Christian August Crusius: Instruction to live reasonably - Basic drives

Just like will can affect understanding, Crusius notes, drives of the will can be controlled through understanding. That is, the more lively the representations of objects of drives are, the livelier the respective drives are. What does this liveliness of both representations and drives mean? Like Baumgarten before him, Crusius explains that liveliness of representations is definitely not the same thing as their distinctness. Indeed, the more distinct our ideas of sensible things become, the less we often feel the need to strive for those things, Crusius argues. Instead of distinctness, liveliness, for Crusius, is characterised by the heightened grade of activity, by which we represent something.

From the standpoint of drives, the liveliness of the respective representations differs from both the strength and longevity of drives. In other words, no matter how lively our thoughts of the objects of our drives, these drives might not be able to withstand resistance nor might they be able to continue over a long period of time. Indeed, all these three characteristics - liveliness, strength and longevity - are for Crusius independent. In fact, he reduces the traditional four temperaments to different combinations of the three characteristics: drives of phlegmatic are lacking in all three characteristics, drives of sanguine are lively, drives of choleric are strong and drives of melancholic last long.

Crusius notes that drives and desires come in many different grades, starting from temporary affections and ending with extremely forceful passions. Crusius goes through a various species of such affections and passions, which was a common topic in current discussions of will. What is more interesting is Crusius’s statement that drives and desires can create new drives and desires. Thus, we might wind up desiring a subspecies of an old desire (like desire for truth might lead into a desire for curiosity) or an individual under that class (like love of philosophy might lead into a love for a particular school of philosophy), we could wind up desiring means for fulfilling other desires (such as when we desire gold), parts of certain desired objects (like when desire for general tidiness evolves into a desire for cleanliness), consequences and effects (like when we love children of our friends) and even mere signs (when we desire medals given for honourable services) and things sensed at the same time (when we desire to live in place with good memories).

Desires and drives can thus be based on other desires and drives, but Crusius insists that such series of desires must end with some first desires: then again, there might well be many different first desires. Now, Crusius notes that some of these first desires are contingent in the sense that they are based on our upbringing, while others are ingrained in the God-designed essence of humanity - the latter he calls basic desires. Indeed, he continues, all reasoning entities must have such basic desires or drives, so that they can become happy by fulfilling those desires. No basic desire can be inherently evil, Crusius believes, because otherwise God wouldn’t have given such to us. Because all desires correspond to some concepts, all reasoning entities must have some innate concepts, Crusius concludes, although they need not be immediately conscious of these concepts.

Crusius remarks that basic desires should not be confused with seemingly universal desires, objects of which could be derived through abstraction from any desires. Such abstract desires include a desire to avoid pain, desire for our own existence, a desire for applying one’s own capacities to the fullest extent and a desire to take advantage of suitable opportunities. A particularly important abstract desire is the sum of all desires that constitutes a desire for happiness, which Crusius defines as sum of all possible pleasures and a complete lack of pain. This desire is important, Crusius thinks, because it leads to a further desire for everlasting happiness, which has an infinite object and thus leads humans to accept the existence of God (note how Kant’s idea of God as a postulate for morality follows a similar path). Although all humans seem to share this desire, like all abstract desires, it is not truly a basic desire - indeed, happiness means different thing for different people, because it is a sum of their peculiar desires. Animals, Crusius adds, do not have this desire, since they do not have the requisite capacity for abstraction.

Of the true basic desires or drives, some are specific to humans. In fact, they are also such desires that have abstract objects and cannot thus belong to mere animals. Although these basic human desires should be common to all human beings, Crusius emphasises that they can exist in different force in different individuals. Furthermore, these drives can be hindered by one another or even some other drives, thus making it not obvious that everyone follows them.

Crusius counts three basic human desires, first of which is a desire to perfect oneself and one’s own capacities. This basic drive involves many other desires, such as desires to use and improve our cognitive abilities, to act according to best of reasons and to perfect our body. All these various desires require us to achieve a certain place in human society - freedom, power, riches, friendship and power. Finally, we also try to see and own perfect things, whether this perfection means real force inherent in these things or an ideal perfection, such as order and regularity.

The second basic human desire, Crusius says, is a drive for love. Love, in its moral sense, Crusius defines as a habit of regarding goals of another person as goals of oneself and of taking pleasure in well-being of others. When loving another person, Crusius continues, we do not aim at our own happiness, but at a mutual feeling of love, which would mean unification of the two persons involved. This love is not to be confused, Crusius warns, with such emotions like affection toward children or sexual desire. Particularly, it should be distinguished from so-called self-love, which is actually just satisfaction with one’s own perfections. This drive for love, Crusius admits, is universal, but sadly very weak and easily overpowered by other desires.

The final basic human drive Crusius admits in the drive to know the laws God has appointed for our behaviour. This drive could also be called drive for conscience, where conscience means judgement about the morality of one’s own actions. Crusius, thus, does not equate conscience with a consciousness of one’s faults, but more as a knowledge of one’s obligations and duties. Because we humans have this drive for knowing moral law, Crusius continues we must have an innate idea of this law. He does not mean that individual duties would be implanted in us, but only a general rule of action: do what is in accordance with the perfection of God, with one’s own relation to God and with the essential perfection of human nature and avoid the opposite. Since this drive for conscience is in our own nature, Crusius adds, we must have an innate idea of God and a natural respect for him. Just like our desire for love, the desire for conscience can be suppressed by stronger desires. Still, when these desires dissipate after we have done the objectionable deed, the conscience often reawakens and causes disagreeable pangs.

In addition to basic human desires, we share some basic desires with other animals. These animal desires concern only the goals of our animal nature, such as nourishment and reproduction. Crusius notes that we cannot really a priori determine what all these desires are, but we can only empirically search for their most general classes. Crusius counts two of these classes: drives to affect one’s body in a certain manner and drives to achieve a certain state of one’s body. The drives of the first class differ from one animal to another, depending on their specific capacities of e.g. movement. In any case, Crusius is certain that such drives presuppose soul having an innate idea of one’s own body and thus speak against the notion of soul moving from one body to another.

The second class might be further described as a drive for achieving pleasant bodily feelings. These feelings are attached to some bodily states - for instance, to certain smells and tastes - and are not necessarily connected with the perfection of body, just like pain is no signal of our body becoming more imperfect. Of specific drives, Crusius notes that a drive for nurturing children is clearly a drive of the first class, while sexual drives are caused by drives from both classes.

The relationship between human reason and animal drives is complicated. Animal drives are naturally strong and at least partially independent, which can be seen e.g. by the fierceness of bodily pains. Then again, Crusius admits that making our representations more distinct can dampen the animal drives. Furthermore, reason might add something to animal drives, such as when it combines sexuality with love.

Enduring pain

I have tried to criticize the common prejudice about Wolffian philosophy that he, in Kant's words, intellectualized appearances. As I have tried to show, this is a rather exaggerated and even misleading opinion. If anything, Wolff was Lockean, when it comes to the source of cognition, and even highly abstract concepts were for Wolff either phantasms dependent on perceptions or words symbolizing such phantasms. Instead of intellectualizing appearances, Wolff picked out a certain subgroup of them as an ideal of cognition, that is, distinct or analysed perceptions, which could be used as a basis for demonstrations.

Even if Wolff would not intellectualize appearances, he appears to fall into a second failing of many pre-Kantians, namely, he reduces appetetive side of human mind into its cognitive side. This seems evident from Wolff's suggestion that all cravings, desires, hopes, volitions etc. presuppose some cognition. In other words, we could not want anything to happen, Wolff says, if we could not see what the situation is like and compare it with some ideal how the situation should be. On top of this, Wolff defines all forms of enjoyment simply as intuitive cognition of something as perfect, making even bodily pleasure appear rather intellectual, like an aesthetic consideration of a statue.

The last problem is actually easy to solve, when one remembers that Wolffian cognition need not be highly conceptual. We need not be able make sophisticated explanations why a taste of sweetness or an orgasm is pleasurable, but we could just cry out ”Oh my God, yes, this is what I want” or even utter no comprehensible sounds. Indeed, the word ”intuitive” tells that this enjoyment does not need any linguistic expression at all, but is instigated by mere perception. What is important is that we human beings are, as it were, hardwired to seek for such feelings of perfection and to avoid respective feelings of imperfection.

Furthermore, we already know from the study of Wolff's theory of cognition that he acknowledges a difference in vividness and strength between sensations and higher intellectual representations. Indeed, a capacity to at least partially avoid the influence of distracting sensations was an essential precondition of more intellectual cognition. Similarly, Wolff can accept that bodily pleasures captivate us so strongly that it will cloud our reason – and similarly pain can make us unable to think clearly. Then again, we also can exercise an ability to become indifferent even to quite strong bodily pleasures and pains. Thus, although being tortured is painful, there have been people able to suppress these extreme feelings, and even if such extreme self-control is rare, all of us can in some degree endure at least some type of bodily discomfort.

A good question is whether Wolff is making an artificial restriction by declaring the appetites for pleasures and aversions of discomfort and pleasure to be essentially connected to cognitions. After all, appetites and aversions we are aware of might be just expression of some unconscious urges. Yet, Wolff is here purposefully restricting himself on what we can immediately observe of ourselves, while the explanations for these observations are left for rational psychology. Thus, Wolff can in empirical psychology point out only that conscious appetites and aversions are clearly dependent of cognitions. This still does not preclude the possibility of unconscious activities causing this whole play of appetites and cognitions.

In Wolffian system, why we feel positive and negative feelings is ultimately work of God and meant to be useful. For instance, bodily pleasure should reward us for benefiting the condition of our body, while bodily pain should warn us of harming our body. Yet, Wolff points out, enjoyment is defined only as cognizing something AS perfect, that is, there remains the possibility that what we enjoy is in truth really not perfect or even good for us. Taste of sugar sends a pleasurable feeling, because we require energy that is easily obtainable from sugar, but eating too much sweets will still be detrimental to our health. Similarly, pressure on nerves in our teeth will cause considerable pain as a warning for a possible dental injury, but similar pain felt in a dentist's chair occurs just as a side effect of fixing our teeth.

The possibility of deceptive enjoyments is essentially connected with the confusion of mere unanalysed sensations. Thus, pleasure or pain is just a murky feeling of ”Yes!” or ”No!” without any proper indication what actually is good and bad in the events causing these feelings. A good question is how we can then recognize enjoyment caused by true perfection and distinguish it from deceptive positive feelings – especially as working it out from Wolff's ontological definition of perfection seems rather difficult. Wolff's suggestion appears to be that constancy can be used as a relevant criterion – truly perfect things cause enjoyment that cannot be contradicted by future knowledge, while deceptive enjoyment could well be just momentary and fleeting.

Affects, like love and hope, fall usually to the more confused side of appetites and aversions – we have tender feelings toward a person and often just cannot explain why. Wolff presents an intricately detailed account of affects and defines them twice – first nominally, by explaining what e.g. love means, and then through its real definition which tells us how to generate love. As I said earlier when dealing with Wolffian theory of affects, the whole system of affects has too much material for a good blog text, thus, I will skip the topic now also. Hence, next time I shall move to consider the question of interaction between mind and body.

Christian Wolff: Reasonable thoughts of human acting and letting others act upon you - Finding the greatest good

In Kantian ethics greatest good is only something that people could hope for: moral actions certainly wouldn't guarantee that one would find greatest good, although they would undoubtedly make one deserve it. In the days of pre-Kantian innocence, one could still believe that the connection between good actions and greatest goodness could be positively proven. Indeed, we have seen that Wolff simply states moral actions to aim at nothing else but the growth of the perfection in oneself and in others. The perfection itself is best one could hope for, but just as a further incentive, God is willing to make anyone happy who wants to act in a moral manner.

Doing the right thing becomes then a mere question of mental calculation: in each situation, you should determine the best possible outcome you could hope for and the most suitable means for acheiving the outcome – and then you already have incentive enough for doing the thing. The final goal should then be organizing all the actions so that they are geared towards the perfection of oneself and others.

The idea of people actually solving all their problems through an ethical calculus sounds quite fabulous. Indeed, Wolff himself admits that actual moral problems are usually too detailed for any humanly calculus. Instead, the ideal of ethical calculus should be applied only to the problem of discovering general principles of action. Thus, an investigator of ethics should try to discover which actions in general work for the human perfection and which hinder its progress. A prudent person would then just follow these general principles, even if they did not hold perfectly in any particular case, because he would understand their reliability.

Still, one might still be uncertain how Wolff would account for the cases where a person acts against such principles due to sensuous influences and desires. Wolff's strategy is to rely on his theory of sensations as a source of confused information. Conflict between ethical reasoning and sensuous desires becomes thus a conflict between two kinds of information: clear and distinct vs. dark and indistinct. A person could in theory free herself from the slavery of sensuous infuences through a perfect clarification and analysis of her consciousness. In practice, this is impossible for human beings, thus they must pit sensuous influences against one another.

Wolff ponders also the possibility of using sensuousness as a general instrument for advocating morality in society at large by representing difficult ethical thoughts through symbolism and ceremonies. Wolff has probably in his mind at least the sacraments of church, but when he discusses how one could invent as rational symbols and ceremonies as possible, Wolff's ideas start to resemble Adam Weishaupt's later society of Illuminati and the more traditional freemasonry. One might wonder if Wolff himself was part of some masonic lodge.

Next time we shall learn how to read other people's minds.