Lectures on the True, the Beautiful and the Good

Lecture I.--the Existence of Universal and Necessary Principles 39

Two great wants, that of absolute truths, and that of absolute truths that may not be chimeras. To satisfy these two wants is the problem of the philosophy of our time.--Universal and necessary principles.--Examples of different kinds of such principles.--Distinction between universal and necessary principles and general principles.--Experience alone is incapable of explaining universal and necessary principles, and also incapable of dispensing with them in order to arrive at the knowledge of the sensible world.--Reason as being that faculty of ours which discovers to us these principles.--The study of universal and necessary principles introduces us to the highest parts of philosophy.

Lecture Ii.--Origin of Universal and Necessary Principles 51

Résumé of the preceding Lecture. A new question, that of the origin of universal and necessary principles.--Danger of this question, and its necessity.--Different forms under which truth presents itself to us, and the successive order of these forms: theory of spontaneity and reflection.--The primitive form of principles; abstraction that disengages them from that form, and gives them their actual form.--Examination and refutation of the theory that attempts to explain the origin of principles by an induction founded on particular notions.

Lecture Iii.--on the Value of Universal and Necessary Principles 65

Examination and refutation of Kant's skepticism.--Recurrence to the theory of spontaneity and reflection.

Lecture Iv.--God the Principle of Principles 75

Object of the lecture: What is the ultimate basis of absolute truth?--Four hypotheses: Absolute truth may reside either in us, in particular beings and the world, in itself, or in God. 1. We perceive absolute truth, we do not constitute it. 2. Particular beings participate in absolute truth, but do not explain it; refutation of Aristotle. 3. Truth does not exist in itself; defence of Plato. 4. Truth resides in God.--Plato; St. Augustine; Descartes; Malebranche; Fénelon; Bossuet; Leibnitz.--Truth the mediator between God and man.--Essential distinctions.

Lecture V.--on Mysticism 102

Distinction between the philosophy that we profess and mysticism. Mysticism consists in pretending to know God without an intermediary.--Two sorts of mysticism.--Mysticism of sentiment. Theory of sensibility. Two sensibilities--the one external, the other internal, and corresponding to the soul as external sensibility corresponds to nature.--Legitimate part of sentiment.--Its aberrations.--Philosophical mysticism. Plotinus: God, or absolute unity, perceived without an intermediary by pure thought.--Ecstasy.--Mixture of superstition and abstraction in mysticism.--Conclusion of the first part of the course.

PART SECOND.--THE BEAUTIFUL.

Lecture Vi.--the Beautiful in the Mind of Man 123

The method that must govern researches on the beautiful and art is, as in the investigation of the true, to commence by psychology.--Faculties of the soul that unite in the perception of the beautiful.--The senses give only the agreeable; reason alone gives the idea of the beautiful.--Refutation of empiricism, that confounds the agreeable and the beautiful.--Pre-eminence of reason.--Sentiment of the beautiful; different from sensation and desire.--Distinction between the sentiment of the beautiful and that of the sublime.--Imagination.--Influence of sentiment on imagination.--Influence of imagination on sentiment.--Theory of taste.

Lecture Vii.--the Beautiful in Objects 140

Refutation of different theories on the nature of the beautiful: the beautiful cannot be reduced to what is useful.--Nor to convenience.--Nor to proportion.--Essential characters of the beautiful.--Different kinds of beauties. The beautiful and the sublime. Physical beauty. Intellectual beauty. Moral beauty.--Ideal beauty: it is especially moral beauty.--God, the first principle of the beautiful.--Theory of Plato.

Lecture Viii.--on Art 154

Genius:--its attribute is creative power.--Refutation of the opinion that art is the imitation of nature--M. Emeric David, and M. Quatremère de Quincy.--Refutation of the theory of illusion. That dramatic art has not solely for its end to excite the passions of terror and pity.--Nor even directly the moral and religious sentiment.--The proper and direct object of art is to produce the idea and the sentiment of the beautiful; this idea and this sentiment purify and elevate the soul by the affinity between the beautiful and the good, and by the relation of ideal beauty to its principle, which is God.--True mission of art.

Lecture Ix.--the Different Arts 165

Expression is the general law of art.--Division of arts.--Distinction between liberal arts and trades.--Eloquence itself, philosophy, and history do not make a part of the fine arts.--That the arts gain nothing by encroaching upon each other, and usurping each other's means and processes.--Classification of the arts:--its true principle is expression.--Comparison of arts with each other.--Poetry the first of arts.

Lecture X.--French Art in the Seventeenth Century 178

Expression not only serves to appreciate the different arts, but the different schools of art. Example:--French art in the seventeenth century. French poetry:--Corneille. Racine. Molière. La Fontaine. Boileau.--Painting:--Lesueur. Poussin. Le Lorrain. Champagne.--Engraving.--Sculpture:--Sarrazin. The Anguiers. Girardon. Pujet.--Le Nôtre.--Architecture.

PART THIRD.--THE GOOD.

Lecture Xi.--Primary Notions of Common Sense 215

Extent of the question of the good.--Position of the question according to the psychological method: What is, in regard to the good, the natural belief of mankind?--The natural beliefs of humanity must not be sought in a pretended state of nature.-- Study of the sentiments and ideas of men in languages, in life, in consciousness.--Disinterestedness and devotedness.--Liberty.-- Esteem and contempt.--Respect.--Admiration and indignation.-- Dignity.--Empire of opinion.--Ridicule.--Regret and repentance.-- Natural and necessary foundations of all justice.--Distinction between fact and right.--Common sense, true and false philosophy.

Lecture Xii.--the Ethics of Interest 229

Exposition of the doctrine of interest.--What there is of truth in this doctrine.--Its defects. 1st. It confounds liberty and desire, and thereby abolishes liberty. 2d. It cannot explain the fundamental distinction between good and evil. 3d. It cannot explain obligation and duty. 4th. Nor right. 5th. Nor the principle of merit and demerit.--Consequences of the ethics of interest: that they cannot admit a providence, and lead to despotism.

Lecture Xiii.--Other Defective Principles 255

The ethics of sentiment.--The ethics founded on the principle of the interest of the greatest number.--The ethics founded on the will of God alone.--The ethics founded on the punishments and rewards of another life.

Lecture Xiv.--True Principles of Ethics 274

Description of the different facts that compose the moral phenomena.--Analysis of each of these facts:--1st, Judgment and idea of the good. That this judgment is absolute. Relation between the true and the good.--2d, Obligation. Refutation of the doctrine of Kant that draws the idea of the good from obligation instead of founding obligation on the idea of the good.--3d, Liberty, and the moral notions attached to the notion of liberty.--4th, Principle of merit and demerit. Punishments and rewards.--5th, Moral sentiments.--Harmony of all these facts in nature and science.

Lecture Xv.--Private and Public Ethics 301

Application of the preceding principles.--General formula of interest,--to obey reason.--Rule for judging whether an action is or is not conformed to reason,--to elevate the motive of this action into a maxim of universal legislation.--Individual ethics. It is not towards the individual, but towards the moral person that one is obligated. Principle of all individual duties,--to respect and develop the moral person.--Social ethics,--duties of justice and duties of charity.--Civil society. Government. Law. The right to punish.

Lecture Xvi.--God the Principle of the Idea of the Good 325

Principle on which true theodicea rests. God the last foundation of moral truth, of the good, and of the moral person.--Liberty of God.--The divine justice and charity.--God the sanction of the moral law. Immortality of the soul; argument from merit and demerit; argument from the simplicity of the soul; argument from final causes.--Religious sentiment.--Adoration.--Worship.--Moral beauty of Christianity.

Lecture Xvii.--Résumé of Doctrine 346

Review of the doctrine contained in these lectures, and the three orders of facts on which this doctrine rests, with the relation of each one of them to the modern school that has recognized and developed it, but almost always exaggerated it.--Experience and empiricism.--Reason and idealism.--Sentiment and mysticism.--Theodicea. Defects of different known systems.--The process that conducts to true theodicea, and the character of certainty and reality that this process gives to it.

Appendix 371

LECTURES

THE TRUE, THE BEAUTIFUL, AND THE GOOD.

DISCOURSE

PRONOUNCED AT THE OPENING OF THE COURSE,

DECEMBER 4, 1817.

PHILOSOPHY IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY.

Spirit and general principles of the Course.--Object of the Lectures of this year:--application of the principles of which an exposition is given, to the three Problems of the True, the Beautiful, and the Good.

It seems natural that a century, in its beginning, should borrow its philosophy from the century that preceded it. But, as free and intelligent beings, we are not born merely to continue our predecessors, but to increase their work, and also to do our own. We cannot accept from them an inheritance except under the condition of improving it. Our first duty is, then, to render to ourselves an account of the philosophy of the eighteenth century; to recognize its character and its principles, the problems which it agitated, and the solutions which it gave of them; to discern, in fine, what it transmits to us of the true and the productive, and what it also leaves of the sterile and the false, in order that, with reflective choice, we may embrace the former and reject the latter. Placed at the entrance of the new times, let us know, first of all, with what views we would occupy ourselves. Moreover,--why should I not say it?--after two years of instruction, in which the professor, in some sort, has been investigating himself, one has a right to demand of him what he is; what are his most general principles on all the essential parts of philosophic science; what flag, in fine, in the midst of parties which contend with each other so violently, he proposes for you, young men, who frequent this auditory, and who are called upon to participate in a destiny still so uncertain and so obscure in the nineteenth century, to follow.

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It is not patriotism, it is a profound sentiment of truth and justice, which makes us place the whole philosophy now expanded in the world under the invocation of the name of Descartes. Yes, the whole of modern philosophy is the work of this great man, for it owes to him the spirit that animates it, and the method that constitutes its power.

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