How far does Enlightenment philosophy inform literary writing in the long eighteenth century? Gulliver's Travels
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- How far does Enlightenment philosophy inform literary writing in the long eighteenth century?
- John Locke
- Deism
- Gulliver's Travels
- How far does Enlightenment philosophy inform literary writing in the long eighteenth century?
- John Locke
- Deism
- Gulliver's Travels
- Jonathan Swift
- attacked the deists as he came from a religious background and deists rejected the following of Jesus
- belief in the existence of a supreme being, specifially of a creator who does not intervene in the universe.
-
A clergyman of the Church of Ireland in the face of the threats to its continued existence
posed by Roman Catholicism in Ireland and in England, where he saw the Catholics as threatening not only the Anglican Church but the English Constitution.
- attacked the deists as he came from a religious background and deists rejected the following of Jesus
- belief in the existence of a supreme being, specifially of a creator who does not intervene in the universe.
- Underlying all of Swift's religious concerns, underlying his apparent
conservatism, which was really a form of radicalism, was his belief that
in Man God had created an animal which was not inherently rational but
only capable, on occasion, of behaving reasonably: only, as he put it, rationis capax.
- It is our tendency to disappoint, in this respect, that he rages against: his works embody his attempts to maintain order and reason in a world which tended toward chaos and disorder, and he concerned himself more with the concrete social, political, and moral aspects of human nature than with the abstractions of philosophy, theology, and metaphysics.
- attacked the deists as he came from a religious background and deists rejected the following of Jesus
- Swift was certainly not one of the optimists typical of his century. He did not believe that the Age of Science was the triumph that a great majority of his countrymen believed it to be. Science and reason needed limits, and they needed a good measure of humanism. They did not require absolute devotion.
- Described his literature as "temporary, occaisional things that die naturally with the change of times"
- attacked the deists as he came from a religious background and deists rejected the following of Jesus
- In Gulliver's Travels, reason is inti mately linked with the virtue of justice and the institutional injustice of contemporary society is pointedly satirized through comparison with the impressive (if not perfect) justice of an imaginary, rational society.
- Mocks the enlightenment obsession with science and reason by satirising it in Book 3: mocking the Royal Society for wasting time on projects such as the extraction of sunbeams from cucumbers.
- The most significant section of the book from the history of science point of view is Gulliver's visit to the floating island, Laputa,
where the inhabitants are enamoured of mathematics, measuring,
quantifying, experimenting and astronomical predictions. The island
floats by magnetic levitation, in what seems to be one of the only
'practical' applications of their knowledge – their obsession with
accurate measurement has led them to apply the use of quadrants to the
art of tailoring, resulting only in badly-fitting clothes. Their heads
literally in the clouds, they have to be woken up from their
speculations to communicate with Gulliver.
- Most obviously, in Laputa, Swift criticises a world of mathematical and philosophical endeavour that does little or nothing to better people's lives, especially those of their subjects in the colony Balnibarbi, located beneath the floating Laputa. In fact, satirising the power relations of Britain and Swift's native Ireland or, more broadly, the rich and poor, we find that Laputa is used to subdue Balnibarbi by threats to block the sun or rain, by throwing down rocks, or even crushing rebel cities by lowering Laputa onto them.
- Swift was surely right that useful applications of the new knowledge either seemed a long time coming, or were clearly in the interests of King, government, military and landowners (who, after all, are much more useful patrons of science than the poor).
- The most significant section of the book from the history of science point of view is Gulliver's visit to the floating island, Laputa,
where the inhabitants are enamoured of mathematics, measuring,
quantifying, experimenting and astronomical predictions. The island
floats by magnetic levitation, in what seems to be one of the only
'practical' applications of their knowledge – their obsession with
accurate measurement has led them to apply the use of quadrants to the
art of tailoring, resulting only in badly-fitting clothes. Their heads
literally in the clouds, they have to be woken up from their
speculations to communicate with Gulliver.
- https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/g/gullivers-travels/critical-essays/philosophical-and-political-background-of-gullivers-travels
- Mirror images of England and Ireland
- Coffee house lectures and periodicals such as The Spectator promoted natural philosophy as a source of refinement.
- Swift knew philosophers and mathmetitians to base his satire upon
- The Stoic attitude toward nature and reason has had a lasting appeal to Western Christians. The thought of several early Church fathers- Origen, Tertullian, Clement of Alexandria -is permeated as much by Stoic as by Christian ideas. Thomas Aquinas appeals repeatedly to nature and to reason. With only two significant modifications (he regards the spirit of nature as an agent of the Christian God; and he explains the corruption of human nature not in terms of individual failures of the moral will, but in terms of weakness due to original sin), he can be said to have integrated the Stoic attitude toward nature and reason into orthodox Christian thought.
- Swift's Houyhnhnms follow "nature" in the Stoic sense of the term
- "Nature and Reason were sufficient Guides for a reasonable Animal" (GT, p. 248). The Houyhnhnms would seem to be making the same mistake as Gul- liver. But since the Houyhnhnms by etymology are "the Perfection of Nature" (GT, p. 235),37 this nature is as reliable a norm for the Houy- hnhnms as it was for the Stoics (and the Utopians). The Houyhnhnms have no reason to distrust a nature which has endowed them with "a general Disposition to all Virtues" (GT, p. 267).
- Finally, Houyhnhnm reason is not unique; the idea of reason as immediate conviction did not originate in the seventeenth or eighteenth century. Reason for the Stoics (and even for Plato) is a perception of ideal nature. If one is uninhibited by "Passion or Interest," that is, by forms of selfishness, this perception will be immediate. The most promi- nent characteristic of Houyhnhnm reason is its Stoic inseparability from virtue. The Houyhnhnms attribute man's general corruption to "gross Defects in Reason, and by consequence, in Virtue" (GT, p. 259). Houyhnhnm reason, fostering virtue and natural fellowship, enables them to achieve a just Stoic state.
- Even if it be granted that the Houyhnhnm society is based -on Stoic standards of reason, nature, and justice, the idea that Swift would ask us to admire, or even accept, such societies is still open to question. The most frequent criticisms of Houyhnhnmland by critics who interpret this land ironically are that the Houyhnhnms are cold and passionless, society severely restricts personal free- dom. It is argued that there is no Houyhnhnm that can compare with Don Pedro de Mendez. These criticisms are justified, at least in part; but at the same time, they fail to acknowledge that the same society, even if it is fictional, cannot maximize both common justice and individual freedom
- The authority of Ricardo Quintana's The Mind and Art of Jonathan Swift (1936) has contributed much to the widespread idea that the Houyhnhnms are cold and lacking in emotions. Quintana writes that in book four of Gulliver's Travels "the life of reason . . . is given merely an intellectual statement, for though we understand the admirable Houyhnhnms we are not moved by them, and this not because horses are an inappropriate symbol but because ideal civilization as conceived by Swift is an emotionless thing
- 42 Samuel Holt Monk's expression of the same point is rhetorically designed to denigrate the Houyhnhnms. He writes that "The Houyhnhnms are the embodiment of pure reason. They know neither love nor grief nor lust nor ambition. " Monk's ordering of the passions - love, grief, lust, ambition - is significant. The control of lust and ambition by reason we all admire. And most of us would accept the control of grief by reason. But by placing love, a passion we value, in the first and most prominent position after stating that the Houyhnhnms embody pure reason, Monk is implicitly arguing that since their reason suppresses such an admirable quality, it must be flawed. The Houyhnhnms, however, are not without passions, though "their Wants and Passions are fewer than among us" (GT, p. 242). The virtues of the Houyhnhnms include not merely self-limiting ones like temperance and chastity (and even those show public spirit as they prevent adultery, jealousy, and overpopulation), but openly generous and public-spirited ones like friendship and benevolence. Houyhnhnms carry these virtues farther than any human does, showing "Affection" to all children, and, pace Monk, "love" to the "whole Species" (GT, p. 268). Although the Houyhnhnm practice of these virtues is infrequently dramatized, we do see repeated examples of the sorrel nag's affection for Gulliver and of general kindness shown to Gulliver by his Houyhnhnm Master.
- In Gulliver's Travels it is the ministers of state, and not the Houy- hnhnms, who lack the conventional passions. Gulliver thinks he can please the reasonable Houyhnhnms by describing the extraordinary control which government ministers keep over their passions. These ministers, he says, are "wholly exempt from Joy and Grief, Love and Hatred, Pity and Anger." A minister "makes use of no other Passions but a violent Desire of Wealth, Power, and Titles" (GT, p. 255). The Houyhnhnms, of course, are not impressed. It is precisely these self- seeking passions which Houyhnhnm reason has no part of. Houy- hnhnm reason is defined as " not mingled, obscured, or discoloured by Passion and Interest" (GT, p. 267). But it is essential to see that in this definition, "Passion and Interest" are nearly synonynms, and represent selfish disregard for others. Houyhnhnm reason being an instrument of justice, it opposes not passions per se, but those passions which endanger the common good. Whatever coldness it seems to have is directed primarily against a warmly passionate love of oneself.
- Guided by such reason, the Houyhnhnms have almost no need of government. Problems exist only when new circumstances arise (like the arrival of Gulliver). Even so, once a decision is made upon principle, a Houyhnhnm would never want to do anything that the will of all forbade.
- Swift's first biographer, John Boyle, stung by what he saw as misanthropy in the theme of Gulliver's Travels, fought back at Swift by attacking Swift's Houyhnhnms: "They are incapable of doing wrong, therefore they act right. . . . They act inof- fensively, when they have neither the motive nor the power to act otherwise."56 Kathleen Williams has cited the same flaw-"they have only the negative virtue of blamelessness" -but she concludes not that Swift erred, but that he did not intend the Houyhnhnms to be an ideal: "the handling of [the Houyhnhnms] seems to suggest not only the remoteness but the inadequacy by human standards, of the life of Reason." Citing Gulliver's erratic behavior after leaving Houy- hnhnmland, and the generosity which Don Pedro chooses to show, she argues that the "conscience" of Don Pedro, rather than the "reason" of the Houyhnhnms, is the ideal toward which the work points.
- In Gulliver's Travels it is the ministers of state, and not the Houy- hnhnms, who lack the conventional passions. Gulliver thinks he can please the reasonable Houyhnhnms by describing the extraordinary control which government ministers keep over their passions. These ministers, he says, are "wholly exempt from Joy and Grief, Love and Hatred, Pity and Anger." A minister "makes use of no other Passions but a violent Desire of Wealth, Power, and Titles" (GT, p. 255). The Houyhnhnms, of course, are not impressed. It is precisely these self- seeking passions which Houyhnhnm reason has no part of. Houy- hnhnm reason is defined as " not mingled, obscured, or discoloured by Passion and Interest" (GT, p. 267). But it is essential to see that in this definition, "Passion and Interest" are nearly synonynms, and represent selfish disregard for others. Houyhnhnm reason being an instrument of justice, it opposes not passions per se, but those passions which endanger the common good. Whatever coldness it seems to have is directed primarily against a warmly passionate love of oneself.
- 42 Samuel Holt Monk's expression of the same point is rhetorically designed to denigrate the Houyhnhnms. He writes that "The Houyhnhnms are the embodiment of pure reason. They know neither love nor grief nor lust nor ambition. " Monk's ordering of the passions - love, grief, lust, ambition - is significant. The control of lust and ambition by reason we all admire. And most of us would accept the control of grief by reason. But by placing love, a passion we value, in the first and most prominent position after stating that the Houyhnhnms embody pure reason, Monk is implicitly arguing that since their reason suppresses such an admirable quality, it must be flawed. The Houyhnhnms, however, are not without passions, though "their Wants and Passions are fewer than among us" (GT, p. 242). The virtues of the Houyhnhnms include not merely self-limiting ones like temperance and chastity (and even those show public spirit as they prevent adultery, jealousy, and overpopulation), but openly generous and public-spirited ones like friendship and benevolence. Houyhnhnms carry these virtues farther than any human does, showing "Affection" to all children, and, pace Monk, "love" to the "whole Species" (GT, p. 268). Although the Houyhnhnm practice of these virtues is infrequently dramatized, we do see repeated examples of the sorrel nag's affection for Gulliver and of general kindness shown to Gulliver by his Houyhnhnm Master.
- The authority of Ricardo Quintana's The Mind and Art of Jonathan Swift (1936) has contributed much to the widespread idea that the Houyhnhnms are cold and lacking in emotions. Quintana writes that in book four of Gulliver's Travels "the life of reason . . . is given merely an intellectual statement, for though we understand the admirable Houyhnhnms we are not moved by them, and this not because horses are an inappropriate symbol but because ideal civilization as conceived by Swift is an emotionless thing
- Even if it be granted that the Houyhnhnm society is based -on Stoic standards of reason, nature, and justice, the idea that Swift would ask us to admire, or even accept, such societies is still open to question. The most frequent criticisms of Houyhnhnmland by critics who interpret this land ironically are that the Houyhnhnms are cold and passionless, society severely restricts personal free- dom. It is argued that there is no Houyhnhnm that can compare with Don Pedro de Mendez. These criticisms are justified, at least in part; but at the same time, they fail to acknowledge that the same society, even if it is fictional, cannot maximize both common justice and individual freedom
- The most comprehensive response thus far to Williams's view of the Houyhnhnms has been that of R. S. Crane. He argues that the Houyhnhnm standard of reason is a reputable standard, that the con- trast between the Houyhnhnm and the human ways of life proves that man is not the animal rationale that he thinks he is, and that the principal issue of Gulliver's Travels is "not of how men ought to govern their actions, but of what kind of creature man, as a species, essentially is, and what opinion, consequently, he is entitled to entertain of him- self. "59 But Gulliver's Travels is not simply an insult. It does not neglect the issue of "how men ought to govern their actions." Crane's interpreta- tion, focusing as it does on the individual reason rather than the social justice of the Houyhnhnms, places an unnecessarily wide gulf between them and the human hero, Don Pedro de Mendez; also, by suggesting that Swift is criticizing our entire species, it strips away Don Pedro's power to serve as a model of behavior.
- Finally, Houyhnhnm reason is not unique; the idea of reason as immediate conviction did not originate in the seventeenth or eighteenth century. Reason for the Stoics (and even for Plato) is a perception of ideal nature. If one is uninhibited by "Passion or Interest," that is, by forms of selfishness, this perception will be immediate. The most promi- nent characteristic of Houyhnhnm reason is its Stoic inseparability from virtue. The Houyhnhnms attribute man's general corruption to "gross Defects in Reason, and by consequence, in Virtue" (GT, p. 259). Houyhnhnm reason, fostering virtue and natural fellowship, enables them to achieve a just Stoic state.
- Jonathan Swift
- To Swift and his contemporaries who combated the deists, this excessive reliance on human reason was altogether unwarranted; and in their answers they frequently set out to define its limitations. Swift's antirationalism is well known from his other works, but perhaps we may glance at it briefly in "On the Trinity" as an example of how he applied it in defense of religion and the mysteries. Here it has a dual aspect. One aspect is the familiar indictment on psychological grounds: "the reason of every particular man is weak and wavering, perpetually swayed and turned by his interests, his passions, and his vices."27 With reason under the sway of sub-rational impulses and inclinations, it cannot be accepted, Swift argues, as a trustworthy instru ment of interpretation. But he obviously wished to avoid a wholly skeptical position: the "right rule of reason" and the "general reason of mankind" are dependable. Nor does he want to reject human reason completely: "It must be allowed," he declares, "that every man is bound to follow the rules and directions of that measure of reason which God hath given him. . . ."28 Yet the emphasis throughout the sermon is on the fact that man has only a "measure of reason," a narrow and circumscribed capacity; and herein is the second aspect of the antirationalism Swift sets up as a corrective to the extreme rationalism of the deists?a limited or partial skepticism which views man's reason as operating effectively only in a restricted sphere. The wisest man, Swift points out, is baffled by the "commonest actions of nature." His vaunted reason is at a loss to explain such mysteries in nature as growth in animals and plants or the operation of the loadstone. If human reason cannot fathom the mystery of "the smallest seed," who will say that it is adequate to comprehend divine mysteries
- John Locke gave it forceful philo sophic expression in the Essay concerning Human Under standing (1690), where he contended that man can know only the nominal, not the real essences of things. Man is involved in darkness, Locke insisted, and he emphasized the narrow limits of the understanding, often in the terminology and with the illustrations repeatedly used in theological literature. Indeed, Swift's sermon echoes some of the pas sages in the Essay. "The clearest and most enlarged under standings of thinking men," Locke wrote, "find themselves puzzled and at a loss in every particle of matter."33 And at another point: Concerning the manner of operation in most parts of the works of nature; wherein, though we see the sensible effects, yet their causes are unknown, and we perceive not the ways and manner how they are produced. We see animals are generated, nourished and move; the loadstone draws iron; and the parts of a candle successively melting, turn into flame, and give us both light and heat. These and the like effects we see and know; but the causes that operate, and the manner they are produced in, we can only guess and probably conjecture.34 Here then is the conventional skepticism that Swift utilizes as one means of defending the credibility of the mysteries and as the basis of his protest against the rationalists. Thus it is that he asserts: "How little do those who quarrel with mysteries, know of the commonest actions of nature!"3
- John Locke gave it forceful philo sophic expression in the Essay concerning Human Under standing (1690), where he contended that man can know only the nominal, not the real essences of things. Man is involved in darkness, Locke insisted, and he emphasized the narrow limits of the understanding, often in the terminology and with the illustrations repeatedly used in theological literature. Indeed, Swift's sermon echoes some of the pas sages in the Essay. "The clearest and most enlarged under standings of thinking men," Locke wrote, "find themselves puzzled and at a loss in every particle of matter."33 And at another point: Concerning the manner of operation in most parts of the works of nature; wherein, though we see the sensible effects, yet their causes are unknown, and we perceive not the ways and manner how they are produced. We see animals are generated, nourished and move; the loadstone draws iron; and the parts of a candle successively melting, turn into flame, and give us both light and heat. These and the like effects we see and know; but the causes that operate, and the manner they are produced in, we can only guess and probably conjecture.34 Here then is the conventional skepticism that Swift utilizes as one means of defending the credibility of the mysteries and as the basis of his protest against the rationalists. Thus it is that he asserts: "How little do those who quarrel with mysteries, know of the commonest actions of nature!"3
- Gulliver's Travels
- On the Reasonableness of Christianity
- “That I have, over and over again, these formal words in my Reasonableness of christianity, viz. That nothing is required to be believed by any christian man, but this, That Jesus is the Messiah.”
- John Locke's books, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding and On the Reasonableness of Christianity, had a great impact on the development of deism in England. Although he was opposed to deism, Locke's arguments in favor of reason, and his emphasis on repentance and virtuous behavior in Locke's version of Christianity contributed to the recognition that Jesus taught the principles of deism. In his book On the Reasonableness of Christianity, Locke admitted that the truths taught by Jesus can be discovered by the use of human reasoning. Although Locke believed that miracles by Jesus would convince people to accept God's truth, Deists find no necessity for believing in miracles. The truth we need to know is self-evident to anyone who thinks about it.
- Deism
- John Locke
- Jonathan Swift
-
A clergyman of the Church of Ireland in the face of the threats to its continued existence
posed by Roman Catholicism in Ireland and in England, where he saw the Catholics as threatening not only the Anglican Church but the English Constitution.
- Underlying all of Swift's religious concerns, underlying his apparent
conservatism, which was really a form of radicalism, was his belief that
in Man God had created an animal which was not inherently rational but
only capable, on occasion, of behaving reasonably: only, as he put it, rationis capax.
- It is our tendency to disappoint, in this respect, that he rages against: his works embody his attempts to maintain order and reason in a world which tended toward chaos and disorder, and he concerned himself more with the concrete social, political, and moral aspects of human nature than with the abstractions of philosophy, theology, and metaphysics.
- Underlying all of Swift's religious concerns, underlying his apparent
conservatism, which was really a form of radicalism, was his belief that
in Man God had created an animal which was not inherently rational but
only capable, on occasion, of behaving reasonably: only, as he put it, rationis capax.
- Swift was certainly not one of the optimists typical of his century. He did not believe that the Age of Science was the triumph that a great majority of his countrymen believed it to be. Science and reason needed limits, and they needed a good measure of humanism. They did not require absolute devotion.
- Described his literature as "temporary, occaisional things that die naturally with the change of times"
-
A clergyman of the Church of Ireland in the face of the threats to its continued existence
posed by Roman Catholicism in Ireland and in England, where he saw the Catholics as threatening not only the Anglican Church but the English Constitution.
- In Gulliver's Travels, reason is inti mately linked with the virtue of justice and the institutional injustice of contemporary society is pointedly satirized through comparison with the impressive (if not perfect) justice of an imaginary, rational society.
- Mocks the enlightenment obsession with science and reason by satirising it in Book 3: mocking the Royal Society for wasting time on projects such as the extraction of sunbeams from cucumbers.
- The most significant section of the book from the history of science point of view is Gulliver's visit to the floating island, Laputa,
where the inhabitants are enamoured of mathematics, measuring,
quantifying, experimenting and astronomical predictions. The island
floats by magnetic levitation, in what seems to be one of the only
'practical' applications of their knowledge – their obsession with
accurate measurement has led them to apply the use of quadrants to the
art of tailoring, resulting only in badly-fitting clothes. Their heads
literally in the clouds, they have to be woken up from their
speculations to communicate with Gulliver.
- Most obviously, in Laputa, Swift criticises a world of mathematical and philosophical endeavour that does little or nothing to better people's lives, especially those of their subjects in the colony Balnibarbi, located beneath the floating Laputa. In fact, satirising the power relations of Britain and Swift's native Ireland or, more broadly, the rich and poor, we find that Laputa is used to subdue Balnibarbi by threats to block the sun or rain, by throwing down rocks, or even crushing rebel cities by lowering Laputa onto them.
- Swift was surely right that useful applications of the new knowledge either seemed a long time coming, or were clearly in the interests of King, government, military and landowners (who, after all, are much more useful patrons of science than the poor).
- The most significant section of the book from the history of science point of view is Gulliver's visit to the floating island, Laputa,
where the inhabitants are enamoured of mathematics, measuring,
quantifying, experimenting and astronomical predictions. The island
floats by magnetic levitation, in what seems to be one of the only
'practical' applications of their knowledge – their obsession with
accurate measurement has led them to apply the use of quadrants to the
art of tailoring, resulting only in badly-fitting clothes. Their heads
literally in the clouds, they have to be woken up from their
speculations to communicate with Gulliver.
- https://www.cliffsnotes.com/literature/g/gullivers-travels/critical-essays/philosophical-and-political-background-of-gullivers-travels
- Mirror images of England and Ireland
- Coffee house lectures and periodicals such as The Spectator promoted natural philosophy as a source of refinement.
- Swift knew philosophers and mathmetitians to base his satire upon
- The Stoic attitude toward nature and reason has had a lasting appeal to Western Christians. The thought of several early Church fathers- Origen, Tertullian, Clement of Alexandria -is permeated as much by Stoic as by Christian ideas. Thomas Aquinas appeals repeatedly to nature and to reason. With only two significant modifications (he regards the spirit of nature as an agent of the Christian God; and he explains the corruption of human nature not in terms of individual failures of the moral will, but in terms of weakness due to original sin), he can be said to have integrated the Stoic attitude toward nature and reason into orthodox Christian thought.
- Swift's Houyhnhnms follow "nature" in the Stoic sense of the term
- "Nature and Reason were sufficient Guides for a reasonable Animal" (GT, p. 248). The Houyhnhnms would seem to be making the same mistake as Gul- liver. But since the Houyhnhnms by etymology are "the Perfection of Nature" (GT, p. 235),37 this nature is as reliable a norm for the Houy- hnhnms as it was for the Stoics (and the Utopians). The Houyhnhnms have no reason to distrust a nature which has endowed them with "a general Disposition to all Virtues" (GT, p. 267).
- Finally, Houyhnhnm reason is not unique; the idea of reason as immediate conviction did not originate in the seventeenth or eighteenth century. Reason for the Stoics (and even for Plato) is a perception of ideal nature. If one is uninhibited by "Passion or Interest," that is, by forms of selfishness, this perception will be immediate. The most promi- nent characteristic of Houyhnhnm reason is its Stoic inseparability from virtue. The Houyhnhnms attribute man's general corruption to "gross Defects in Reason, and by consequence, in Virtue" (GT, p. 259). Houyhnhnm reason, fostering virtue and natural fellowship, enables them to achieve a just Stoic state.
- Even if it be granted that the Houyhnhnm society is based -on Stoic standards of reason, nature, and justice, the idea that Swift would ask us to admire, or even accept, such societies is still open to question. The most frequent criticisms of Houyhnhnmland by critics who interpret this land ironically are that the Houyhnhnms are cold and passionless, society severely restricts personal free- dom. It is argued that there is no Houyhnhnm that can compare with Don Pedro de Mendez. These criticisms are justified, at least in part; but at the same time, they fail to acknowledge that the same society, even if it is fictional, cannot maximize both common justice and individual freedom
- The authority of Ricardo Quintana's The Mind and Art of Jonathan Swift (1936) has contributed much to the widespread idea that the Houyhnhnms are cold and lacking in emotions. Quintana writes that in book four of Gulliver's Travels "the life of reason . . . is given merely an intellectual statement, for though we understand the admirable Houyhnhnms we are not moved by them, and this not because horses are an inappropriate symbol but because ideal civilization as conceived by Swift is an emotionless thing
- 42 Samuel Holt Monk's expression of the same point is rhetorically designed to denigrate the Houyhnhnms. He writes that "The Houyhnhnms are the embodiment of pure reason. They know neither love nor grief nor lust nor ambition. " Monk's ordering of the passions - love, grief, lust, ambition - is significant. The control of lust and ambition by reason we all admire. And most of us would accept the control of grief by reason. But by placing love, a passion we value, in the first and most prominent position after stating that the Houyhnhnms embody pure reason, Monk is implicitly arguing that since their reason suppresses such an admirable quality, it must be flawed. The Houyhnhnms, however, are not without passions, though "their Wants and Passions are fewer than among us" (GT, p. 242). The virtues of the Houyhnhnms include not merely self-limiting ones like temperance and chastity (and even those show public spirit as they prevent adultery, jealousy, and overpopulation), but openly generous and public-spirited ones like friendship and benevolence. Houyhnhnms carry these virtues farther than any human does, showing "Affection" to all children, and, pace Monk, "love" to the "whole Species" (GT, p. 268). Although the Houyhnhnm practice of these virtues is infrequently dramatized, we do see repeated examples of the sorrel nag's affection for Gulliver and of general kindness shown to Gulliver by his Houyhnhnm Master.
- In Gulliver's Travels it is the ministers of state, and not the Houy- hnhnms, who lack the conventional passions. Gulliver thinks he can please the reasonable Houyhnhnms by describing the extraordinary control which government ministers keep over their passions. These ministers, he says, are "wholly exempt from Joy and Grief, Love and Hatred, Pity and Anger." A minister "makes use of no other Passions but a violent Desire of Wealth, Power, and Titles" (GT, p. 255). The Houyhnhnms, of course, are not impressed. It is precisely these self- seeking passions which Houyhnhnm reason has no part of. Houy- hnhnm reason is defined as " not mingled, obscured, or discoloured by Passion and Interest" (GT, p. 267). But it is essential to see that in this definition, "Passion and Interest" are nearly synonynms, and represent selfish disregard for others. Houyhnhnm reason being an instrument of justice, it opposes not passions per se, but those passions which endanger the common good. Whatever coldness it seems to have is directed primarily against a warmly passionate love of oneself.
- Guided by such reason, the Houyhnhnms have almost no need of government. Problems exist only when new circumstances arise (like the arrival of Gulliver). Even so, once a decision is made upon principle, a Houyhnhnm would never want to do anything that the will of all forbade.
- Swift's first biographer, John Boyle, stung by what he saw as misanthropy in the theme of Gulliver's Travels, fought back at Swift by attacking Swift's Houyhnhnms: "They are incapable of doing wrong, therefore they act right. . . . They act inof- fensively, when they have neither the motive nor the power to act otherwise."56 Kathleen Williams has cited the same flaw-"they have only the negative virtue of blamelessness" -but she concludes not that Swift erred, but that he did not intend the Houyhnhnms to be an ideal: "the handling of [the Houyhnhnms] seems to suggest not only the remoteness but the inadequacy by human standards, of the life of Reason." Citing Gulliver's erratic behavior after leaving Houy- hnhnmland, and the generosity which Don Pedro chooses to show, she argues that the "conscience" of Don Pedro, rather than the "reason" of the Houyhnhnms, is the ideal toward which the work points.
- In Gulliver's Travels it is the ministers of state, and not the Houy- hnhnms, who lack the conventional passions. Gulliver thinks he can please the reasonable Houyhnhnms by describing the extraordinary control which government ministers keep over their passions. These ministers, he says, are "wholly exempt from Joy and Grief, Love and Hatred, Pity and Anger." A minister "makes use of no other Passions but a violent Desire of Wealth, Power, and Titles" (GT, p. 255). The Houyhnhnms, of course, are not impressed. It is precisely these self- seeking passions which Houyhnhnm reason has no part of. Houy- hnhnm reason is defined as " not mingled, obscured, or discoloured by Passion and Interest" (GT, p. 267). But it is essential to see that in this definition, "Passion and Interest" are nearly synonynms, and represent selfish disregard for others. Houyhnhnm reason being an instrument of justice, it opposes not passions per se, but those passions which endanger the common good. Whatever coldness it seems to have is directed primarily against a warmly passionate love of oneself.
- 42 Samuel Holt Monk's expression of the same point is rhetorically designed to denigrate the Houyhnhnms. He writes that "The Houyhnhnms are the embodiment of pure reason. They know neither love nor grief nor lust nor ambition. " Monk's ordering of the passions - love, grief, lust, ambition - is significant. The control of lust and ambition by reason we all admire. And most of us would accept the control of grief by reason. But by placing love, a passion we value, in the first and most prominent position after stating that the Houyhnhnms embody pure reason, Monk is implicitly arguing that since their reason suppresses such an admirable quality, it must be flawed. The Houyhnhnms, however, are not without passions, though "their Wants and Passions are fewer than among us" (GT, p. 242). The virtues of the Houyhnhnms include not merely self-limiting ones like temperance and chastity (and even those show public spirit as they prevent adultery, jealousy, and overpopulation), but openly generous and public-spirited ones like friendship and benevolence. Houyhnhnms carry these virtues farther than any human does, showing "Affection" to all children, and, pace Monk, "love" to the "whole Species" (GT, p. 268). Although the Houyhnhnm practice of these virtues is infrequently dramatized, we do see repeated examples of the sorrel nag's affection for Gulliver and of general kindness shown to Gulliver by his Houyhnhnm Master.
- The authority of Ricardo Quintana's The Mind and Art of Jonathan Swift (1936) has contributed much to the widespread idea that the Houyhnhnms are cold and lacking in emotions. Quintana writes that in book four of Gulliver's Travels "the life of reason . . . is given merely an intellectual statement, for though we understand the admirable Houyhnhnms we are not moved by them, and this not because horses are an inappropriate symbol but because ideal civilization as conceived by Swift is an emotionless thing
- Even if it be granted that the Houyhnhnm society is based -on Stoic standards of reason, nature, and justice, the idea that Swift would ask us to admire, or even accept, such societies is still open to question. The most frequent criticisms of Houyhnhnmland by critics who interpret this land ironically are that the Houyhnhnms are cold and passionless, society severely restricts personal free- dom. It is argued that there is no Houyhnhnm that can compare with Don Pedro de Mendez. These criticisms are justified, at least in part; but at the same time, they fail to acknowledge that the same society, even if it is fictional, cannot maximize both common justice and individual freedom
- The most comprehensive response thus far to Williams's view of the Houyhnhnms has been that of R. S. Crane. He argues that the Houyhnhnm standard of reason is a reputable standard, that the con- trast between the Houyhnhnm and the human ways of life proves that man is not the animal rationale that he thinks he is, and that the principal issue of Gulliver's Travels is "not of how men ought to govern their actions, but of what kind of creature man, as a species, essentially is, and what opinion, consequently, he is entitled to entertain of him- self. "59 But Gulliver's Travels is not simply an insult. It does not neglect the issue of "how men ought to govern their actions." Crane's interpreta- tion, focusing as it does on the individual reason rather than the social justice of the Houyhnhnms, places an unnecessarily wide gulf between them and the human hero, Don Pedro de Mendez; also, by suggesting that Swift is criticizing our entire species, it strips away Don Pedro's power to serve as a model of behavior.
- Finally, Houyhnhnm reason is not unique; the idea of reason as immediate conviction did not originate in the seventeenth or eighteenth century. Reason for the Stoics (and even for Plato) is a perception of ideal nature. If one is uninhibited by "Passion or Interest," that is, by forms of selfishness, this perception will be immediate. The most promi- nent characteristic of Houyhnhnm reason is its Stoic inseparability from virtue. The Houyhnhnms attribute man's general corruption to "gross Defects in Reason, and by consequence, in Virtue" (GT, p. 259). Houyhnhnm reason, fostering virtue and natural fellowship, enables them to achieve a just Stoic state.
- How far does Enlightenment philosophy inform literary writing in the long eighteenth century?
- To Swift and his contemporaries who combated the deists, this excessive reliance on human reason was altogether unwarranted; and in their answers they frequently set out to define its limitations. Swift's antirationalism is well known from his other works, but perhaps we may glance at it briefly in "On the Trinity" as an example of how he applied it in defense of religion and the mysteries. Here it has a dual aspect. One aspect is the familiar indictment on psychological grounds: "the reason of every particular man is weak and wavering, perpetually swayed and turned by his interests, his passions, and his vices."27 With reason under the sway of sub-rational impulses and inclinations, it cannot be accepted, Swift argues, as a trustworthy instru ment of interpretation. But he obviously wished to avoid a wholly skeptical position: the "right rule of reason" and the "general reason of mankind" are dependable. Nor does he want to reject human reason completely: "It must be allowed," he declares, "that every man is bound to follow the rules and directions of that measure of reason which God hath given him. . . ."28 Yet the emphasis throughout the sermon is on the fact that man has only a "measure of reason," a narrow and circumscribed capacity; and herein is the second aspect of the antirationalism Swift sets up as a corrective to the extreme rationalism of the deists?a limited or partial skepticism which views man's reason as operating effectively only in a restricted sphere. The wisest man, Swift points out, is baffled by the "commonest actions of nature." His vaunted reason is at a loss to explain such mysteries in nature as growth in animals and plants or the operation of the loadstone. If human reason cannot fathom the mystery of "the smallest seed," who will say that it is adequate to comprehend divine mysteries
- John Locke gave it forceful philo sophic expression in the Essay concerning Human Under standing (1690), where he contended that man can know only the nominal, not the real essences of things. Man is involved in darkness, Locke insisted, and he emphasized the narrow limits of the understanding, often in the terminology and with the illustrations repeatedly used in theological literature. Indeed, Swift's sermon echoes some of the pas sages in the Essay. "The clearest and most enlarged under standings of thinking men," Locke wrote, "find themselves puzzled and at a loss in every particle of matter."33 And at another point: Concerning the manner of operation in most parts of the works of nature; wherein, though we see the sensible effects, yet their causes are unknown, and we perceive not the ways and manner how they are produced. We see animals are generated, nourished and move; the loadstone draws iron; and the parts of a candle successively melting, turn into flame, and give us both light and heat. These and the like effects we see and know; but the causes that operate, and the manner they are produced in, we can only guess and probably conjecture.34 Here then is the conventional skepticism that Swift utilizes as one means of defending the credibility of the mysteries and as the basis of his protest against the rationalists. Thus it is that he asserts: "How little do those who quarrel with mysteries, know of the commonest actions of nature!"3
- John Locke gave it forceful philo sophic expression in the Essay concerning Human Under standing (1690), where he contended that man can know only the nominal, not the real essences of things. Man is involved in darkness, Locke insisted, and he emphasized the narrow limits of the understanding, often in the terminology and with the illustrations repeatedly used in theological literature. Indeed, Swift's sermon echoes some of the pas sages in the Essay. "The clearest and most enlarged under standings of thinking men," Locke wrote, "find themselves puzzled and at a loss in every particle of matter."33 And at another point: Concerning the manner of operation in most parts of the works of nature; wherein, though we see the sensible effects, yet their causes are unknown, and we perceive not the ways and manner how they are produced. We see animals are generated, nourished and move; the loadstone draws iron; and the parts of a candle successively melting, turn into flame, and give us both light and heat. These and the like effects we see and know; but the causes that operate, and the manner they are produced in, we can only guess and probably conjecture.34 Here then is the conventional skepticism that Swift utilizes as one means of defending the credibility of the mysteries and as the basis of his protest against the rationalists. Thus it is that he asserts: "How little do those who quarrel with mysteries, know of the commonest actions of nature!"3
- Gulliver's Travels
- On the Reasonableness of Christianity
- “That I have, over and over again, these formal words in my Reasonableness of christianity, viz. That nothing is required to be believed by any christian man, but this, That Jesus is the Messiah.”
- John Locke's books, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding and On the Reasonableness of Christianity, had a great impact on the development of deism in England. Although he was opposed to deism, Locke's arguments in favor of reason, and his emphasis on repentance and virtuous behavior in Locke's version of Christianity contributed to the recognition that Jesus taught the principles of deism. In his book On the Reasonableness of Christianity, Locke admitted that the truths taught by Jesus can be discovered by the use of human reasoning. Although Locke believed that miracles by Jesus would convince people to accept God's truth, Deists find no necessity for believing in miracles. The truth we need to know is self-evident to anyone who thinks about it.
- Deism
- John Locke
- In the phraseology of Locke, "the proper object of faith" is a revelation from God, "but whether it be a divine revelation or no, reason must judge."37 Or as another of Swift's contemporaries expressed it more elaborately: . . . when a thing is proposed to me as from God, all that my Reason has to do in this Case is Seriously, Soberly, Diligently, Impartially, and (I add) Humbly to Examine whether it comes with the true Credentials of his Authority, and has him for its real Author or no. This is all that Reason has to do in this Matter, and when she has done this, she is to rise from the Seat of Judgement, and resign it to Faith, which either gives or refuses her Assent.3
- John Norris, An Account of Reason and Faith (London, 1697), pp. 292-3
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