Robert L. Dabney, The Sensualistic Philosophy of the Nineteenth Century Considered
Reprint of the 1887 edition; Naphtali Press, 2003, 304 pgs.
Summary: A thoughtful and essentially accurate critique of materialistic philosophy and theology of the 19th Century by Robert L. Dabney (1820-1898).
Dabney’s modern fame rests on his having been Stonewall Jackson’s chaplain during the Civil War and as the author of the book A Defense of Virginia and Through Her the South. Not having read the book, I understand that it espouses at least a paternal racism similar to modern liberalism and likely very much worse as he defends the institution of American race slavery.
Dabney’s racism aside, The Sensualistic Philosophy points out over and over again that materialism as a philosophical theory only works if materialism is assumed as the only possible system.
The Sensualistic philosophy is that theory, which resolves all the powers of the human spirit into the functions of the five senses, and modifications thereof. It is the philosophy, which finds all it rudiments in sensation. It not only denies to the spirit of man all innate ideas, but all innate powers of originating ideas, save those given from our senses. It consequently attempts to account for every general and every abstract judgment, as an empirical result of our sensations, and consistently denies the validity of any a priori (11).
He finds the main source of ‘modern sensualistic’ philosophy in John Locke (1632-1704). Dabney’s basic critique of Locke is that he confused the occasion of many of our ideas—sense perception—with the cause. Locke taught that all human ideas were developed from material stuff, so that the cause of ideas is sense perception. And this then allows if not requires that the cause of all things be material rather than spiritual. Locke’s philosophy, Dabney suggests unintentionally, opens the door to more aggressive forms of materialism.
Dabney then slogs through the different nineteenth-century schools showing how his definition of sensualistic philosophy is expounded by Christians and non-Christians. And he critiques the philosophical systems and materialistic outcomes rejecting God and the Scripture.
Statements abound like:
All logicians agree that this probability mounts up, as the instances of regular concurrence are multiplied, in a geometric ratio; and when the instances become numerous, the expectation of an additional coordinating cause becomes the highest practical certainty. It becomes rationally impossible to believe that these frequent and regular concurrences of the effects came from the blind, fortuitous coincidence of the physical causes, acting each, separately from the other. . .The thing to be accounted for is their regular convergence. This is an additional fact: the blind physical causes do not and cannot account for it,—It discloses design (291).
Such statements now backed by genetic research and greater development in our understanding of probability are also found in Meyer’s Darwin’s Doubt published in 2013. The sophistication and complexity of the arguments have advanced, but the arguments over materialistic rather the idealistic conceptions of the universe have not much advanced. Perhaps, we should note that Xenophon (430-354 BC), Memoirs of Socrates, 1.4.4-11, makes a similar case.
Dabney also provides a very helpful critique of some of the intercollegiate debates among Christians that continue in the present. On the issue of theistic evolution he states:
There has recently arisen a very small party among evolutionists, who, having some proper appreciation of the psychological facts observed in consciousness. . . propose this middle scheme, that the human race has arisen from evolution as to its body, and from creation as to its rational spirit. This middle ground is absolutely visionary. None will pronounce it impossible more promptly than evolutionist themselves. . . . Doubtless then the consistent evolutionist will say that to seek this middle ground of a partial creation is to surrender the very principle of their system; and that the expedient is more offensive to them than the old and simple doctrine of an almighty creation of man. That is at least intelligible and consistent (286).
While noting that theistic evolution is a philosophical, practical, and theological blunder, he also digs deeply into missteps taken by Jonathan Edwards and Paley in the case of the “nature of virtue”:
I group together three theories of the nature of virtue, which really amount to the same: that of David Hume, who taught that we apprehend an act to be virtuous because it is useful to mankind: That of Jeremy Bentham, who taught that virtue is pursuing the greatest good of the greatest number: And that of some New England speculators, who teach that virtue consists in benevolence (227).
The ‘Benevolence scheme’ appears in its most ingenious, and least obnoxious form, in the hand of Edwards, as Love for Being as being (227). . . Dr. Paley’s type of the Selfish System may be said to be equally perspicuous and false” (233).
Both Edwards (via Locke) and Paley had attached themselves to theories of knowledge which required them to link the development or understanding of ethics to the senses. Everything must pass through the senses to the mind, and so virtue must now be attached to stuff rather than to the spirit. Dabney and I see this system of virtue as leading to greater materialism.
Exemplar quotes:
Locke’s EpistemologyThe problem which [Locke] proposed to himself was to discover the origin of our ideas. Here was the first and the fatal vice of Locke’s method, that he began with a hypothesis as to the origin of cognitions of which he found the mind possessed, instead of beginning by a faithful inspection of the traits of the mind’s operations. The question of origin, which he made first, should thus been the last, being reached as the final induction from the fact of consciousness. He would have been more than human if, having commenced by a hypothesis as the source of our ideas, he had not been unconsciously swayed by that hypothesis, when he proceeded to the analysis of the ideas themselves, which must be the only means of acquainting ourselves accurately with them. He should then have begun by the analysis, and inferred the origin of our ideas from their qualities (21).
On the Tabula Rasa in Locke[Tabula Rasa] is pushed so unsparingly, as to deny not only innate ideas, but innate principles of cognition. [Yet] the mind is not a tablet, written or unwritten by nature; it is an intelligent agent. It is not a surface, but a spiritual monad. And second, Locke heedlessly confounds the occasion of the genesis of ideas with the cause. It may be perfectly true, that the intelligence exerts none of the cognitive power of which its nature makes it capable, and discloses none of those ruling norms of thought, or feeling, or will, which are originally constitutive of it, until it is stimulated by sensation (21-22).
Ethics Cannot be Wedded to AestheticsIf the same power of association is the instrument, and the same natural pleasures and pains of sense are the materials, both of the ethical and aesthetic sentiments, how is it that they do not form one general class in men’s minds?. . . This one question, insuperable for the Sensualist, is enough to bring both his moral and his aesthetic analysis into discredit (75).
On Revelation The unspeakable advantage of revelation over human science here appears from this; that the problem of verification of a testimony from God to us, is a single problem, perfectly definite, and perfectly simple to the right heart; a problem to which man’s power are fully competent, provided only God presents His credentials. When that one point is settled {that God has presented His credentials}, our progress is safe in His teaching (108).
On the Human Capacity to Think of God[Our opponents claim can be stated]: “One cannot think an infinite something, because to think it is to limit it;” and we then see that it is a mere begging of the question. Do we limit it, in the sense of circumscribing it by a figure? No. We think that it is. Without figuring what it is. The enthymeme is just as good to prove the falsehood, that I cannot think self-identity, because to think is to limit (i.e. figure) it. But I do think self-identity; I am obliged to think it, virtually, every time I think reflectively at all. The sum of the matter, then, is; that I can and do think the infinite, because I can think it without limiting it; although I cannot comprehend it without limiting it (170).
On the Limits of Free Will:If the will is not determined to choice by subjective motive, but determines itself, then the will must determine to choose by an act of choice, for this remains its only function. That is, the will must choose to choose. Now, this prior choice must be held by our opponents to be self-determined. Then it must be determined by the will’s act of choice: that is, the will must choose to choose to choose. Thus we have an endless and ridiculous regressus (217).
Benefits/Detriments: The strength of Dabney’s work is that is an essentially accurate and rightly frustrated critique of a stream of philosophy and theology. It would have been helpful if he would have connected Locke’s work to Thomas of Aquinas and Aristotle who both maintained Nihil in intellectu, quod non prius in sensu. (Nothing enters the mind that does not pass through the senses). Many of the contemporary philosophers that he interacts with are no longer well-known in undergraduate venues.
Also, I am convinced that self-consciousness needs to be more carefully distinguished from mere consciousness. The book will be helpful for philosophically minded pastors and students of philosophy.