Liberals I

This chapter begins with a brief discussion of what we mean by liberalism. It continues with an evaluation of the views that liberals have taken of the justification of property. I first consider the broadly utilitarian case developed by William Paley, James Mill, and Jeremy Bentham. I then assess the distinctive view taken (in France) by Benjamin Constant and (in the US) by Thomas Jefferson and James Madison. I devote careful attention to the work of John Stuart Mill, who is a key source for a distinctively modern (or ‘new’) liberal view in which property is not so much a right of persons as a social institution, legitimately open to collective regulation. The chapter ends with an outline of the liberal case for communal ownership of the land made by the American journalist Henry George.

Gay, Tucker, Paley, and Bentham

This chapter discusses the views on self-interest and morality of four key figures in the British utilitarian tradition. The associationist theory of virtue of John Gay (1699–1745) is outlined. It is shown how psychological and rational hedonism are combined with utilitarianism in the work of Abraham Tucker (1705–74). The largely instrumental view taken by William Paley (1743–1805) of the rules of common-sense morality is described, and it is demonstrated how he sometimes slides into a non-instrumental position. The ‘split-level’ act utilitarianism of Jeremy Bentham (1748–1832) is placed within his largely legislative project. A conclusion outlines several philosophical themes running through the ethics of the period discussed in the book, and the importance of that period as an influence on, and a source for, contemporary ethics.

Faith and Thought

This chapter examines Stokes as an outspoken scientist of faith. It uses Stokes to examine the intellectual threats to conservative Christianity in the second half of the nineteenth century, and highlights his leading role among Victorian Britain’s religious scientists, through bodies such as the Royal Society and the Victoria Institute. It also explains how Stokes’s upbringing and education formed the basis for his own evangelical theology, and highlights his two most significant contributions to that field. First, it explores Stokes’s opposition to the doctrine of eternal punishment, and his promotion of conditional immortality as an alternative. Second, it highlights how Stokes continued to advocate the natural theology and teleological argument of William Paley a century after they were first proposed, as a method of harmonizing faith and scientific practice.

The Art of Science: Nineteenth-Century Theory and the Logic of Practice

This chapter examines how nineteenth-century philosophers from William Paley and Charles Darwin to John S. Mill and William Whewell described and debated the relations between art and science as well as practice and theory. Offering close readings of Paley’s Natural Theology and of various passages from Charles Darwin’s work on breeding and gardening, the chapter distinguishes between two conceptions of art in the sense of skilful practice: art as guided by knowledge and different from nature on the one hand and art as productive of knowledge as well as continuous with an evolving nature on the other. As the chapter argues, these two notions of art played a key role in a controversy between John S. Mill and William Whewell that was carried out, between 1840 and 1872, through successive editions of their published works. Engaging closely with the style and spirit in which this debate was conducted, the chapter shows that Mill and Whewell argued from radically different conceptions of what ‘science’ means. As a result, they disagreed, for instance, about the very question of what constitutes a logical form of argument or proof.

Paley, William (1743–1805)

William Paley, theologian and moral philosopher, expressed and codified the views and arguments of orthodox Christianity and the conservative moral and political thought of eighteenth-century England. Paley says that his works form a unified system based on natural religion. Like others during this period, Paley thought that reason alone, unaided by revelation, would establish many Christian theses. He is confident that a scientific understanding of nature will support the claim that God is the author of nature. Paley belongs to the anti-deist tradition that holds that revelation supplements natural religion. The most important revelation is God’s assurance of an afterlife in which the virtuous are rewarded and the vicious are punished. Natural and revealed religion, in turn, provide the foundation for morality. God’s will determines what is right and his power to reward and punish us in the afterlife provide the moral sanctions. On the whole, Paley is concerned with sustaining Christian faith, and ensuring that people known what their duties are and do them.