OPTIMISTIC WORLD-VIEW AND ETHICS IN THE
RENAISSANCE AND POST-RENAISSANCE PERIODS
Belief in Progress and Ethics
THE essential characteristic of the modern age is this, that it thinks
and acts in the spirit of a world- and life-affirmation which has
never before shown itself with such active strength.
This world-view breaks through in the Renaissance, first at the end of
the fourteenth century, and it arises as a protest against the
mediæval enslavement of the human spirit. The movement is helped to
victory by the increasing knowledge of Greek philosophy in its
original form which is the result of the migration to Italy about the
middle of the fifteenth century of learned Greeks from Constantinople.
Among the thinking men of that time there arises the belief that
philosophy must be something more elemental and more living than
Scholasticism made it.
But the thought of antiquity would not have been sufficient by itself
to keep alive this new world- and life-affirmation which appealed to
it. It has not, in truth, the mentality required. But another kind of
fuel is in time brought for the fire. Taking refuge from book-learning
in nature, the men of that time discover the world. As seamen they
reach countries whose very existence was not suspected, and they
measure the size of the earth. As inquirers they press on into the
infinite and the secrets of the universe, and learn by experience that
forces governed by uniform laws are at work in it, and that man has
power to make them serviceable to himself. The knowledge and power won
by Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519), Copernicus [pg 062] (1473-1543),
Kepler (1571-1630), Galileo (1564-1642), and others are decisive for
the current world-view.
As a movement which draws its life solely from spiritual forces, the
Renaissance passes its bloom-time comparatively quickly, and without
forming much fruit. With Paracelsus (1493-1541), Bernardino Telesio
(1508-1588), Giordano Bruno (1548-1600), and others, an enthusiastic
nature-philosophy announces itself. It does not, however, reach full
growth. The Renaissance has not strength enough to bring to birth a
world- and life-affirming philosophy corresponding to their spirit.
Here and there their thought surges for a time, like a rough sea,
against the world-denying world-view of the Church. Then all is still.
What we know definitely as the philosophy of modern times begins
almost without any reference to the Renaissance. It springs not from
any nature-philosophy, but from the problem of the theory of knowledge
which was raised by Descartes, and from that starting-point philosophy
has once more had laboriously to seek its way to a nature-philosophy.
It is not, then, because it was enlarged during the Renaissance into a
fully thought out world-view that world- and life-affirmation made
good its position in the modern age. If it was able to hold out right
into the eighteenth century, when it triumphs against the world- and
life-denial which mediæval thought and Christianity kept working in
opposition to it, it owed this to the circumstance that progress in
knowledge and power never ceased. In them the new mentality had a
support which never gave way, but became continually stronger. Since
the new scientific knowledge cannot be suppressed nor its progress
arrested, belief in the power of truth becomes firmly established.
Since it becomes more and more evident that nature works with a
uniformity which never misses its aim, there grows up a confidence
that the circumstances of society and of mankind generally can be so
organized as to secure definite objects. Since man is ever obtaining
[pg 063] greater power over nature, he takes it more and more as
self-evident that the reaching of perfection in other spheres also is
only a question of a sufficiency of will-power and a correct way of
grappling with problems.
Under the steadily working influence of the new mentality the
world-view of Christianity changes, and becomes leavened with the
leaven of world- and life-affirmation. It gradually begins to be
accepted as self-evident that the spirit of Jesus does not give up the
world in despair, but aims at transforming it. The early Christian
conception of the Kingdom of God, which was born of pessimism and,
thanks to Augustine, prevailed through the Middle Ages, is rendered
impotent, and its place is taken by one which is the offspring of
modern optimism. This new orientation of the Christian world-view,
which is accomplished by a slow and often interrupted process of
change between the fifteenth century and the end of the eighteenth, is
the decisive spiritual event of the modern age. During this period
Christianity takes no account of what is happening to itself. It
believes that it is remaining unchanged, whereas in reality, by this
change from pessimism to optimism, it is surrendering its original
character.
The man of modern times, then, becomes optimistic, not because
deepened thought has made him understand the world in the sense of
world- and life-affirmation, but because discovery and invention have
given him power over it. This enhancement of his self-appreciation and
the consequent strengthening of his will and his hopes, determine his
will-to-live in a correspondingly pronounced and positive sense.
In the ancient world man’s natural disposition to world- and
life-affirmation could not be worked out to a complete world-view of
the same, because at that time deep thought about the world and life
pressed resignation upon him as a necessity of thought. In the man of
the modern age the mentality produced by discovery and invention
unites with his natural disposition to world- and life-affirmation,
and establishes him in an optimistic world-view [pg 064] without
leading him to deeper thought about the world and life.
The spirit of the modern age is not the work of any one great thinker.
It wins its way gradually by reason of the unbroken series of triumphs
won by discovery and invention. Hence it is not a result of chance
that an almost unphilosophic and moreover somewhat antiquated
personality like Francis Bacon, Lord Verulam (1561-1626), is the man
who drafts the programme of the modern world-view. He founds it upon
the sentence: “Knowledge is power.” His picture of the future he
develops in his _New Atlantis_, in which he describes how the
inhabitants of an island, through the practical application of all
known discoveries and inventions and all possible rational reflexion
on the purposive organization of society, find themselves in a
position to lead the happiest possible lives._(_9_)_
Christian and Stoic Elements in Modern Ethics
What is the relation between ethics and the mentality of belief in
progress, and how were they influenced by it?
When the ethical thought of antiquity wanted to come to clearness
about itself, it fell a victim to resignation, because it tried to
determine the moral as that which is rationally profitable and
pleasurable to the individual. It remained shut up within the circle
of the egoistic, and never reached the thought of social
utilitarianism. From such a fate modern ethics are protected in
advance. They have no need to produce from their own resources the
thought that the ethical is action directed to promoting the welfare
of others, for they find it as something already accepted as true.
That is the gift of Christianity. The thought of Jesus that the
ethical is the individual’s active self-devotion to others has won its
way to acceptance. Ethics, [pg 065] which are making themselves
independent of religion, keep, as a result of their passage through
Christianity, a pronouncedly active and altruistic mode of thought.
What they have to do now is to provide this possession with a rational
foundation.
It is extraordinarily significant that to meet modern ethics there
comes in the Late Stoicism a philosophical ethical system in which
there appear, as the result of rational thinking, thoughts which run
side by side with Christian morality. There is now coming up for the
benefit of modern times the seed sown by Seneca, Epictetus, and Marcus
Aurelius. Cicero, too, counts with modern times for so much, because
its thinkers find in his writings noble morality based upon thought.
The discovery of Late Stoicism’s ethic of humanity is for modern times
akin to their discovery of nature. They identify it with the real
Christian ethic, and contrast it with the scholastic, in which Jesus
is expounded according to Aristotle. It is through Late Stoicism that
modern times become aware that the moral is something direct. Because
Seneca, Epictetus, and Marcus Aurelius speak to such an extent just as
Jesus did, they help to spread the conviction that the truly rational
ethic and the ethic of the Gospels coincide with one another.
When antiquity came to an end, Late Stoicism and Christianity, in
spite of the identity of their moral teaching, had torn each other to
pieces. In modern times they unite in order to produce together an
ethical world-view. Why is that now possible which before was
impossible? Because the chasm which lay between their respective
world-views has been bridged. Christianity now treats world- and
life-affirmation as valid.
But how could this volte-face of Christianity be brought about?
Because of the fact that in spite of its pessimistic world-view it
upholds an ethic which, so far as it touches the relation of man to
man, is an activist ethic. The pessimistic world-view, if it thinks
itself out to a consistent conclusion, must end with a purely
world-denying ethic, [pg 066] divorced from action, as it has in
India. The peculiar character, however, of the world-view of Jesus
which is determined by the expectation of the end of the world and the
coming of a supernatural kingdom of God, together with the directness
of his ethical feeling, entail his proclaiming of an ethic of active
devotion to one’s fellow-Man in spite of his pessimistic attitude
towards the natural world. This activist ethic is what is wanted to
provide the cardinal-point of an evolution from a
Christian-pessimistic world-view to one of Christian optimism. The
modern age, following its instinct, assumes it as self-evident that an
ethic which deals with the active relations of man to man is
pre-supposed to be an ethic which assigns a positive value to action
as such, and, further, that such an ethic of action belongs to a
world-view which is optimistic and which wills and hopes for a
transformation of relationships.
It is, then, the ethic of active self-devotion taught by Jesus which
makes it possible for Christianity to do what is suggested by the
spirit of the modern age, and modulate from the pessimistic to the
optimistic world-view. This result finds expression in the way the new
conception of Christianity, when it has to come to an understanding
with the old one, contrasts itself as “the religion of Jesus” with
“the Christianity of dogma.”
A way is prepared, then, in Erasmus and individual representatives of
the Reformation, shyly at first but then more and more clearly, for an
interpretation of the teaching of Jesus which corresponds to the
spirit of modern times, an interpretation which conceives the teaching
as a religion of action in the world. Historically and in actual fact
this is a wrong interpretation, for the world-view of Jesus is, so far
as concerns the future of the natural world, thoroughly pessimistic.
His religion is not a religion of world-transforming effort, but the
religion of awaiting the end of the world. His ethic is characterised
by activity only so far as it commands men to practise unbounded
devotion to their fellow-men if they would attain to that inner
perfection [pg 067] which is needed for entrance into the supernatural
kingdom of God. An ethic of enthusiasm, and therefore presumably
focused upon an optimistic world-view, forms part of a pessimistic
world-view! That is the magnificent paradox in the teaching of Jesus.
But the modern age was right in overlooking this paradox and in
assuming in Jesus an optimistic world-view which corresponded to an
ethic of enthusiasm and met with a welcome the spirit of Late Stoicism
and of modern times. For the progress of the spiritual life of Europe
this mistake was a necessity. What crises the latter must have gone
through, if it had not been able without embarrassment to place the
new world-view under the authority of the great personality of Jesus!
The mistake was such a natural one that till the end of the nineteenth
century it was never seriously shaken. When historical criticism, at
the beginning of the twentieth century, proclaimed its discovery that
Jesus, in spite of his activist ethic, thought and acted under a
pessimistic world-view dominated by the expectation of the end of the
world, it aroused indignation. It was accused of degrading Jesus to a
mere enthusiast, while it after all only put an end to the false
modernising of his personality._(_10_)_
What we at the present time have to do is to go through the critical
experience of being obliged to think as modern men under a world-view
of world- and life-affirmation, and yet let the ethic of Jesus speak
to us from out of a pessimistic world-view.
Of this problem which is disclosing itself to-day the early period of
the modern age suspects nothing. Jesus and the moralists of Late
Stoicism together are its authorities for an ethical world- and
life-affirmation.
What the Late-Stoic ethic is for the modern age is shown by Erasmus of
Rotterdam (1466-1536), Michel de [pg 068] Montaigne (1533-1592),
Pierre Charron (1541-1603), Jean Bodin (1530-1596), and Hugo Grotius
(1583-1645), and that whether their ideas run predominantly on
Christian or on freethinking lines. To the Later Stoics Erasmus owes
it that he can understand the simple gospel of Jesus which was being
discovered behind the Church’s dogmas, as being the essence of all
ethical philosophizing. It is by finding support in them that
Montaigne in his _Essays_ (1580) is saved from falling into complete
ethical scepticism. Because he is inspired by the Later Stoics, Bodin
in his work _De la république_ (1577), puts forward an ethical ideal
of the State to combat the ideas of Machiavelli’s _Prince_
(_Principe_) (1515). Because he draws from the same source, Pierre
Charron in his work _De la sagesse_ (1601), ventures to assert that
ethics are higher than traditional religion, and can maintain
themselves in an independent position in face of it without losing
anything of their essential nature or of their depth. Because the work
of Marcus Aurelius has preceded him, Hugo Grotius is able in his
famous work, _De jure belli ac pacis_ (1625) to lay so securely the
foundations of natural and international law, and thereby to champion
the claims of reason and humanity in the domain of jurisprudence.
Other considerations apart, it would have been the first task of the
rising power of natural science to restore to currency the world-view
of Epicurus, and Pierre Gassendi (1592-1655)_(_11_)_ attempts it. He
fails, however, to accomplish his purpose. By its inward belief in
progress the mentality of the modern age is driven in elemental
fashion beyond scepticism and sceptical ethics. What is great in
Epicurus, viz. that in obedience to the deepest demands of truth he
tries to think ethically within a nature-philosophy which does not
interpret nature as embodying any purpose, can neither be comprehended
nor be put before his own age by the philosopher’s all too clever
modern prophet.
[pg 069]
For the weighty questions of absolute truth that time is by no means
ripe. Its capacity is only that of the uncritical. Typical for its
spirit is Isaac Newton (1643-1727), who in his investigation of nature
is purely empirical, and in his world-view remains simply Christian.
Against the difficulties which crop up for ethics and world- and
life-affirmation out of a nature-philosophy which works without any
presuppositions, the Renaissance and the Post-Renaissance are secure.
The belief in progress which arises from the achievements of discovery
and invention, and the joy felt in action itself are their world-view.
Thanks to belief in progress, new life streams into ethics. The inner
relations between ethics and world- and life-affirmation begin to have
their effect. The elementary impulses to activity which are embodied
in the Christian ethic are set free, and the belief in progress gives
them an aim and object: the transformation of the circumstances of
society and of mankind.
It is not any really deeper ethical thinking that brings the modern
age in, but the influence exerted by the belief in progress, which
arose out of the achievements of discovery and invention, on the ethic
which drew its life from Stoic and Christian thought. The cart is
drawn by the belief in progress, and at first ethics have only to run
along beside it. But as the cart gets heavier and the road more
difficult to negotiate, so that ethics ought to lend their strength to
help, they refuse, because they have no strength of their own. The
cart begins to run backward, and carries belief in progress, and
ethics with it, down the hill.
The task before philosophy was to change the world- and
life-affirmation which arose out of enthusiasm over the attainments in
discovery and invention into a deeper, inner one arising out of
thought about the universe and the life of man, and on that same
foundation to build up an ethical system. But philosophy could do
neither.
About the middle of the nineteenth century, when it has become
perfectly clear that we are living with a world- and [pg 070]
life-affirmation which has its source merely in our confidence in
discovery and invention and not in any deeper thinking about the world
and life, our fate is sealed. The modern optimistic-ethical
world-view, though it has done so much for the material development of
civilization, proves to be like a building erected already to a
considerable height but on rotten foundations, and has to collapse.
[pg 071]