Friday, June 27, 2008

Wollstonecraft: Unmarried and pregnant--man's responsibility, or woman's?

Wollstonecraft opined that men should be compelled to provide for the unmarried women with whom they sleep and impregnate, as long as the women remain sexually faithful to their providers. Such an arrangement she terms a "left-handed marriage" (distinguished from proper marriages which she deems superior and preferable).

Her argument here is difficult to follow. The passage reads:

"...yet when a man seduces a woman, it should, I think, be termed a left-handed marriage, and the man should be legally obliged to maintain the woman and her children, unless adultery, a natural divorcement, abrogated the law. And this law should remain in force as long as the weakness of women caused the word seduction to be used as an excuse for their frailty and want of principle; nay, while they depend on man for a subsistence, instead of earning it by the exertion of their own hands or heads."

As far as I can tell, the exhortation goes as follows:

Unfortunately, contemporary women are weak in moral principles and financial resources.

Women can and should be strong in these respects.

As part of their empowerment, pregnant unmarried women should stop blaming their "seducers" for the sexual activity in which both parties willingly participated.

(Implied) If men do not enjoy providing for their lovers and their offspring, then they should admit that women have sexual and financial responsibilities, i.e. assent to Wollstonecraft's feminist platform.

It is unclear to me how the claim that pregnant unmarried women should stop blaming their "seducers" is compatible with the idea that men should provide financially for their lovers. Wollstonecraft critiqued the contemporary assumption of her wealthy economic class that men were expected to earn money for their families while women were expected to sit at home and look pretty, and she envisioned a future in which women took responsibility for their own lives. The present and the future visions are clear, but her intermediate step--the specific practical recommendation by which the society would arrive at a more perfect future--is not clear at all. She said that men should provide for women until women got sick of the attention and, perhaps, if I read her correctly, until men became feminists (ceasing to use the word "seduction" as an excuse for women's behavior). We need a better-detailed program for social change.

Source:
Mary Wollstonecraft. A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. (1792) Chapter 4: Observations on the State of Degradation to Which Woman Is Reduced by Various Causes.


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Thursday, June 26, 2008

Wollstonecraft: Fondness and friendship

"To gain the affections of a virtuous man is affectation necessary?" In formulating this question, Wollstonecraft put her finger on an ancient question that even today populates advice columns. Courtship involves playful pretense and mystery to stimulate mutual interest. But when does coquettishness cross the line into affectation, that is, a false persona that hides the true self?

Asking if a woman should "condescend to use art and feign a sickly delicacy in order to secure her husband's affection", Wollstonecraft answered, "Fondness is a poor substitute for friendship!"

In the search for romantic partnership, many people (both male and female) display their own weaknesses and are attracted to weaknesses in others, to some extent because they are searching for a partner who can tolerate, complement, or even fix their problems. This is not an entirely bad desire. Everyone is imperfect, and everyone has needs; these facts certainly influence our choice of partner, and our behavior with our partner! Yet, we have all seen examples of how the simple admission of vulnerability can go awry, in certain couples where one of the partners behaves in a manner that just seems annoyingly fake and therefore desperate.

Source:
Mary Wollstonecraft. A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. (1792) Chapter 2: The Prevailing Opinion of a Sexual Character Discussed.


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Sunday, June 15, 2008

Berkeley: What color is that dismembered body part you are imagining?

In the last post, we quoted a 1772 text from David Hume that referred to compound ideas, that is, the combination of known concepts such as "gold" and "mountain" to generate new ideas and fantasies such as "golden mountains." Here is a similar idea from George Berkeley, 62 years earlier:

...for myself, I find indeed I have a faculty of imagining, or representing to myself, the ideas of those particular things I have perceived, and of variously compounding and dividing them. I can imagine a man with two heads, or the upper parts of a man joined to the body of a horse. I can consider the hand, the eye, the nose, each by itself abstracted or separated from the rest of the body. But then whatever hand or eye I imagine, it must have some particular shape and colour. Likewise the idea of man that I frame to myself must be either of a white, or a black, or a tawny, a straight, or a crooked, a tall, or a low, or a middle-sized man. I cannot by any effort of thought conceive the abstract idea above described. And it is equally impossible for me to form the abstract idea of motion distinct from the body moving, and which is neither swift nor slow, curvilinear nor rectilinear; and the like may be said of all other abstract general ideas whatsoever.

Rightly (in my opinion) Berkeley points out that, while one can imagine a human being, one cannot imagine a human being without particular qualities of height, color, etc. This illustrates two meanings of the word "abstract." One can imagine an abstract human, or even an abstract body part such as a hand or head, separated from all context and having no basis in reality; but remove all physical description and sensory reference points from the abstract idea, and it is no longer an image of anything. I imagine the same is true with virtue. When we imagine virtue, we imagine examples of virtue. The abstract ideas of kindness or honesty would mean nothing if they were so far abstracted as to be no longer grounded in human relationships.
Source: George Berkeley. A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge. (1710) Introduction, Paragraph 10.

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Friday, June 6, 2008

Hume: Ideas are imitations of sense perceptions

David Hume believed that the most direct, "lively" mental images are those caused by sensory impressions, and that the gyrations of the imagination and intellect are weak imitations or hybrids. "All the colours of poetry, however splendid," he wrote, "can never paint natural objects in such a manner as to make the description be taken for a real landscape. The most lively thought is still inferior to the dullest sensation." I am unsure whether I agree with this, particular as, during my morning meditation, my opinions on Hume's book nearly succeeded in crowding out my attention to a bird chirping outside my window. He also applied this to emotion, pointing out that we can recognize or imagine emotion in ourselves and others without actually feeling that emotion: "A man in a fit of anger, is actuated in a very different manner from one who only thinks of that emotion. If you tell me, that any person is in love, I easily understand your meaning, and form a just conception of his situation; but never can mistake that conception for the real disorders and agitations of the passion." One might add--I wish to point out--that when we hear of others' fortunes and misfortunes we often have our own emotional responses. Thus, when we hear about someone's unjust punishment, we actually become angry on her behalf, and when we watch the hero kiss his beloved on a movie screen, we actually feel the love we imagine he feels. Many of our mental creations are hybrids in the simplest and most literal sense. "What never was seen, or heard of, may yet be conceived...When we think of a golden mountain, we only join two consistent ideas, gold, and mountain..." And yet, these ideas ultimately must be rooted in experience. He wrote, "A blind man can form no notion of colours, a deaf man of sounds." He also applied this to virtue: "A man of mild manners can form no idea of inveterate revenge or cruelty, nor can a selfish heart easily conceive the heights of friendship and generosity." Though it feels depressing to say so, this seems true to some degree. Why is it that deeply felt impulses and ethical commitments are so difficult to sympathize with in other people who experience them differently? If we were capable of understanding each other better, surely this would promote peace.
Source: David Hume. Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding. (1772) Section II: Of the Origin of Ideas.

Bonus: An adaptation of a short paper I wrote for college c. 2000. Revised 2022.

Hume's Enquirey into Knowledge of Matters of Fact

Hume, in Section IV of his Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, divides the objects of knowledge into two kinds: relations of ideas (whose truth we can prove) and matters of fact (which could always be different). So, how can we be certain about facts? Hume claimed that philosophers had yet explored it to his satisfaction.

First: We know some facts by immediate sense perception or by memory. Others, we know because we assume that an effect has an appropriate cause. A friend sends us a letter about a trip to France; this suggests to us that the friend is in France. The cause-and-effect relationship isn't known a priori but rather from experience.

Next: When we draw conclusions from experience, they aren't purely rational. We simply can't reason that the future will be exactly like the past. We've eaten bread in the past, but what is this breadlike meal before us now? Is it also bread? Will it nourish us? Hume questions the rationalist tradition that knowledge gained from experience is ultimately founded on reason.

In Section V, Hume offers a "sceptical solution" to his doubts. We have "natural instincts" to draw conclusions. It's custom or habit. Our reason is powerless to alter our conclusion. We see one action followed by another. The pattern repeats. We begin to believe it is cause and effect, though we have no rational explanation. And our experience does become "useful to us" when we draw the conclusion.

Logic is limited, he observes. Logic manipulates "relations of ideas" but not "matters of fact." That's why the scientific method involves experimental testing of a hypothesis. Scientists don't always work out their answer with pencil and paper alone, not only because it's hard, slow work to do it that way, but because it might not even be possible to do it that way. Repeated observations may be a better method. With the assurance attained through observation, our beliefs become pragmatically useful to us. We acquire knowledge. This is applicable not only to scientific ventures but to all of human life.

Hume acknowledges our beliefs are never certain.

Neither should we. After all, theories are only hypotheses that have been confirmed multiple times, and "natural laws" are only theories that have stood the test of time. If a contradictory event is ever observed, the theory or natural law will shatter. We can never prove matter of fact beyond doubt. Theories and beliefs are subject to factual observation. We are only certain of our beliefs insofar as they have not yet been proven wrong and our certainty remains useful to us.

Hume is aware that, starting with our observations, we must make an irrational, explicable leap to gain knowledge of cause and effect. After all, we could not function in the world without knowing anything about cause and effect. Though we gain this knowledge from custom and habit rather than from reason, we have no choice, he says, but to trust it.

Hume recognizes that some components of human knowledge are so fundamental that we cannot investigate them. At some point, we can no longer reason about our reasoning process or observe our process of observation. Hume's skepticism about the foundation of knowledge manifests intellectual humility. His conclusion that we gain knowledge through "custom or habit" is satisfactory for a non-scientific approach to human understanding.


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Tuesday, June 3, 2008

Smith: Sleeping soundly through famine

Adam Smith wrote of the ordinary man:
If he was to lose his little finger to-morrow, he will not sleep tonight; but, provided he never saw them, he will snore with the most profound security over the ruin of a hundred millions of his brethren, and the destruction of that immense multitude seems plainly an object less interesting to him, than this paltry misfortune of his own. To prevent, therefore, this paltry misfortune to himself, would a man of humanity be willing to sacrifice the lives of a hundred millions of his brethren, provided he had never seen them?

There is a truth to this, at least regarding our immediate focus. You lie asleep at night worrying about your boss, your computer file, your friend, your bicycle, etc. — not someone you've never met on the other side of the world, no matter what grave things you imagine might be happening to them.

Smith is asking not only what you think about, but what you would do. Are you "willing to sacrifice" others' happiness for your own? That is a question of what you believe you want, but also perhaps what you'd actually do.

Of course, if the hypothetical situation is silly enough, it may not sound like a real moral question. No one is offering to free a child they've kidnapped if you'll turn over your bicycle.

Nonetheless, a hypothetical can be a starting point for self-examination.

Source: Adam Smith. The Theory of Moral Sentiments. eds. D. D. Raphael and A. L. Macfie. (1790, reprint Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975) pp. 136-137. Quoted in "Humanity and Citizenship," by Amartya Sen, in For Love of Country: Debating the Limits of Patriotism. Martha C. Nussbaum with respondents. ed. Joshua Cohen. Boston: Beacon Press, 1996.


If you'd like to learn more about my work, I've published books. Also, I write for Medium.

See my thoughts on Joel Edward Goza's America's Unholy Ghosts, a book that discusses Adam Smith. My article is a 5-minute read, and the link I provided is unpaywalled. If you buy a paid membership, you don't have to worry about the paywall.