THE
DECLINE OF GREATNESS
In
the "Decline of Greatness" which appeared in the Saturday Evening Post
on November 1, 1958, Arthur Schlesinger Jr. succeeded in creating the impression
that the terms, 'determinism' and 'fatalism' are synonymous. Some
passing references were made to different schools of thought. However,
Professor Schlesinger neglected (1) to clarify the fact that these words are not
synonymous, (2) to make quite clear that not all concepts of determinism are
fatalistic, and (3) to indicate that some theories of determinism are thought to
be compatible with free-will. It is a grave injustice to the doctrine of
determinism, inasmuch as the average reader has very little knowledge of its
philosophic implications. It is not adequately treated in the simple
explanations offered by Professor Schlesinger. It is unlikely that this
noted author is unaware of contemporary thinking on this problem. There is
much agreement that man, himself, is a cause in the stream of historical events.
I suspect that he did not intend to equate determinism with fatalism. I am
compelled to point out, however, that such an apparent identification is
unfortunate, especially since it bears the authority of such an eminent thinker. To
speak of determinism as being outside the pale of choice-making seems, in the
face of all that has been written about the subject, to be a misunderstanding of
the issue. Choices are made because of deterministic processes not in
spite of them. Responsibility, too, (which Professor Schlesinger envisions
as lying outside the realm of determinism) is not to be dispensed with.
Both serve as deterministic forces. Acts
are not beyond the control of people merely because they live in a deterministic
world. An act is the result of all forces: physical, religious, social,
tangible, intangible, etc. To say that historical or social forces are
mystical, abstract, or metaphorical is to impute little practical meaning to the
patterns of group behavior. However, pragmatic use is made of the
predictability of such patterns (in advertising, use of propaganda,
"educating" the public, salesmanship, etc.). When Professor
Schlesinger asks for predictions that he requires to be consistently accurate,
he is asking for the impossible. Consistent for how long? We cannot
tell how much of our ignorance the future holds until the future becomes past.
Only a god-like mind would have the infinite knowledge necessary for such
prediction. But, even if Professor Schlesinger's criticisms were correct,
it would not add one iota of weight to the position that there is an area of
"free" choice. It merely puts both doctrines on an even basis --
assuming there is no evidence for either. But scientific study shows that
under many circumstances, human behavior can be predicted and directed -- on a
statistical basis if not otherwise. And, from what we know about these
matters, all knowledge and all prediction have their basis only in probability
and rest upon some assumption. Hence, it is logically improper (with all
due respect to Hume) to abstract an act from the causal stream of which it is a
part. The effects of an act themselves become causes in altering possible
future choices. It
is unfair to give praise or blame for an act if the intent of the giving is
merely reward or revenge. However, in a society such as ours, praise and
blame are meant to be causative, inducing further conformity with the demands of
society. Contrary to Sir Isaiah Berlin, we do in fact take determinism
very seriously; when we eat, drink, vote, pray, pay taxes, obey laws, etc.,
expecting a determined result. This is as it should be, or we would be
living in a state of chaos. There
is no society that is not founded on determinism. There is no area of
life, including religion, which is not founded on determinism. All
institutions resort to punishment and reward of some kind. In the case of
religion, for example, the final punishment or reward is Heaven or Hell, or
whatever the respective equivalent happens to be. In
regard to Professor Schlesinger's references to Napoleon and Shakespeare, it is
not appropriate to offer Tolstoy as the representative of deterministic
philosophy. It is questionable whether someone else would have marched
across Europe if Napoleon had not. The weakness of Tolstoy's example does
not at all re-enforce William James' position regarding Shakespeare. The
question as to whether the convergence of sociological pressures impinging on
Strafford on Avon on April 23, 1564 had to result in the birth of a William
Shakespeare with all his abilities, is hardly a sensible one. If it had
referred to sociological, physical, religious, scientific, nutritional, and
innumerable other forces being responsible for W. Shakespeare's appearance on
the scene with all that he achieved, I find it difficult to answer in the
negative. As
to whether another might have taken his place to restore the sociological
equilibrium had he died in infancy, seems to be unanswerable, except in
retrospect -- not even then. Who can say who might have been a
Shakespeare? Furthermore, the question overlooks the fact that there would
necessarily have been some other sociological equilibrium. Determinism
does not mean that the world as it is today would have been the same if certain
deterministic processes had not occurred. Rather, it means that the world
is as it is because of those processes. In addition the individual as a
self, as a person, as a responsible choice-making entity is one of those
processes which leaves its mark on the world whether he be a Shakespeare or an
infant who died shortly after birth. History is not a specific final event, a set of events, or a
temporal segment in which the events happen to be the historian's own special
area of interest. Rather it is the totality of events from "the
moment of creation" to the moving present. The child which died in
infancy left its mark on the course of events, in terms of love, misery, pain,
economics, hope, etc., as surely as, even if much less than, our full-grown
heroes. History is a plurality of events brought about by a plurality of
causal streams, some of them contingently causal. Many
of our contemporary determinists do not rule out the individual from the stream
of historical events, as Professor Schlesinger seems to suggest that they do.
They insist, rather, to the contrary, that the individual is a determining
factor in that stream.
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