Will, Imagination, and Reason

Babbitt, Croce and the Problem of Reality

Claes G. Ryn

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781351299107
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Philosophy History & Theory

Will, Imagination, and Reason sets forth a new understanding of reality and knowledge with far-reaching implications for the study of man and society. Employing a systematic approach, Claes Ryn goes to the philosophical depths to rethink and reconstitute the epistemology of the humanities and social sciences. He shows that will and imagination, together, constitute our basic outlook on life and that reason derives its material and general orientation from the interaction between them.

The imaginative master-minds novelists, poets, composers, painters, and others powerfully affect the sensibility and direction of society. Sometimes a distorting, self-serving willfulness at the base of their visions draws civilization, including reason, into dangerous illusion. More penetrating and balanced vision and rationality spring from a different quality of will. Ryn explains the kind of interplay between will, imagination, and reason that is conducive to a deepened sense of reality and to intellectual understanding. He argues that human life and self-knowledge are inescapably historical. In developing his dialectical view of intellect, he draws from Irving Babbitt, Benedetto Croce, and other philosophers to refute positivistic, formalistic, and ahistorical theories of knowledge and to develop his alternative.

Advancing a systematic epistemological argument, Ryn throws much new light on the nature of reason but also on central issues of ethics and aesthetics. This trenchant and original work is indispensable to philosophers, social, political and cultural theorists, literary scholars, and historians.

Part
One

Chapter 1

The Ethical Will and Reality

Babbitt’s view of human existence is anchored in his idea of the higher will. He regards the higher will as ultimately constitutive not only of man’s happiness but of his ability to gain knowledge of the essence of life. An examination of Babbitt’s ethical doctrine is hence given priority in the task of defining will, imagination and reason and their interaction in the acquisition of knowledge.

According to Babbitt, attempts by modern philosophy to solve the problem of knowledge rest on a vain belief in abstract rationality as the way to truth. These attempts signify a failure to understand that, in the end, man will attach himself only to a standard of reality that has immediacy and concreteness— that is, one firmly established in experience. Thinking specifically of the failure of epistemology, Babbitt is moved to the sweeping and indiscriminate statement that “modern philosophy is bankrupt, not merely from Kant, but from Descartes.” Babbitt’s doctrine of the ethical (and aesthetical) basis of man’s search for reality is, among other things, a contribution to the development of a new theory of knowledge. (RR,9)¹

Instead of taking ideas on authority, modern man proposes to submit them to the test of experience. Babbitt is willing to accept this challenge and to adopt what he calls “the positive and critical spirit.” He also insists that what is typically meant by “experience” in the modern world is artificially restricted. Babbitt accuses representatives of the modern project of being “incomplete positivists.” They are not really attentive to the full range of human experience but arbitrarily select fragments of it or distort it through methodological reductionism. Babbitt points out that human experience, now and over the centuries, provides a vast array of evidence regarding the nature of man, including evidence of a universal moral order. This experience must be examined on its own ground.

More than anywhere else, man discovers the essence of reality in ethical action. Such action, Babbitt contends, realizes the ultimate meaning of life and is its own reward. An admirer of Plato and especially of Aristotle, Babbitt is at the same time critical of the Greek tendency to equate virtue and intellectual knowledge. He sees in Christianity a deeper ethical wisdom, more fully attuned to the centrality of will and to the need for man to take on the discipline of a higher will. As a representative of the Orient rather than the more intellectualistic West, Jesus of Nazareth does not present man with a new philosophy, to be tested on abstract intellectual grounds. Jesus asks men to follow him—that is, to perform Christ-like actions. Genuine religion and morality, Babbitt argues, is most importantly exercise of good will, a path of striving. Without in some way entering upon that path, and thus undertaking a gradual transformation of character, the individual will be unable to perceive the reality of the path, which is first of all a reality of practice.

In contrast to theories that tend to make moral virtue a problem of intellection, Babbitt’s thesis stresses the human proclivity for moral procrastination, the lethargy or intractability of the will that keeps the individual from moral action. Theorizing about the nature of moral virtue will not bring the individual much closer to understanding those values unless he also has some experience of them in concrete action. Philosophizing about the good can easily become an excuse or pretext for not doing what is always more difficult, namely getting on with the task of good action. The crux of the ethical life, Babbitt argues, is not acquiring definitive theoretical knowledge of the good, which is beyond man, but the ability to act on whatever ethical insight one does have. As man grows in character and performs new good actions, the light of reality streaming forth from these actions will brighten. Theoretical doubts regarding the existence or nature of the universal good will tend to evaporate. Summarizing the contribution of the Christian teaching of the Incarnation to solving the problem of knowledge, Babbitt observes, “The final reply to all the doubts that torment the human heart is not some theory of conduct, however perfect, but the man of character.” The man of good action embodies, or “incarnates,” in himself the reality of the eternal. (DL, 197)²

Babbitt agrees with Aristotle that truly virtuous action finds its own justification in the satisfaction of happiness, which must be carefully distinguished from passing moments of mere pleasure. In the specifically religious sphere, the result of moral striving is peace. In both cases, man comes to know concretely something of the ultimate purpose and meaning of human existence. What is meant by happiness or peace cannot be understood by anyone wholly lacking in personal experience of moral action. The happy life of the mean described in The Nicomachean Ethics is achieved gradually, not simply through intellectual deliberation, but primarily through ethical action that transforms character. Volumes of good ethical philosophy will mean little to their reader unless the terms used find referents in personal life and help the reader better to understand his own experience. What is true of humanistic self-understanding is true also of religious self-understanding. In Babbitt’s words, “Knowledge in matters religious waits upon will.” (D)³ To submit questions of truth or falsity to the test of experience means to judge them ultimately from the point of view of life’s completion in good action. To Babbitt, the final criterion of reality is the special type of willing that by its very nature satisfies man’s deepest yearning. This is the meaning of his statement that the epistemological problem, “though it cannot be solved abstractly or metaphysically, can be solved practically and in terms of actual conduct.” (RR, 9)

As “the supreme maxim” for a modern respect for experience Babbitt proposes the words of Jesus, “By their fruits shall ye know them.” Thinkers who are hostile to all traditional authority and who blindly reject the insights common to the great religious and ethical systems of mankind will produce certain practical consequences. As their ideas are put into practice, these theorists will bring upon others and themselves a sense of life’s absurdity and misery. Those, by contrast, who are willing to undertake some of the action called for by the older traditions (if not to accept the literal meaning of inherited dogmas) will grow to appreciate the ultimate reality and happiness of life. If absolute knowledge must forever elude man, Babbitt writes, “we may still determine on experimental grounds to what degree any particular view of life is sanctioned or repudiated by the nature of things and rate it accordingly as more or less real.” (DL, 14)

It must be left for later treatment but may be noted in passing that in stressing the ultimacy of the practical criterion of reality, Babbitt sometimes unduly discounts—or at least appears to discount—the contribution of reason to man’s search for reality. Speaking of the path of religious striving, he says, “The end of this path and the goal of being cannot be formulated in terms of the finite intellect, any more than the ocean can be put into a cup.” (RR, 125) This statement would appear to push intellectual humility to an extreme. Yet, if reason is so utterly powerless as Babbitt indicates here, by what faculty is he observing and articulating the shortcomings of the “finite intellect”? In his essay on the Dhammapada and in other places, Babbitt does formulate the nature of the religious “path and goal of being.” Does he then not have at his disposal a reason which is more powerful and more comprehensive than the “finite intellect” mentioned in the quotation? All of the arguments and concepts presented in his various books—the practical criterion of reality, the higher and the lower will, etc. —assume an intellect capable of significant observation.

Inasmuch as Babbitt regards ethical action as the final answer to questions of reality, it is necessary to examine in some depth his idea of the higher will, or “inner check,” a subject poorly understood by most of his interpreters. Babbitt’s doctrine is summed up in these words: “I do not hesitate to affirm that what is specifically human in man and ultimately divine is a certain quality of will, a will that is felt in its relation to his ordinary self as a will to refrain.” In most of Babbitt’s work, the main emphasis is on defining the higher will in its humanistic manifestation. In Democracy and Leadership, he explains that his “interest in the higher will and the power of veto it exercises over man’s expansive desires is humanistic rather than religious.” (DL, 6) Babbitt’s ideas regarding the humanistic role of the higher will are similar in some respects to the traditional doctrine of natural law. The latter recognizes a standard of good intrinsic to human life to which man has access independently of special revelation. But while the tradition of natural law tends to conceive what is universal and normative in terms of principles of reason, Babbitt conceives what is universal and normative in terms of will. In the ethical life the authority to which man ultimately defers is not a set of conceptual propositions but a special power of will which finally transcends efforts at exhaustive intellectual definition.

Babbitt develops a dualistic view of human nature. Life presents us with the mystery of the One and the Many. Our most immediate awareness of reality is simultaneous order and disorder. Life is not a flux of unrelated impressions; it is an ordered flux. “Life does not give here an element of oneness and there an element of change. It gives a oneness that is always changing. The oneness and the change are inseparable.” (RR, 7) Set apart from the flux, and yet also in it, is a power which orders life to a purpose. Man is a unity of opposing inclinations. He is, in Babbitt’s terminology, a lower and a higher self. He is drawn, on the one hand, into impulses destructive of individual and social harmony, but he is able, on the other hand, to structure his impulses toward the opposite goal of community. Of primary importance to Babbitt, as to Plato, is the moral dimension of the tension at the core of existence. Standing against the human desires in their endless diversity is an unvarying sense of higher moral purpose which transcends all particular impulses. The same in all men, this sense harmonizes the individual circumstances of each. By restraining the merely partisan, particularistic wishes present in human society, it brings men together at a common center of value. This moral ordering of life, in its aspect as a civilizing force, Babbitt calls humanistic self-control.

How is it that man is not just swept along by the stream of desires? The appearance of the inner check, Babbitt maintains, is finally a mystery, but it is an indisputable fact nevertheless. Although our finite intellect cannot fathom the “ultimate nature” of this ordering principle, it is known to us in immediate experience. “The higher will must simply be accepted as a mystery that may be studied in its practical effects . . .”⁴ This special quality of will is experienced as a restraint on man’s “ordinary self.” The latter is Babbitt’s term for the impulsive life as unordered by moral considerations. The tendency to act in a self-indulgent manner, without regard for the good of the whole, he also calls, depending on the context, the “lower,” “natural,” or “temperamental” self. To the extent that man rises above his ordinary self by acting from inside the inner check, the latter becomes more firmly established, not only as an irrefutable fact of experience, but as the very source and center of meaningful life.

Babbitt’s theory of the “inner check” has led to vast misunderstanding. Does he mean that morality consists of completely negative action, some sort of ascetic self-denial? One of the reasons why the concept of the inner check has caused so much confusion is that Babbitt’s readers have frequently failed to put it in the proper context. He employs the term in opposition to ethical doctrines that would forget the duality of human nature and identify the moral good with particular human sentiments and intentions. He is sharply critical, for instance, of the school of moral sense associated with Shaftesbury. Another of his main opponents is Jean-Jacques Rousseau, whose morality of the heart he sees as identifying the good with unrestrained impulse. Our moral will, Babbitt asserts repeatedly, must not be confused with gushes of “sympathy” or “pity.” It is better described as an inhibition on our outgoing impulses. Arguing against “expansionists of every kind” (DL, 6), he distinguishes the ordering universal principle from what is ordered. Not only is the urge of the moment frequently in conflict with the good, so that morality requires an act of self-restraint; but when our impulses do harmonize with the moral end, which means that they are not censured by the inner check, they are still transcended by that ordering power itself. Morality, Babbitt insists, is a creation of will, an overcoming of obstacles. It is through spiritual activity, not through some easy yielding to the impulses of the moment, that good is brought into the world. Using the word “civilization” to describe the quality of existence made possible by the higher will, he writes: “Civilization is something that must be deliberately willed; it is not something that gushes up spontaneously from the depths of the unconscious. Furthermore, it is something that must be willed first of all by the individual in his own heart.” (DL, 229) There are no shortcuts to the genuine values of social life. Tradition and social reform can aid, but never replace, individual moral effort.

In spite of Babbitt’s emphasis on civilization and happiness as the fruits of humanistic exercise of the higher will, it has been alleged often that he has a purely negative conception of the good. A comment by Edmund Wilson is typical of this strangely unperceptive and careless reading of Babbitt: “. . . how can one take seriously a philosophy which enjoins nothing but negative behavior?”⁵ In a similar vein, Allen Tate believes that he has exposed “the negative basis of Professor Babbitt’s morality. The good man is he who ‘refrains from doing’ what the ‘lower nature dictates,’ and he need do nothing positive.”⁶ Henry Hazlitt writes, “The insistence, you will notice, is always on the purely negative virtues.”⁷ To some extent, this mistaken impression has been caused by Babbitt’s repeated use of a particular term, “the inner check,” to describe the ethical will. His actual theory is that morality has two aspects, the renunciation and the affirmation of impulse. They form part of one and the same effort to realize good. In its relation to impulses that are destructive of our spiritual unity and hence of our happiness, the higher will is felt as a check; the moral purpose is advanced by censuring what is opposed to it. That Babbitt pays much attention to the “negative” side of morality is due to his assessment of what our time needs to hear the most. The main threat to the values of civilization today is not an excess of renunciation of the world, but an excessive, indiscriminate release of the “expansive desires.” Modern Western man has the greatest need to learn not that the good is achieved through affirmation of impulse (although that is a part of the truth), but that man’s true humanity lies in his ability to put checks on his desires. In the Middle Ages, with its emphasis on otherworldliness, the point that good can be advanced through positive human acts would have deserved more attention.

In the person who, having followed Aristotle’s admonition to develop sound habits, has acquired a taste for morality, the impulsive life tends to merge, without special effort, with the higher will. Realizing its intent through particular actions, the higher will becomes a feeling of acting in consonance with one’s own true humanity. The result of bringing one’s character into harmony with the universal good, Babbitt and Aristotle agree, is the special satisfaction of happiness. The creation of particular acts having universal value is the affirmative, “positive” side of the moral life. Even here, however, there is some justification for using the term “inner check” to describe man’s higher will, for human acts are not simply identical to or exhaustive of what gives them ethical direction. Higher than particular instances of moral behavior, higher even than man’s most noble acts, is the ultimate standard of perfection itself. The tension between immanent and transcendent is never completely removed. It should be noted also that willing is always an act of selection. To affirm what is moral is to negate possibilities of a different quality.⁸

Granted that self-disciplin...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Transaction Introduction
• Prefatory Note
• Introduction
• Bibliographical Note
• Part One
• Part Two
• Index