philosophy took its rise in the seventeenth century, but
the philosophers of that age--Descartes, Bayle and others--
assumed the soul of man to be the starting point in all
investigations of physical science. The eighteenth century
philosophers went a step further and rejected all idea of God and
the soul. Voltaire, De Montesquieu, D'Holbach, D'Alembert,
Diderot, Helvetius and the Abbe Raynal, are the chief minds who
shaped the thought of France in the eighteenth century, and by
their cynicism, sensuality, and contempt for law and order,
helped to pave the war for the horrors of the French Revolution.
What they offered to the world the lower classes could only grasp
in its most material sense, and they wrested it indeed to their
own, and to others, destruction.
Voltaire, Diderot, D'Holbach and their school in France, with
Hume, Bolingbroke and Gibbon in England, formed a coterie whose
desire it was to edit a vast encyclopaedia, giving the latest
discoveries, in philosophy and science in particular, and in
literature in general. These men became known as the
Encyclopaedists, and their history is fully set forth by
Condillac. They rejected all divine revelation and taught that
all religious belief was the working of a disordered mind, and
that physical sensibility is the origin of all our thoughts.
Alternately gross or flippant, or else both, the French
philosophers offered nothing pure or elevating in philosophic
thought. Their teaching spread to England, where the philosophy
of the eighteenth century, less gross than the French, is chiefly
distinguished for being cold and indifferent, rather than
actively opposed, to religion. Hume is a type of the class of
thinkers whom we find uncertain and unworthy of confidence. The
histories of Hume, Robertson and Gibbon are the offspring of this
degraded material philosophy of the eighteenth century. They
surpassed the histories of other nations in comprehensiveness and
power, and became standard works in France and Germany, but in
all of them we can trace a lack of true philosophy, due to the
blighting influence of the eighteenth century skepticism; for, as
the greatest minds, in which Christianity and science are
blended, have agreed--"without some reasonable and due idea of
the destiny and end of man, it is impossible to form just and
consistent opinions on the progress of events, and the
development and fortunes of nations. History stripped of
philosophy becomes simply a lifeless heap of useless materials,
without either inward unity, right purpose, or worthy result;
while philosophy severed from history results in a disturbed
existence of different sects, allied to formality."
The originator of English philosophy was John Locke, whose
teachings were closely allied to the sensual philosophy of the
French. It remained for the Scottish school under Thomas Reid to
combat both the sensualistic philosophy of Voltaire and Locke,
and the skepticism of Hume. Reid was a sincere lover of truth, a
man of lofty character, and his philosophy, such as it is, is the
purest that can be found, more akin to the profound reasoning of
Plato.
In Italy, during the eighteenth century, the theory that
experience is the only ground of knowledge, as taught by Locke
and Condillac, gained some followers; but none of them were men
of any great influence. Gallupi in the beginning of the
nineteenth century endeavored to reform this philosophy; others
took up his work, and the result was a change of thought similar
to that brought about by Reid in England and Scotland.
The earlier German philosophers were influenced by the grosser
forms of the science, as found in Locke and Helvetius. Leibnitz
and Wolf taught pure Idealism, as did Bishop Berkeley in England.
It remained for Kant to create a new era in modern philosophy.
His system vas what has become known as the Rationalistic, or
what we can know by pure reason. Kant was followed by Lessing,
Herder, Hegel, Fichte, and a host of others.
These German philosophers of the eighteenth and nineteenth
centuries have had a powerful influence in shaping literature in
England, France, Denmark, Sweden and America. The mystic and
profound German mind has often been led astray; but its
intellectual strength cannot be questioned. Schelling was the
author of theories in philosophy that have been adopted and
imitated by both Coleridge and Wordsworth, while Van Hartmann
teaches that there is but one last principle of philosophy, known
by Spinoza as substance, by Fichte as the absolute I., by Plato
and Hegel as the absolute Idea, by Schopenhauer as Will, and by
himself as a blind, impersonal, unconscious, all-pervading Will
and Idea, independent of brain, and in its essence purely
spiritual, and he taught that there could be no peace for man's
heart or intellect until religion, philosophy and science were
recognized as one root, stem and leaves all of the same living
tree.
It is curious to trace how these various philosophies, recognized
by Van Hartmann under different names to be one, can be merged
into the sublime Christian philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas, who
taught that religion, philosophy and science were indeed
one--root, stem and leaves of the one life-giving tree, which is
God.
All that is deepest and most profound is to be found in this
modern German philosophy, which is diametrically opposed to the
flippant and sensual philosophy of the Voltarian school. However
far the German philosophers are from true philosophy as seen in
the light of Christian truth, they command a respect as earnest
thinkers and workers, which it is impossible to accord the
eighteenth century French school.
