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Divergence in the Study of Ethics as a Byproduct of British Social Hardship

The classification and understanding of conceptual right and wrong actions has been studied since before the Common Era, with the word “Ethics” first being defined by the Ancient Greeks with their word “ethikos.” Much of what moral philosophy deals with is rooted in questions like “What is the correct action?” or “What is the best way for people to act?” Ethics of the modern world, coming out of the Reformation and moving into the Enlightenment era, like many other fields of philosophical study were pushed forward by dozens of influential and pertinent philosophers, all while English and European societies were growing more and more complex. The study of ethics is fundamentally the same, with philosophers arguing definitions of “good” and “bad” and the perception of those actions, yet through the first three hundred years of the modern era philosophers in Great Britain and Europe developed ideas of ethics simultaneously, yet divergently, based on separate fundamental values of good, evil, and often the correct action. This paper will examine the opposite values taken by said philosophers, and the socio-economic standard and shifts in English society that might have led to a heavier application of emotion and attention to the many.

Two philosophers from the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth century each will be analyzed, with one from Europe and one from Great Britain. English society will examined as well, and themes will be pulled from changes in Great Britain that likely influenced the ideologies of the English philosophers at the time. Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) and Benedict de Spinoza (1632-1677) will be compared first, followed by David Hume (1711-1776) and Immanuel Kant (1724-1804), and ending with John Stuart Mill (1806-1873) and Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900). An analyzation of English society and its difficulties will follow, and English social themes will be applied to the philosophical ideas of Hobbes, Hume, and Mill, as well as some of their predecessors. Each of these philosophers is highly influential to the field of ethics in their own way, all of them being researched and cited extensively since their existence. Each of these philosophers lived during eras of massive poverty and issues for the lower class in Great Britain. From what we understand about Europe in the 17th through 19th century, things like population, prices, and poverty were near constantly on the rise, causing social issues throughout the nation.

Thomas Hobbes, being the first of the British philosophers examined, was born in England in 1588, and grew to become one of the leading examples of free thought that became possible in Protestant countries following the Reformation. Growing up attending a private school, and then Oxford, Hobbes was very well-educated. Interestingly enough, following his graduation from Oxford, Hobbes traveled much of Europe. He wrote several influential works while abroad, most notably Leviathan in 1651, which outlined his idea of “social contract theory.” The work begins with the hypothesis that humans are self-interested and the natural world does not provide for each of their needs, with men competing habitually in the time before civil society. He follows this up with his famous argument of a social contract, in which people sacrifice their right to attack others, and in return gets the same concession from everyone else. The work defines good as “the object of any man’s appetite or desire” (Duignan, 65), arguing that nothing is simply good in itself. This definition, as well as his famed social contract theory, helped rocket ethics into the modern era. The important piece here is the definition itself, particularly the emphasis on desire, an appeal to the emotion of pleasure. The social contract theory, however, was not only influential for ethics, but for ideas of government. Hobbes was living in Paris when the English Civil War broke out, which was a hotspot for fleeing English loyalists. With the company of English royalists, Hobbes published Leviathan, and was met with contempt by those of that had fled Great Britain. During the period when Hobbes left Great Britain to travel abroad across Europe, English society was in a hard position.  

Similar to other nations of Europe, the people of Great Britain were aware of the poor conditions they lived in, and used other vices to shift their focus away from their day to day. “People had an ingrained tolerance of such inconvenience and squalor, and compensated by aggressive pursuit of pleasures and passions. Emotion was near the surface.” (Porter, 19). Porter is arguing that the English people, living in squalor, put an intense effort into the acquisition of pleasure and passion, very often engaging in activities like drinking, love-making, rough sports, and social gatherings. The pursuit of pleasure was not unseen across Europe, but it seems to be highly prominent in Great Britain, with its smaller population and larger divide between aristocracy and peasantry. According to census data taken from 17th century statistician Gregory King, landowners made up 1.2 percent of the population, while farmers, laborers, and cottagers and paupers, made up some eighty percent (Porter, 48). This divide was evident in the society of Great Britain, and accounted for much of the wealth flowing upwards to the “one-percent,” leaving the lower class of English peoples in the state of squalor that many had grown accustomed to. The people of England and their difficulties can be seen as an illustration of what Hobbes was defining. The social contract of England was not fulfilling the ends of its citizens, and thus the revolt to create a more representative government was seen as inevitable, with Hobbes recognizing this.

One of the other philosophical giants of the 17th century was Benedict de Spinoza, born in Amsterdam in 1632. Growing up in the large city of Amsterdam, Spinoza was subject to a culture that was tolerant of new ideas, allowing for the philosophers to develop his works in the hands of the intellectual community of the seventeenth century Dutch Republic. Spinoza was also the son of a merchant, which were considered the more affluent class of the era, allowing for Spinoza to have a greater degree of opportunity. Spinoza’s most influential work, and the one that outlines his ethical theory, is aptly named Ethics, and was published after Spinoza’s death. This book differs heavily from Hobbes’ ideas of ethics, desire, and pleasure. Where Hobbes views pleasure as an indisputable aspect of human existence and necessary for decision making, Spinoza viewed it as just the opposite, seeing natural desires as bondage that hold one back from intellectual enlightenment. This opposition taken by Spinoza not only opposes Hobbes, but also Hume whose work centers around pleasure. Spinoza lived in the Dutch Republic during its “Dutch Golden Age,” growing up among large cosmopolitan centers.

As shown, Thomas Hobbes and his work Leviathan depicted good as being synonymous with desire, and being necessary for society, and his Social Contract Theory. Benedict de Spinoza, on the other hand, outlined his view of desires as being the slave-master of reason in his work Ethics. Both philosophers held fundamentally differing views on what defines “good” and which is more necessary for a good action, desire of rationality, and both were apart of vastly different societies. Great Britain was ruled extensively by a single monarch who was cited as not giving enough representation to the people of England, and was subsequently overthrown, while Spinoza grew up in a mercantile hot bed, which relied largely on local leadership to govern.

The ideas of differentiating philosophical definitions of “good” and “evil” were not isolated to the seventeenth century, and followed ethical philosophy into the eighteenth century with such philosophers as David Hume and Immanuel Kant, two of the largest and most influential philosophers to date. Hume, from Great Britain, takes a stance on pleasure and empiricism, while Kant does the opposite, standing by rationalism and reason. Like the 17th century before it, the 18th century was still dealing with internal issues. The Parliament had been fully established, and was given a large jurisdiction over the ruling monarch, yet the society of Great Britain was still struggling to quell the growing trends of population growth, as well as issues like poverty.  From 1704 to 1804, prices for wheat and bread nearly tripled, while the goods from producers struggled to double, leaving the lower class in a position of decline, (Porter, 372). With prices rising rapidly and income from goods not rising enough to meet those demands, poverty begins to take hold as people cannot afford food from their profession. The prices of food and ability to produce it was heavily affected by the swift growth of population. According to Porter, the population in 1681 was 4.9 million, and the population in 1811 was 9.8 million (361). The population of Great Britain doubled in the span of 100 years, and markets and farmers struggled to meet the demand of new mouths to feed and care for.

David Hume, born in Scotland in 1711, was one of the highly influential philosophers of the era, expanding on ideas of skepticism, empiricism, naturalism, and of course, ethics. Hume’s most famous work is A Treatise of Human Nature, which outlines Hume’s ideas of empirical investigation as human nature. One of the more important aspects of this work is Hume’s focus on pleasure, and its counterpart, pain. Hume argues that the most “good” action is the one that produces the most pleasure, and the most “evil” action is the one that produces the most pain. This belief drove Hume’s ethical philosophy as one of empiricism, and of being rooted in emotion. Not only did Hume build onto the foundation that would be expanded on by Utilitarians in the nineteenth century, but he also disagreed with the idea of reason as a basis for morality, believing that reason cannot give rise to moral judgments, which should be left to desire, pleasure, and emotion. Hume grew up during an era of rapid class disparity, poverty, and population growth. Viewing all of this as a citizen of Great Britain likely influenced the ideas behind “pleasure” and “desire” as concepts like that were few and far between while the masses struggled to feed themselves, as well as their children, and produce enough goods to make a stable living.

Immanuel Kant, of course, stands on the opposite side of the argument, citing reason and intellectual pursuit as the ultimate good. Kant, born in Prussia in 1724 and leading a scholarly lifestyle for the entirety of his lifetime, argues, similarly to Spinoza, that actions that are rooted in desire cannot be free, thus showing their lack of “good.” Kant’s most distinctive contribution to the field of ethics is his insistence that one’s actions only possess moral worth when he does it for his own sake, his own intellect’s sake that is. Kant’s main point to this is his distinction between “hypothetical” and “categorical” imperatives, meaning that actions from desire are hypothetical, as it is a command of reason that applies only if one desires the goal (Duignan, 93). Kant was a staunch believer in moral universal law as the definitive factor of ethics, not the consequences of the actions themselves. Kant spent much of his life in the city Königsberg, and rarely traveled. This must be taken into consideration as Kant was not exposed to the problems like mass starvation and economic hardship of Great Britain that Hume was defined by, and instead spent nearly his entire life living within a small area of land.

Like Hobbes and Spinoza before them, David Hume and Immanuel Kant illustrate the differences taken between ethics philosophers of Great Britain and Europe. Hume stands on the opposite side of Kant, arguing that pleasure, the byproduct of desire, is at its core the most good, and therefore actions that result in a maximum amount of pleasure are the best actions. Hume, living in a culture that contained horrible plights of the poor and middle class, was likely largely influenced by the overall lack of pleasure that is evident from the lack of stable earnings, starvation, and rapidly rising population numbers. Kant, on the other hand, argues that actions cannot be driven by desire as it is a hypothetical imperative, and actions based on desires can never reward someone with good. The correct action in Kant’s eyes would be the one that is based in universal moral law. Unlike Hume, Kant lived roughly his entire life in his birth town, venturing out rarely for the occasional tutoring job, and overall not encountering starvation or destitute living conditions as often as Hume.

The argument of desire, emotion, and empiricism versus reason, intelligence, and rationalism, took the backseat to other philosophies that developed at the time. Utilitarianism, developed by John Stuart Mill, Jeremy Bentham, and Henry Sidgwick, was rooted in the concept of pleasure as the ultimate good, but did not differ against concepts that argued for reason. Instead Utilitarianism saw a much different philosophical opponent in Nietzsche’s existentialism and Ubermensch theory. The philosophy had shifted from reason and emotion, to arguments over which actions were right and wrong. The introduction of industrialization largely changed the principles of western cultures, as is reflected in the ideas of these philosophers. Again, the population of Great Britain doubled, and flocks of people began moving to urbanized areas to find jobs in industry. This shifted the significance of the impoverished, as they were now an unavoidable aspect of urban society. With much tighter living conditions in urbanized areas, and a larger number of people living there, recognition of the poor grew rapidly.

John Stuart Mill coined the term “Utilitarianism” in his work of the same name. Mill, born in London in 1806, was the son of John Mill, a famed economist and philosopher himself. J.S. Mill was an active member of the liberal party and fighter for social rights, as well as a student of Jeremy Bentham, who was seen as the forefather of Utilitarianism. Working with Bentham and Hume’s concepts of pleasure and pain, Mill argued in Utilitarianism that the action that produces the most good, would be the one that produces the most pleasure for the largest number of people. Mill also expanded on the ideas of higher and lower pleasures, arguing famously that it is “better to be a dissatisfied Socrates than a satisfied fool.” He believed that Utilitarians shouldn’t calculate each action by its outcome, but should instead adhere to a general principle to increase happiness. Mill’s basic argument is essentially that the actions that will provide the most pleasurable conditions for the most people is fundamentally the best decision one can make. With the introduction of industry to British society, Utilitarianism is the precise ethical philosophy to address these issues. The poor were no longer scattered across the nation, but were moving into highly urbanized areas. With large portions of cities dedicated to the destitute, the poor were no longer able to be disregarded. Utilitarianism addresses this, as it states that the best course of action is the one that will bring the most pleasure for the most people. The philosophy is presumably influenced partially by the large number of poverty-stricken individuals living in high population urbanized areas, essentially bringing recognition of the poor to the surface.

Friedrich Nietzsche argued a conflicting point of view. Nietzsche was a Prussian philosopher and social critic who was born in Prussia in 1844, most known for his introduction of existentialism and nihilism to the field of philosophy, as well as the notion that philosophers should do away with all philosophical works since the Ancient Greeks, and begin anew. Nietzsche’s views differed greatly from Mill’s, as he introduced his concept of the Ubermensch in his novel Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Mill defines the Ubermensch, or overman, as the byproduct of the death of God and the solution to the struggles of mankind. According to Nietzsche, the overman does not need to follow the moral code of good versus evil that the common man does, as he is above the “herd.” While Nietzsche’s overman theory is at its center an attempt to distance morality from Christianity and the notion of God, it sets up an ideology of a single person being above the “herd” of common folk, directly opposing Mill’s ideology. Nietzsche is not unlike many of the philosophers listed above, growing up in above average conditions and receiving schooling for most of his life. Nietzsche, however, served in the Prussian army during the Franco-Prussian war, experiencing combat firsthand. Nietzsche’s theory of Ubermensch is logical to his experiences, as he witnessed large scale bloodshed as arranged by few individuals. Coming from a wealthier upbringing and having attended private school for much of his life, Nietzsche was subject to a superiority complex, which coincides with his theory. The sight of battle presumably warped the view of Nietzsche, taking his theories on individualism, existentialism, and eventually the Ubermensch, into the center of his philosophical ideologies.

Where J.S. Mill and Utilitarians saw the need for pleasure in the largest number of people possible, Nietzsche saw quite the opposite, as the Ubermensch was deserving to be above the common people and did not need to adhere to their concepts of good versus evil, as whatever action the Ubermensch takes is the best course of action. Mill, however, was born and raised in London, witnessing the growing trend of urbanized poverty as industrialization took hold. Being in a large urban center that was dealing with growing numbers of impoverished daily seemingly helped build the concept of Utilitarianism. Nietzsche’s experience was much different, as he grew up fairly affluent, receiving a high quality education, and spending nearly his entire life in academia. The Franco-Prussian war, having influenced his concepts of existentialism, also influenced his conceptions of individualism, which involved his Ubermensch theory. The philosophy of ethics of this era took a shift away from the common theme of rationality versus emotionality, and moved towards one based in the results of actions and whether those actions, and results, are for the better or worse.

This paper recognizes that the interrelationship between British poverty and struggles may not be the direct origin of British ethical ideologies, but still presents the argument of the harsh conditions in Great Britain, and the secure conditions of the lives of other European philosophers, as having an effect on the philosophies of British ethical empiricists. The sharp increase in British population, poverty, and disproportionate incomes presumably influenced the amount of emotion and desire within the ethical beliefs of British philosophers.