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Helvétius and the Roots of the “Closed” Society*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 August 2014

Blair Campbell
Blair Campbell*
Affiliation:
University of California, Los Angeles
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Abstract

The argument of this essay is that Talmon and Popper are mistaken in their suggestion that speculation about human affairs is governed by an inexorable logic of political consequences: that there exist certain broad perspectives or ‘paradigms” that impel men willy-nilly to pathological extremes in their political views, apart from intention or historical circumstance.

I seek to demonstrate that the general perspective which informed the thought of Helvétius—unquestionably one of the most manipulative of thinkers in his conception of politics—was simply the framework of early-modern science, as it was understood in France. It was the same philosophy which served his unequivocally libertarian contemporaries, such as Voltaire and Diderot, as well as their predecessors. Helvétius' political conclusions resulted, not from pathological attitudes or doctrines, but rather from his attempt to resolve a problem engendered within the new science, a fundamental dilemma in French thinking concerning the relationship of the individual to society and the state.

Type
Articles
Information
American Political Science Review , Volume 68 , Issue 1 , March 1974 , pp. 153 - 168
Copyright
Copyright © American Political Science Association 1974

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Footnotes

*

I am deeply indebted to the referees of this Review, both for their superb criticism and their many useful suggestions (including the title).

References

1 Popper, Karl R., The Open Society and Its Enemies, 2 vols. (New York: Harper & Row, 1963)Google Scholar, and Talmon, J. J., The Origins of Totalitarian Democracy (New York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1961)Google Scholar. Popper and Talmon are by no means unique in their approach. For other studies in the same vein, see Thorson's, T. L. Plato: Totalitarian or Democrat? (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall, 1963)Google Scholar, Chapman's, John W. Rousseau—Totalitarian or Liberal? (New York: AMS Press, 1968)Google Scholar. Chapman's book includes a résumé of the literature concerning Rousseau's putative totalitarian leanings. Also see Kelsen's, Hans “Absolutism and Relativism in Philosophy and Politics,” in What is Justice? And Other Essays (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1957)Google Scholar.

2 Talmon, for instance, describes the totalitarian mentality as ultra-rationalist (Origins, p. 4), whereas for Popper it is irrational ( Open Society, I, 167 Google Scholar). Similarly, Talmon contrasts the empirical method of liberal society with the totalitarian penchant for dealing in abstractions (Origins, pp. 2–4). Popper, on the other hand, suggests that the “closed” mentality is quite compatible with scientific empiricism ( Open Society, I, 162 Google Scholar) and attributes abstractness to the open, rather than closed society. The latter is for him “still a concrete group of concrete individuals, related to one another not merely by such abstract social relations as division of labour and exchange of commodities, but by concrete physical relationships such as touch, smell, and sight (Ibid., p. 173). Because the open society has lost its organic character, it gradually becomes an “abstract society”: “It may, to a considerable extent, lose the character of a concrete or real group of men, or of a system of such real groups” (Ibid.).

3 See Smith's, D. W. Helvétius: A Study in Persecution (Clarendon: Oxford University Press, 1965)Google Scholar.

4 This is the thrust of Popper's condemnation of Plato. See Open Society, I, 169 Google Scholar, for instance.

5 See Talmon's discussion of “political messianism” in Origins, pp. 3ff, as well as my first section, below.

6 See Popper's discussion of the poetic impulse in political speculation, Open Society, I, 165ff.Google Scholar

7 Although Talmon claims to be treating attitudes, rather than ideas, his discussion centers in fact upon the latter. See below, first section and passim. Also see Alfred Cobban's excellent critique of Talmon's notion of “influence” in his In Search of Humanity: The Role of the Enlightenment in Modern History (New York: George Braziller, 1960), pp. 183ff.Google Scholar

8 Open Society, I, 1 Google Scholar. Popper has discussed his conception of piecemeal engineering in greater detail in his The Poverty of Historicism (New York: Harper and Row, 1961), pp. 58–71 Google Scholar. Cf. Origins, p. 1.

9 Origins, p. 2.

10 Tiere is, of course, one highly-touted exception to this generalization, Machiavelli. But it is unlikely that Talmon or Popper would be prepared to claim him for their side.

11 Origins, p. 18.

12 Ibid., p. 22.

13 Ibid., p. 4, 29ff.

14 Ibid., p. 4.

15 English Social History (London: The Reprint Society, 1948), p. 3 Google ScholarPubMed.

16 Medieval France presents a sharp contrast with Trevelyan's England. See, for instance, Bloch's, Marc Feudal Society (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1968)Google Scholar.

17 Quoted in de Tocqueville's, Alexis The Old Régime and the Revolution (Garden City: Doubleday and Company, 1955), p. 107 Google Scholar. Tocqueville has abundantly documented the social and cultural fragmentation which confronted the philosophes, see part II, chaps. 8–12.

18 Mornet, Daniel, French Thought in the Eighteenth Century, trans. Levin, L. M. (Hamden: Archon Books, 1969), p. 231 Google Scholar. Nor, for that matter, had there been a vigorous tradition of moral speculation in the preceding century. Although the sixteenth century had witnessed the apogee of neostoicism, ethics lacked connection with a coherent view of life: ethical rationalism merely coexisted with skepticism in speculative matters. See Levi's, A. French Moralists: The Theory of the Passions (1585–1649) (Clarendon: Oxford University Press, 1964), p. 2 Google Scholar. Albert Desjardins begins his Les moralistes français du seizième siècle with the observation: “the sixteenth century produced neither a great school nor even a great thinker” capable of creating a system of morality (Paris: Librairie Académique, 1840), p. 2. And Octave Nadal describes the prevailing code of “gloire” as a mere mixture of egoism and fraternalism, “L'ethique de la gloire au dix-septième siècle,” Mercure De Fiance, 308 (1950), 22–34 Google Scholar.

19 Lanson, Gustav, “L'influence de la philosophie cartésienne sur la litérature française,” in Études D'Histoire Littéraire (Paris: Librairie Ancienne Honoré Champion, 1930), p. 69 Google Scholar. See also Zimmerman's, J. P. “La morale laique au commencement du XVIIIe siècle,” Revue d'Histoire Littéraire de la France, 24 (1917), pp. 42–65 Google Scholar. However, M. Thamin offers a contrary view, describing a continuous infatuation with religion from the post-Montaigne period to Bossuet. See his “La philosophie morale en France à la fin du XVIIe siècle,” Revue Hebdomadaire, N°7 (Dec. 1896), p. 291 Google Scholar.

20 Tocqueville, , Old Regime, p. 68 Google Scholar. Also see Koenigsberger's, H. G. “The Organization of Revolutionary Parties in France and the Netherlands during the Sixteenth Century,” Journal of Modern History, 27 (Dec. 1955), pp. 335ff.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

21 Whereas Hobbes and Mandeville were viewed with opprobrium at home, La Rochefoucauld was widely acclaimed among his countrymen.

22 Spink, J. S. discusses these trends in his French Free Thought From Gassendi to Voltaire (London: Athlone Press, 1960)Google Scholar. See also Nadal's “L'Ethique de la Gloire au Dix-Septième Siècle.”

23 Krailsheimer, A. J., Studies in Self-interest: From Descartes to La Bruyère (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1962), chaps. 3, 11, 12Google Scholar.

24 Krailsheimer, chaps. 5, 7, 10. Nor was the psychology of self-love confined to intellectuals. It also had strong economic roots in the life style of the new bureaucrats created by Louis XIV. See Gustav Lan-son's two essays: “La transformation des idées morales et la naissance des morales rationnelles de 1680 à 1715” and “L'eveil de conscience sociale et les premières idées de reformes politiques.” Both essays are included in La Revue du Mois, 9 (Jan. 1910), 5–29 and (Apr. 1910), 409–430, respectivelyGoogle Scholar.

25 Hobbes—that other great philosopher of egoism— lacked Descartes's prestige in mathematics. Moreover, Hobbes's political conclusions were unacceptable. See my concluding section.

26 The Principles of Philosophy in Philosophical Works of Descartes, trans. Haldane, Elizabeth S. and Ross, G. R. T., 2 vols. (New York: Dover Publications, 1955), I, 211 Google Scholar. Except when otherwise indicated, my citations of Descartes are from this collection.

27 For Descartes's joust with error, see his Discourse on the Method of Rightly Conducting The Reason and Seeking for Truth in the Sciences, I, 90ff.Google Scholar

28 Discourse, p. 127.

29 Ibid., I, 101; The Search After Truth by the Light of Nature, I, 324–325 Google Scholar.

30 Rules for the Direction of the Mind, I, 25 Google Scholar.

31 Ibid., p. 25.

32 The Passions of the Soul, I, 427 Google Scholar.

33 Lettres sur la morale, ed. Chevalier, Jacques (Paris: Boivin et Cie [n.d.]), p. 100 Google Scholar.

34 Hazard, Paul, The European Mind (New York: World Publishing Company, 1963), pp. 130–131 Google Scholar.

35 The Principles of Philosophy, I, 211 Google Scholar.

36 See M. Thamin's “La philosophie morale en France à la fin du XVIIe siècle.”

37 D. W. Smith attributes the objections raised by the other philosophes against Helvétius to his “extreme” development of their own premises, in Helvétius: A Study in Persecution, pp. 165ff. There exists only the most scanty literature concerning Helvétius' role in the Enlightenment. Horowitz's, Irving L. Claude Helvétius: Philosopher of Democracy and Enlightenment (New York: Paine-Whitman, 1954)Google Scholar, describes Helvétius as a proto-Marxist thinker. Cumming's, Ian Helvétius: His Life and Place in the History of Educational Thought (London: Routledge and K. Paul, 1955 Google Scholar, and Grossman's, Mordecai The Philosophy of Helvétius: With Special Emphasis on the Educational Implication of Sensationalism (New York: Bureau of Publications, Teachers College, Columbia University, 1926)Google Scholar, stress his role as an educational theorist.

38 Origins, pp. 4ff. Popper also condemns happiness, the utilitarian standard: “of all political ideals, that of making the people happy is perhaps the most dangerous one. It leads invariably to the attempt to impose our scale of ‘higher’ values upon others, in order to make them realize what seems to us of greatest importance for their happiness; in order, as it were, to save their souls.” Open Society, II, 237 Google Scholar.

39 French utilitarianism appears to have originated as a late seventeenth-century protest against the encroachments of Louis XIV. See Rothkrug's, Lionel Opposition to Louis XIV: The Political and Social Origins of the French Enlightenment (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1965), pp. 299–372 Google Scholar. For discussions of utilitarianism among the philosophes, see Martin's, Kingsley French Liberal Thought in the Eighteenth Century (New York: Harper & Row, 1963), chap. 7Google Scholar, Crocker's, Lester G. Nature and Culture: Ethical Thought in the French Enlightenment (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1963), chap. 5Google Scholar, and Gay's, Peter The Party of Humanity: Essays on the French Enlightenment (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1964), pp. 200ff.Google Scholar

40 Traité de métaphysique, included in Oeuvres Complètes de Voltaire, edited by Moland, Louis (Paris: Garnier Frères, Libraires-Editeurs, 1879), XXII, 223 Google Scholar.

41 Descartes also appears to have been the inspiration for the notion of a calculus of happiness. See Bredvold's, Louis “The Invention of The Ethical Calculus,” in The Seventeenth Century: Studies in the History of English Thought and Literature from Bacon to Pope, ed. Jones, Richard F. (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1951), p. 166 Google Scholar.

42 “It is the nature of extreme self-lovers,” wrote Bacon, a canny observer of the breed, “as they will set an house on fire, and it were but to roast their eggs” (“On Wisdom For a Man's Self,” in The Complete Essays of Francis Bacon, Including the New Atlantis and Novum Organum, with an Introduction by Finch, Henry LeRoy [New York: Washington Square Press, 1963], p. 64)Google Scholar.

43 The Philosophy of History (New York: The Citadel Press, 1965), p. 30 Google Scholar.

44 For d'Holbach, society is based upon natural inequality; therefore “morals, like the universe, are founded upon necessity or upon the eternal relation of things.” The System of Nature, or, Laws of the Moral and Physical World, translated by Robinson, H. R. (New York: G. W. and A. J. Matsell, Publishers, 1835), p. 66 Google Scholar. Aram Vartanian provides a thorough discussion of La Mettrie's doctrine of determinism in his La Mettrie's L'Homme Machine (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1960)Google Scholar.

45 Voltaire claimed that history fails to reveal a single example of a philosopher opposing himself to the laws. Thoughts on the Public Administration, included in The Works of Voltaire, translated by Fleming, William F. (Paris: E. R. Dumont, 1901), XXXVII, 230 Google Scholar.

46 Peter Gay describes this posture in his Voltaire's Politics: The Poet as Realist (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1959)Google Scholar. Also, Gay's The Enlightenment: An Interpretation, II, chaps. 7–10, provides an excellent general description of the philosophes' sociopolitical thought. In addition, see chap. 4 for their conception of human nature, as well as Crocker's, Lester G. An Age of Crisis: Man and World in Eighteenth Century French Thought (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1959), chaps. 7, 8, and 12Google Scholar.

47 Helvétius, M., A Treatise on Man, His Intellectual Faculties and His Education, translated by Hooper, W., 2 vols. (London: [no publisher], 1777), II, 436 Google Scholar.

48 Helvétius, , De L'Esprit; or, Essays on the Mind, and Its Several Faculties (London: [no publisher], 1809), p. 127 Google Scholar.

49 Ibid.

50 Ibid., p. 126.

51 Ibid., p. 74.

52 Ibid., p. 178.

53 Essays on the Mind, p. 172. The analogy with Descartes's conception of error remains exact in form. See Meditations, I, 174ff.Google Scholar

54 Ibid., p. 123.

55 Passions of the Soul, I, 411–412 Google Scholar.

56 Ibid., p. 425.

57 Ibid., p. 353.

58 “For God has so established the order of things, and joined men together in a society so closely knit, that although each individual looks out only for himself and feels no charity for others, he would not fail, in ordinary matters, to concern himself with them to the utmost extent of his power, provided that he use prudence …” Lettres sur la morale, pp. 107–108.

59 A Treatise on Man, II, 12–13, nGoogle Scholar.

60 Ibid., I, 56–57.

61 Ibid.

62 Ibid., II, 469.

63 See Essays on the Mind, I, and A Treatise on Man, I, sect. IV, chap. 22, and II, sect. V, chap. 2, in particular.

64 A Treatise on Man, I, 2 Google Scholar.

65 Ibid., p. 175.

66 Essays on the Mind, p. 72.

67 Ibid., II, chap. 2.

68 Ibid., I, 348–349.

69 Ibid., p. 298.

70 Ibid., p. 318.

71 I have discussed La Mettrie in this context in my “La Mettrie: The Robot and the Automaton,” Journal of the History of Ideas, XXXI (Oct-Dec. 1970), pp. 555–572 Google Scholar.

72 A Treatise on Man, I, 2 Google Scholar.

73 Ibid., p. 279.

74 Ibid., p. 91.

75 Ibid., pp. 91–120.

76 Ibid., p. 278.

77 Ibid., pp. 36–37.

78 Ibid., p. 280.

79 Ibid., II, 8.

80 Ibid., I, 32. Even here Helvétius has preserved his formal continuity with Descartes. Descartes had also deprecated the role of genius in order to underscore the significance of method: “anyone who has perfectly learned the whole of this method, however moderate may be his talent, may see that no avenue to the truth is closed to him from which everyone else is not excluded.” Rules for the Direction of the Mind, I, 28 Google Scholar.

81 Ibid., p. 223.

82 Ibid., p. 170.

83 A Treatise on Man, pp. 157–158.

84 Ibid., pp. 255ff.

85 Ibid., p. 171.

86 Ibid., II, 438.

87 Ibid., I, 280.

88 Ibid., p. 26.

89 Ibid., II, 14.

90 Ibid., p. 18. Cf. La Mettrie's conception of ‘remorse’ in his Anti-Sénèque, included in Oeuvres philosophiques de M. de La Mettrie (Amsterdam, 1774), II Google Scholar.

91 Ibid., p. 400.

92 Again, Helvétius is exploiting a familiar form; in this instance, the educational ideal underlying the Greek paideia tradition. But the Greek ideal, as we encounter it for instance in Aristotle, sought to employ education preeminently for the development of character. For Helvétius, on the other hand, the main function of education is to instill obedience

93 Essays on the Mind, 278ff.

94 Essays on the Mind, p. 187c.

95 A Treatise on Man, I, 272 Google Scholar.

96 Ibid., pp. 276–277.

97 Essays on the Mind, pp. 172–185.

98 Essays on the Mind, p. 187ff.

99 Letter to DeLeyre, M., October 5, 1758, included in Citizen of Geneva: Selection from the Letters of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, ed. Hendel, Charles (New York: Oxford University Press, 1937), p. 153 Google Scholar.

100 For Voltaire's vacillation on natural law, see Gay's, Peter Voltaire's Politics, pp. 343–346 Google Scholar. La Mettrie ultimately repudiates natural law. See my “La Mettrie,” pp. 568ff.

101 Hence Voltaire's reported jibes at Rousseau's noble savage. And Voltaire is equally contemptuous of Adam, Christianity's prototypical natural man. See his poem, Le Mondain.

102 For example, Norbert Wiener contemplates the possibility of a cybernated machine à gouverner. See his The Human Use of Human Beings: Cybernetics and Society (Garden City: Doubleday & Co., Inc., 1954), pp. 178ff.Google Scholar Nor is this Strangelovian orientation confined to the physical sciences. Skinner's, B. F. Beyond Freedom and Dignity (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1972)Google Scholar amply illustrates that the behavioral sciences are not immune. See also his Waiden Two (New York: The Macmillan Co., 1962)Google Scholar.

103 The Republic of Plato, translated with introduction and notes by Cornford, Francis MacDonald (New York: Oxford University Press, 1967), pp. 44ffGoogle Scholar: This is substantially the argument propounded by the title character in Diderot's Rameau's Nephew. It is unlikely that we today could improve upon Diderot's response: “There was in all he said much that one thinks to oneself, and acts on, but that one never says. … Neither more nor less detestable than other men, he was franker than they, more logical, and thus often profound in his depravity.” Rameau's, Nephew and Other Works, trans. Barzun, Jacques and Bowen, Ralph H. (Indianapolis: The Bobbs-Merrill Co., 1956), p. 74 Google Scholar.

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