Revision Lecture 2 - PowerPoint Presentation

Slide1

Revision Lecture 2Slide2

In search of humanities ‘true’ nature –

‘the science of man’

T

erm coined by the Scottish philosopher David Hume, who

sought to apply Newton’s laws of nature to human

nature.

By

leading people to

escape or control

their basic physical and emotional drives through the exercise of ‘reason’, enlightened philosophers

sought

to lead humanity towards

its’

true

nature’,

a nature that they deemed free from the desire to terrify or compel others.

The Enlightenment celebrated human ‘reason’ above everything else and nurtured the strong belief that ‘reason’, and its application via the empirical method, would enable people to get at what man really was - not only individual man, but how man acts in society. Slide3

The Science of Man

Since the latter part

of the seventeenth century, European

thinkers

began to believe that in order to understand the true history and destiny of the human race, one could no longer blindly rely on the authority of the Greek and Roman thinkers (the Ancients) or on the Bible.

Man’s

nature – so they began to believe—was not yet properly known; it must become the subject of inquiry.

Important:

‘science’ is not understood as ‘natural science’ – as we do today. The Enlightenment understood in a much broader sense as a general ‘inquiry following a rational method’. So, ‘history writing’ or ‘theology’ could be part of this ‘science of man’ – if undertaken by a rationally reasoning mind, of course!Slide4

Assumptions about ‘Human Nature’

1. Human

nature

follows

laws.

2.

Human nature develops in stages and this development is

universal (stage history).

3.

Human nature is perfectible.

4. Human nature no longer innately sinful but can be trained to contribute to the ‘common good’ and ‘happiness’ of

all.Slide5

The Pacific Slide6

‘Stage Theory’ of Human

Civilisation

and

C

onjectural History of Man

Developed from

Montesquie’s

ideas by Scottish thinkers who grafted the movement

of a gradual progress onto the classification of individual and social phenomena ‘There is [ . . . ] in human society, a natural progress from ignorance to knowledge, and from rude to civilized manners [ . . . ]. Various accidental causes, indeed, have contributed to accelerate, or to retard, this advancement in different countries.’ (Adam Smith)

Human society develops in 4 distinct chronological stages:

‘1st

, the Age of Hunters, 2dly

, the

Age of Shepherds, 3dly, the Age of Agriculture; and 4thly, the Age

of Commerce.’ (Adam Smith)

From savage state to state of full

civilisation

Slide7

The ‘noble savage’

:

The term

expresses

the concept of an idealized

indigeneous

‘other’

who

has not been ‘corrupted’ by civilization, and therefore symbolizes humanity's innate goodness. The Theme can be found in the 16th century in Montaigne. A typical 18th century use in Alexander Pope’ "Essay on Man" (1734).

Lo, the poor Indian! whose

untutor'd

mind

Sees God in clouds, or hears him in the

wind…

Yet

simple Nature to his hope has

giv'n

,

Behind the cloud-

topp'd

hill, a humbler

heav'n

;

Some safer world in depth of woods

embrac'd

,

Some happier island in the

wat'ry

waste,

Where slaves once more their native land behold,

No fiends torment, no Christians thirst for gold!

To be, contents his natural desire;

He asks no angel's wing, no seraph's fire:

But thinks, admitted to that equal sky,

His faithful dog shall bear him company.

Bougainville uses ‘the noble savage’ theme in his

Voyage au tour du monde

; it becomes very popular in 18

th

century EuropeSlide8

A Valuation of Estate Slaves, Antigua, 1782

This financial document illustrates the extent to which slaves were regarded as marketable property.Slide9

Johann Friedrich Blumenbach, 1752-1834

New:

The notion of a natural hierarchy of races based NOT on external characteristics such as skin

colour

but on internal structures of the body

De generis

humani

varietate

nativa

(

On the Natural Variety

of Mankind)

(1775)

RaceSlide10

He divided the human species into five races:

the Caucasian or white race

the Mongolian or yellow race, including all East Asians and some Central Asians.

the Malayan or brown race, including Southeast Asian and Pacific Islanders.

the Ethiopian or black race, including sub-Saharan Africans.

the American or red race, including American Indians.Slide11

Jean-Jacques Rousseau , 1712-1787

Émile

, or On Educati

on (1762)

Rousseau was a believer in the

moral– because he believed ‘natural’ --superiority

of the patriarchal family based on the antique Roman

model

1. Rousseau’s view on women’s natureSlide12

Dr

John Gregory, 1724-1773

A

father’s legacy to His

Daughter

(1774)

Comparative Views of the State and Faculties of Man with Those of the Animal World (1765)

‘…your

natural character and place and

society there

arises a certain propriety of conduct peculiar to your sex

’

‘

I do not want to make you anything: I want to know what Nature has made you, and to perfect you on her plan’

2.

Dr

John Gregory Slide13

‘I may be accused of ignorance, still I must declare what I firmly believe, that all the writers who have written on the subject of female education and manners from Rousseau to Dr Gregory, have contributed to …degrade one half of the human species, and render women pleasing at the expense of every solid virtue’.

Mary Wollstonecraft,

A Vindication of the Rights of Women

(1792)Slide14

Women’s

bodies

are becoming ‘different’ from that of men during 18

th

century; cases

f

emale inferiority start to be based on their ‘different’ physicality and its classificationSlide15

“Adam

Smith’s decisive contribution [to the history of liberalism] was the account

of

a

self-generating order which formed spontaneously if the individuals were

restrained by appropriate rules of law. His

Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of

the Wealth of Nations marks perhaps more than any other single work the beginning of the development of modern liberalism. It made people understand that those restrictions on the powers of government which had originated from sheer distrust of all arbitrary power had become the chief cause of Britain’s economic prosperity.”

“homo

economicus

”

,

or economic man, is the concept in many

current economic

theories portraying humans as consistently rational and narrowly self-interested agents who usually pursue their subjectively-defined ends optimally

.

(term first used in late nineteenth century)

Hayek on Smith whom he celebrates as the inventor of economic liberalism:

Friedrich Hayek 1899

-1992Slide16

Adam Smith (b.1732, d.1790)

The

Theory of Moral Sentiment

(1759):

Central concept is ‘sympathy’:

Smith

great achievement is that he turned

sympathy into the governing principle of a theory of sociability on which a theory of commerce could be based.

‘[The] greatest

human happiness arises from the consciousness of being beloved’

Slide17

The Wealth of Nations, 1776Slide18

John Locke (1632-1704)

David Hume (1711-1776)

Étienne

Bonnot

de

Condillac

(1714

-

1780) Slide19

A definition of phrenology with chart from Webster's Academic Dictionary, circa 1895

According to Gall’s cerebral physiology there were 27

faculties of the mind, lodged in the brain that could be ‘felt’ from touching the skullSlide20

Theory of Evolution – ‘co-discovered’ by

Charles Darwin, 1809 – 1882

Alfred

Russel

Wallace, 1823-1913 Slide21

The Reverend Thomas Robert Malthus

,

1766 – 1834

Essay on the Principle of Populations

(1798

)

1803 edition read by

Darwin

‘The power of population is so superior to the power of the earth to produce subsistence for man…’

‘ongoing struggle of existence over subsistence

’ -- according to Malthus God directed

Note

:

t

erm’ survival of the fittest’ (not from Malthus but Herbert Spencer who read Darwin. Darwin then used it in later editions of his book.Slide22

Darwin’s offers his own view on the raging debate on ‘human evolution’ in two, by now, famous publications

1871

1872Slide23

Vienna 1900

Fin-de

siecle

Vienna:

Grand, boring….and suppressed (according to Freud!)Slide24

Stefan Zweig, 1881-1942 (suicide); in the 1920s

and 1930s, he was one of the most popular writers in the world

The World of Yesterday

(1942)

Describes that world perfectlySlide25

A different philosophical setting in which we have to see Freud’s ideas about the mind

Idealism/

Romanicism

: emphasizes the "ideal" character of all phenomena and is very strong during the 18

th

and 19

th

century in the German speaking world. Opposites are ‘materialism’, or ‘realism’ and philosophies such as positivism. Philosophers of German idealism are Kant, Fichte, Schelling, Hegel.

Experimental scientists who studied the human mind in the German speaking world did not seek a distinction of psychology – the study of the mind – from philosophy.Slide26

Franz Brentano (1838-1917)

Lectured at the University of Vienna in the medical school.Slide27

Richard

Freiherr

von Krafft-Ebing, 1840-1902

Psychopathia

Sexualis

:

eine

Klinisch-Forensische Studie (Sexual Psychopathy: A Clinical-Forensic Study), 1886Hugely influential in defining ‘normal’ and ‘abnormal’ sexualities

Book popularized

the terms

sadism

(derived from the brutal sexual practices depicted in the novels of Marquis de Sade) and

masochism

(derived from the name of Leopold von

Sacher-Masoch

),

He teaches at the University of Vienna since 1882

Richard Von Krafft-Ebing (1840-1902) Slide28

Freud in Paris 1885-1886 to study under Jean-Martin Charcot

Charcot demonstrating hypnosis on a ‘hysterical’

Salpêtrière

patient, ‘Blanche’ (Blanche

Wittmann

)

The aim for

Charcot was to

discover a diagnostic technique which would distinguish between paralysis (which

were

then understood as the

consequences of organic disease of the central nervous

system)

and paralysis which were

hysterical

(that is not linked to organic disease) Slide29