Human Knowledge
Table of Contents
- Our knowledge is of 2 kinds:
- distinct
- confused
Distinct knowledge is intelligence.
It occurs in the actual use of reason.
But the senses supply us with confused thoughts.
We are immune from bondage as long as we act with a distinct knowledge.
But our slavery from passion makes our perceptions confused.
In this sense, not all of us have the freedom of spirit that we want.
We say with St. Augustine that being subject to sin, we have the freedom of a slave.
Yet a slave has freedom to choose according to the state he is in.
He is often under the stern necessity of choosing between two evils, because a superior force prevents him from attaining the goods whereto he aspires.
That which in a slave is effected by bonds and constraint in us is effected by passions, whose violence is sweet, but none the less pernicious.
We will only that which pleases us.
But what pleases us now might often be a real evil.
- It would displease us if our eyes of understanding were open.
We are in an evil state of the slave.
Nevertheless, we can still choose what pleases us most, in proportion to our present strength and knowledge.
- Aristotle rightly said that our own spontaneity belongs to us since we are the source of our actions.
External things often divert us from our path.
This made people believe that some of our actions were caused outside ourselves.
A person who is about to speak will adopt the popular mode of expression.
But in terms of personal expression, I maintain that:
- our philosophical spontaneity is ours
- external things have no physical influence on us
- True spontaneity is common to us and all simple substances.
In the intelligent or free substance, this becomes a mastery over its actions.
This was explained by my System of Pre-established Harmony from some years ago.
It says that every simple substance:
- has perception
- has an individuality from the perpetual law which brings about the sequence of perceptions assigned to it.
- This sequence springs naturally from one another
- Its goal is to represent the body allotted to it and the entire universe through its instrumentality
- This is in accordance with the point of view proper to this simple substance, without it needing to receive any physical influence from the body
The body also adapts itself to the wishes of the soul by its own laws.
Consequently, the body only obeys the soul according to the promptings of these laws.
It follows that the soul has in itself a perfect spontaneity.
- It depends only on God and on itself in its actions.
- This system was not known formerly.
The Cartesians:
- were in difficulties over the subject of free will.
- were not satisfied by the ‘faculties’ of the Schoolmen
- considered that:
- all the actions of the soul are determined by what comes from outside, according to the impressions of the senses
- ultimately, all is controlled in the universe by God’s providence
People objected that this meant there is no freedom.
Descartes replied that we:
- are assured of:
- God’s providence by reason
- our freedom by experience within ourselves
- must believe in both, even though we see not how it is possible to reconcile them.
- Descartes cut the Gordian knot.
He answered the conclusion not by refuting it, but by opposing a contrary argument to it.
It does not conform to the laws for philosophical disputes.
Most of the Cartesians contented themselves with this.
Pierre-Sylvain Régis sums up Descartes’ doctrine:
Most philosophers have fallen into error.
Some are unable to understand the relation between free actions and God’s providence. So they deny that God was the first efficient cause of free will. But that is sacrilegious.
The others are unable to apprehend the relation between God’s efficacy and free actions. So they deny that man has freedom. But that is a blasphemy.
The mean between these 2 extremes is that we are unable to understand all the relations between freedom and God’s providence.
Byt we should acknowledge that we are free and dependent on God.
Both these truths are equally known, the one through experience, and the other through reason.
Prudence forbids us to abandon known truths just because one cannot apprehend all the relations between them and other well known truths
- Bayle here remarks pertinently in the margin, ’that these expressions of M. Regis fail to point out that we are aware of relations between man’s actions and God’s providence, such as appear to us to be incompatible with our freedom.’
He adds that these expressions are over-circumspect, weakening the statement of the problem.
‘Authors assume’, he says, ’that the difficulty arises solely from our lack of enlightenment; whereas they ought to say that it arises in the main from the enlightenment which we have, and cannot reconcile’ (in M. Bayle’s opinion) ‘with our Mysteries.’
That is exactly what I said at the beginning of this work, that if the Mysteries were irreconcilable with reason, and if there were unanswerable objections, far from finding the mystery incomprehensible, we should comprehend that it was false.
There is no question of a mystery, but only of natural religion.
- This is how M. Bayle combats those inward experiences, whereon the Cartesians make freedom rest: but he begins by reflexions with which I cannot agree.
Those who do not make profound examination of that which passes within them easily persuade themselves that they are free, and that, if their will prompts them to evil, it is their fault, it is through a choice whereof they are the masters.
Those who judge otherwise are persons who have studied with care the springs and the circumstances of their actions, and who have thought over the progress of their soul’s impulses.
Those persons usually have doubts about their free will, and even come to persuade themselves that their reason and mind are slaves, without power to resist the force that carries them along where they would not go. It was principally persons of this kind who ascribed to the gods the cause of their evil deeds.'
