The Devil in Modern Philosophy by Ernest Gellner

Author:Ernest Gellner [Gellner, Ernest]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: aVe4EvA
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2003-08-11T20:00:00+00:00

The system of nature

The eighteenth-century French thinkers were both numerous and prolific. A full account of the views even of those who can be characterized, in some sense or another, ‘materialists of the Enlightenment’, would be impossible in a limited space. It is customary and appropriate to take some writer or work as epitomizing the thought of the period. If one wished to concentrate on anticlericalism alone, without a total rejection of religious ideas, one might choose Voltaire. If one were to choose a single work as both typical and influential, it would be appropriate, and customary, to take the co-operative Encyclopédie. But there would be obvious disadvantages in using a cooperative work of this kind, without the claim to consistency or restriction to general principles. For purposes of examining a coherent, systematically expounded philosophy, it is best, from consideration of both merit and a kind of unity, to take Baron d’Holbach’s Le Système de la Nature, and in particular the first of its two volumes. Its views are more radical than most of the publicly expressed views of the time; it is, however, essentially a coherent, frank, and passionate systematization of the largely shared ideas or of their logical conclusions of the most influential group of intellectuals of the time.

There is a sense in which The System of Nature can be said to tell a story. It is not merely a vision of the universe and man, and an exhortation, but it is a kind of dramatic presentation of a conflict of two forces: it is almost a narrative. The battle it describes is, of course, unfinished. The intention of the book is to make us see its true character, to make us understand the nature of the two contestants, and to enlist our support for good against evil and to aid its victory. We are conducted along the various points of the front line, the doctrines of man, of knowledge, of morals, and so on.

The two forces engaged in this fundamental crucial conflict are two ways of thinking: the religious and the naturalistic (which includes materialism and empiricism). The former is both wrong and very harmful. The latter is both true and immensely beneficial to humanity.

The work consists of the delineation and demonstration of the true and beneficial view and style of thought, and of an analysis and refutation of the main features of the mistaken and harmful view. It also consists of a pathology of thought, a diagnosis of how the harmful type of thought comes to exist and have a hold on humanity; and, to a lesser extent, it also includes what may be called a rationalist theory of Grace—that is to say, an account of how the true, rationalistic, materialistic manner of thinking can be restored and establish itself amongst men. (This part of the doctrine is among its weaker aspects. So is the rationalistic doctrine of Original Sin—the attempt to account for how mistaken or meaningless and harmful doctrines have come to be so pervasive and powerful.

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