The Philosophy of German Idealism - B.

the texts - Robbert Veen

The Philosophy of German Idealism (1) Introduction

B. Reading the texts: Dialogue on Free Thought (Voltaire - 1765)

1. Voltaire: Dialogue on Free Thought

In 1765, in the third edition of the philosophical dictionary, a short dialogue

was published with the title Freedom of Thought, now generally known as the
Dialogue on Freedom. That is just 16 years before the beginning of the era
that we have established for German idealism. In this dialogue we find several
of the motifs of the Enlightenment that have already been discussed when we
talked about Immanuel Kant.

Let's go into to the text straightaway.

Around the year 1707, when the English won the battle of Saragossa, made themselves Protectors of
Portugal, and for a while gave a king to Spain, Milord Boldmind, a general who had been wounded in
combat, was taking the waters at Barèges. There he met Count Medroso <1> , who, having fallen off his
horse at the rear of the supply lines a league and a half from the battlefield, had come to take the waters as
well. He was a familiar of the Inquisition <2>. Milord Boldmind was familiar only in conversation; one day,
after drinks, he and Medroso had the following exchange.

The dialogue is between a man called Boldmind, who is the representative of

the Enlightenment as his name indicates, and a man called Medroso, which is
Spanish for coward. The former is an English general, the latter a Portuguese
count, both of them have been wounded in the battle of Zaragoza. The date is
1707. The setting of the dialogue is the town of Barèges, that has thermal
baths. So in essence two wounded men from opposite sides of a conflict meet
each other in a "medical facility" - somehow both reduced to a common and
vulnerable humanity - and start a friendly conversation.

BOLDMIND
So you're a sergeant for the Dominicans <3>. That's a vile job.

MEDROSO
That's true, but I'd rather be their valet than their victim, and I've preferred the misery of burning my
neighbor to that of being cooked myself.

Apparently we enter into the conversation just after the beginning. Boldmind
identifies his opponent as a "sergeant for the Dominicans." So our Portuguese
friend is in the service of the Inquisition. By the word Sergeant or familiar -
referring to a bewitched pet - characterizes Medroso as a tool, rather than a
thinking, autonomous agent. The conversation now gets under way by the
characterization of that position as a" vile job."
Medroso freely admits that fear motivates him, and that he is a rather the
"valet" of the Inquisition, as he euphemistically calls it, than its victim.

BOLDMIND
What a horrible choice! You'd be a hundred times happier under the yoke of the Moors <4> , who let you
freely rot in all your superstitions, and who, conquerors though they may have been, never arrogated to
themselves the unheard-of right to keep souls behind bars.
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MEDROSO
What do you expect? It is not permitted us neither to write, nor to speak, nor even to think. If we speak, it is
easy to interpret our words, and still easier our writings. In sum, since no one can condemn us to an auto da
fé for our secret thoughts, they threaten us with eternal burning by the order of God Himself, if we don't think
like the Jacobins <5>. They have persuaded the government that if we were to have common sense, the
whole state would be in flames, and that the nation would become the most miserable on earth.

The reply to this by Boldmind is a comparison of this situation of having to

choose to be an accomplice rather than a victim, too living under the authority
of the Muslims. They at least let you free to keep all of your superstitions by
granting Christians and Jews the right to maintain their religion in Muslim
countries, even though there award you just a secondary citizenship. Only the
Inquisition goes so far as to judge thoughts, exercising the "unheard of rights
to keep souls behind bars."
Medroso quite unexpectedly actually agrees with this. It is not permitted to
write, to speak or to think. As long as you keep your thoughts at a secret there
is no problem, both in writing or speaking it is necessary to follow the dictates
of the Dominican order. The uniformity of thought and the thought police that
is required to suppress all deviation, is said to be necessary for the survival of
the state and the quality of life in the nation. The ideology of this Dominican
suppression of free thought, is directed against the idea of common sense,
which here means something like the exercise of reason.

BOLDMIND
Do we strike you as unhappy, we English who cover the world with ships and who've just won battles on
your behalf all over Europe? Do you see that the Dutch, who have taken from you nearly all your discoveries
in India and who today rank as your protectors, are accursed of God for having afforded complete freedom to
the press and for doing business in men's thoughts? Was the Roman Empire any the less powerful because
Cicero wrote with liberty?

MEDROSO
Who is this Cicero <6>? I've never heard speak of any such man? It's not a matter of Cicero; it's a matter of
our Holy Father the Pope and of Saint Anthony of Padua, and I've always heard say that the Roman religion
is doomed if people start thinking.

Boldmind then gives three examples of states that do without common sense
and nevertheless do not suffer a destruction of the state. The English have
won battles all over Europe but allow freedom of thought; the Dutch, that have
given complete freedom to the press, have built a huge empire. The third
example is from antiquity: Cicero could write with liberty in the Roman empire,
without it losing its power. Medrosos has to express his lack of knowledge
here. He hasn't heard of Cicero which means that he has had no formal
education with the same standard as Boldmind. That is a nice literary device,
to show the lack of education on the part of Medroso, implying that the lack of
liberty in speech and thought would lead to this ignorance. The importance of
education is hinted at here.
Again the count recites ideology: the Roman (-Catholic) religion is doomed if
people start thinking. Of course the very manner of formulating this already
presupposes a dismissive point of view. But it does go to the heart of the
matter. The Roman Catholic tradition does not encourage any free use of
reason, which of course to Voltaire is the only possible use of reason. This
identification of thought with free thought, this characterization of reason as
standing in principle separate from reveals and traditional truths, furthermore
this basic opposition to every argument based on authority, characterizes a
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turn to complete autonomy. I think that this is the birthmark of the
Enlightenment in the proper sense of the word. This identity of reason with
autonomy, freedom, this separateness and opposition of human reason over
against faith, the wisdom of the collective, tradition and authority and so on, is
actually a new idea.

BOLDMIND
It's hardly for you to believe that. [First argument] For you are sure that your religion comes from God,
and that the Gates of Hell cannot prevail against it. If that's true, nothing will ever destroy it.

MEDROSO
No, but it might be reduced to little, and it's for having thought, that Sweden, Denmark, your whole island,
and half of Germany are groaning in the horrible misery of no longer being subject to the Pope. It is even
said that if men keep on following their false lights, they will eventually end up in the simple worship of God
and virtue. If the Gates of Hell every prevail that far, what will become of the Holy Office?

BOLDMIND
[Second argument] If the first Christians had not had the freedom to think, is it not true that Christianity
itself would never have come into being?

MEDROSO
What are you saying? I don't understand at all!

BOLDMIND
I believe you. I mean that if Tiberius <7> and the first emperors had been Jacobins who had prevented the
first Christians from having pen and ink, if it had not been long permitted within the Roman Empire to think
freely, it would have been impossible for Christians to establish their dogmas. So if Christianity emerged
only in virtue of freedom of thought, by what contradiction, by what injustice would it annihilate today this
liberty upon which it is itself founded?
[Third argument] When somebody proposes something to you on a matter involving your interests, don't
you look it over a good while before you arrive at a decision? What greater interest have we in this world
than our eternal happiness or our eternal misery? There are a hundred religions on earth that condemn you
for believing in your dogmas, which they call absurd and impious. Then look into these dogmas.

Boldmind now presents a series of three arguments based on the position of

his opponent. What he is saying comes down to this. [1] If you really believe
that your religion is based on a revelation by God, and that God is the keeper
of this truth, why then would it be necessary for people like the Dominicans to
defend it with violence? As my teacher in Amsterdam, Kees-Jan Brons, used to
say: The Absolute can take care of itself!
[2] Furthermore does not the history of Christianity imply the necessity of
freedom of thought? When Christians were in the minority they needed
freedom of thought to exist and expand.
[3] Finally, Christianity presupposes an interest in eternal happiness. Now
there are hundred other religions that would think that Christian dogma is
absurd. If eternal happiness is at stake, would it not be necessary to use
reason to find out which dogma in which religion would be sure to grant it?
The autonomy of reason can be expressed, as we have seen already, by the
phrase "your own reason." That is what Immanuel Kant said: have the courage
to use your own reason. It means that authority leads to error because we do
not look at the arguments itself but to the person that expresses an opinion. At
the end of the 17th century and the beginning of the 18th century it was
already common to argue that the main source of error lies in a bias or pre-
judgment. Either the pre-judgment that favors authority over argument, or the
pre-judgment that is based on haste and the inability to give a proposition it's
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due consideration.
Especially scripture and it's dogmatic explication is the object of this particular
stage of the Enlightenment. The second argument about the necessity of free
thought in the history of Christianity, is symptomatic for the attempts to look at
the Christian religion without this dogmatic prejudgment, the attempts to
understand tradition in a proper manner, i.e. without prejudgment and based
on rational principles. The simple fact that the authority of Scripture is
connected to the historical process in which such a Scripture came to be,
makes this a difficult strategy. Whatever is written is difficult to contradict.
The written word is available to all and functions like a piece of evidence. It
takes a special as acute to let go of a pre-judgment in favor of the sacred word
and to devise a reading strategy that is able to distinguish between mere
opinion and truth. In other words, the possible truth of the tradition is
dependent upon the credibility it retains under the scrutiny of reason. That in
fact replaces the principle of tradition and authority (who has the right to be
believed) with the principle of reason (who has the argument to be accepted)
as the final authority of all truth. We are able to know more than those who
have written before us. That insight demythologizes the written word. That is
the birth place of all historical research of the 19th and 20th century. Tradition
is the object of critique and no longer a method of finding the truth.
One can make the argument that this separation between the autonomy of
reason as the standard of all truth on the one hand and the kind of truth that
resides in biblical texts, dogma and religious traditions on the other is made
too sharply. It tends to make reason into an absolute faculty, and ignores the
reasonability of traditions by defining them as mere opinions without
argument, defining them as nothing but pre-judgments. As you will know, this
is what Hans-George Gadamer called the Enlightenment's pre-judgment about
pre-judgment. It presupposes in a way that all presuppositions are pre-
judgments and as such opinions without argument and therefore by default
without truth.

MEDROSO
How can I look into them? I'm no Jacobin.

BOLDMIND
You're a man, and that's enough.

The next element of importance seems small and insignificant at first. When
Medroso states that he cannot look into the other religions and other dogmas a
declaration in a way that he cannot do comparative religion - he gives as his
argument that he cannot do so because he is not a Jacobin (Dominican). That
implies two things: (1) that only the Dominicans have the authority to
investigate dissenting opinions and therefore Medroso is not allowed to do so.
And (2) that any research into these dissenting opinions would have to be like
that of the Dominicans, i.e. with the purpose of defending the own truth
against the evil outsider.
And then Boldmind states: "You're a man and that's enough." Isn't it
wonderful? Boldmind is here referring to now to the fact that Medroso has the
authority and the competence to examine other religions from his own
perspective - i.e. the search for eternal life - simply because he is a human
being! In the world of the Dominicans the notion of humanity means nothing in
itself. It's the universal category of human beings in distinction to animals and
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plants. The universal category is meaningless, the specific distinction on the
basis of nationality and faith are important however. And now the word "man"
is used to denote something which has a meaning in itself. Humanity is the
basis for the faculty of reason, the search for eternal happiness and the
rational means to inquire into that is not any kind of particular procedure,
already embedded in human institutions that grant a full or limited permit for
the use of reason. (It is forbidden to think!) Now the use of reason is an
universal trait of mankind, and therefore something like a basic right with
which you are born. As Boldmind says: "You are born with a mind." The second
image he uses stresses even more that the use of reason is not something
relative and cultural, and certainly not derived from institutional authorities.
His "wings are clipped, but they can grow back." Not being able to use reason
as autonomous, individual and free is a cultural deformation that can be
undone. "Every man can tutor himself." Note also that Voltaire does not say
that he, Medroso is himself fully responsible for this. Kant seems to imply that
it is, the tutelage is humanity's own fault, both collectively and individually.
Well, I should say, he doesn't say that yet, but he reserves that for the final two
lines.

MEDROSO
Alas! You are more man than I.

BOLDMIND
It rests entirely with you to learn to think. You're born with a mind. You are a bird in the cage of the
Inquisition: the Holy Office has clipped your wings, but they can grow back. Whoever doesn't know
geometry can learn it; every man can tutor himself: it's shameful to put your soul in the hands of those to
whom you'd never trust your money. Dare to think for yourself.

MEDROSO
They say that if everyone thought for himself, there would be a strange confusion.

Boldmind's ultimate appeal is expressed in a shape that we can easily

recognize: "Dare to think for yourself." What is the meaning of that statement?
Is it any different from Kant's appeal: "Have the courage to use your own
reason?" Is thinking and "using your reason" the same? One might think that
the difference cannot be too great, unless there is a difference between
"thinking for yourself" (stressing the individuality) and "using one's reason."
The latter has the tension between the universal scope of reason and its
individual use, that the former has not, or not to the same degree. It seems to
me, because both are just motto's, we can treat them as expressing the same
basic idea, if we understand that we need to ask many questions before we can
determine what it means exactly. For now we can be satisfied that the
difference is primarily one of accent or stress.
That the stress in Voltaire's text lies on the individuality of thought, can be
deduced especially from Medroso's reply. "They", that is the Dominicans or the
authorities of the Pope and so on, "they say that if everyone thought for
himself, there would be a strange confusion." Now what does this mean? A
confusion implies a lack of clarity, an erroneous attribution of the
characteristics of one to the other, a wiping out of differences. One would not
be able to know clearly and in advance how anyone thinks, we would have to
ask to find out. So a confusion in that sense would be basically a lack of
knowledge, an uncertainty about people's thought.
Why however would it be a "strange" confusion? Does that mean that the

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confusion, this lack of knowledge would make people to be like strangers to
one another? Is it a confusion of "strangeness" because even if we're to find
out what other people think, we would not arrive at a common understanding?
It is easy to see that some level of consensus is necessary for many communal
enterprises. Maybe that is why Boldmind's answer uses the realm of aesthetic
appreciation to make the point that there is no such thing as a "strange
confusion."

BOLDMIND
On the contrary. When one attends a play or ballet, everyone freely states his opinion, and the peace is not
disturbed. But if some arrogant patron of a bad poet tried to force all people of taste to find good what
seemed bad to them, well, whistles and boos would arise, and the two parties might start throwing fruit at
each others' heads, as once happened in London. Such are the tyrants of the mind who have brought about
a good share of the world's sufferings. We are not happy in England until each freely enjoys the right to
express his opinion.

MEDROSO
We're also very peaceful at Lisbon, where no one can express his.

We get an answer to two of our questions in the response made by Boldmind

here. He says here: "When one attends a play or ballet, everyone freely states
his opinion." To "think for yourself" is like having an individual opinion, an
individual appreciation of beauty e.g. It has nothing to do with science, but with
appreciation! One cannot force people into accepting the value judgment of
somebody in particular, that would be arrogance. This right to voice one's
opinion freely does not stand at the same level as voicing dissent with Christian
dogma or the government policy. Boldmind's appeal to a free cultural
exchange on aesthetic issues is just an example of how differing opinions
might be expressed without the loss of peace and it serves as a paradigm for
all dissent. But is it an effective argument?
The point of the argument is not lost on Medroso. Surely, even in Catholic
countries one could express an opinion about a play or a piece of literature.
Medroso understands that the exempla e that is used by Boldmind is a
paradigm. 'No one can express" an opinion about anything in Portugal, yet
there is also peace. A peace then, presumably, without the "strange confusion",
implying the maintenance of social order. So Boldmind's first argument,
entailing the use of aesthetic dissent as a paradigm and arguing that peace is
maintained, does not convince. At best the argument would show that dissent
does not necessarily lead to peace, but it does not show that the opposite, the
prohibition of public dissent, leads to violence or disorder.

BOLDMIND
You are peaceful, but you aren't happy. That is the peace of the galley-slaves, who row in cadence and in
silence.

MEDROSO
You believe then that my soul is in the galleys?

If the word peace is sufficiently ambiguous to allow for Medroso's defense,

Boldmind needs to resort to a further argument: okay, he says, maybe in some
sense you can call this "peace" as well, but you're certainly not happy. It's just
the peace of slavery. It's about everyone doing the same thing and obeying the
same authorities and about being silent. (Remember Kant praising Frederick
the Great for saying: argue about everything as much as you like but obey.
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Here the opposite is portrayed as: Don't argue and obey. Kant seems to have
thought that Fredericks "enlightened" rule was sufficient progress. Was that an
expression of faith in the power of public conversation alone to ultimately
change things toward the Enlightened Age?)
Obviously this comparison of Medroso's situation with galley-slaves, is lost on
him. From the perspective of the Enlightenment the inability to voice dissent,
the prohibition of free speech and the like is ultimately an issue of basic human
freedom. Such a situation canot be condoned, there is no justification for it,
what it needs is liberation, deliverance.

BOLDMIND
Yes. I should like to deliver it.

MEDROSO
But if I feel fine in the galleys?

BOLDMIND
In that case, you deserve to be there.

What if someone accepts the power of tradition and does not want to be
delivered? The ultimate proof that the Enlightenment is an expression of
freedom, is that it cannot use force to achieve its goals. In Plato's Parable of
the Cave the philosopher's education is likened to a forced liberation from the
shackles inside the Cave. The force referred to of course is the force of
argument. What fi someone does not want to be free? From the perspective of
the Enlightenment it can only be said, what Boldmind says here at the end:
Then you deserve to be there. He does not say: then you have chosen to be
like this. The choice to be a slave is not a free choice at all. It is an
acquiescence in how things are. Nevertheless, there can be no forced
deliverance from such a state.
The apparent contradiction is not resolved we must say. How is it possible to
understand that one is not free and nevertheless to 'feel fine" in that context?
This ability to accept servitude is actually a scandalous one for the
Enlightenment project. How is it possible that men seem to choose freely - on
the assumption that every human condition is ultimately a matter of free
choice - and yet elect to be in a situation in which this very freedom is not
exercised in free speech and public dissent? What can only be described as
hypocrisy from the point of view of the Enlightenment, is actually the preferred
condition of men like Medroso - even if they do express fear as one of their
motivating factors. The opposition, strongly expressed in Kant's Practical
reason, between the egotistical private interest that make us seek pleasure
and fulfillment of our desires, is put in opposition to the "true" interests of a
person, seeking the common good and universal reason, including the true
interests of others. The notion of the autonomy of Reason actually demands
the idea that autonomy is defined as liberation from basic emotions like fear
and pleasure. It involves the identification of humanity with reason. Maybe that
implies the inability of understanding humanity at all.

2010 © Robbert A. Veen

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Original notes on the translated text of Voltaire.

(1) Medroso: In Spanish, medroso means fearful, timid, cowardly.

(2) a familiar of the Inquisition: Witches were thought to have cats or
other animals as their "familiars," which did their bidding or kept them
informed of goings-on of interest. But some of the saints, too, had famous
familiars. (A case in point, mentioned soon, is Saint Anthony of Padua, who is
often depicted in the company of his pig.) One implication, then, is that
Medroso is a kind of trained dog or bewitched pet of the Inquisition. Another is
that he is an informer. Another is that he is "not his own man" but a tool, not a
being with the dignity of an autonomous person, but a creature whose identity
reduces to being "one who does his master's bidding."
Inquisition: An investigative and judicial body for the prosecution of heresy,
founded in the Thirteenth Century by Pope Gregory IX. Heretics who refused to
recant were handed over to the civil (that is, secular) authority for
punishment. The original Inquisition was directed against the Walsensians in
southern France, but was revived during the Counter-Reformation in the
struggle against Protestantism. In this form it is known as the "Roman
Inquisition." In the meanwhile, the Spanish monarchs had persuaded the pope
to commission an inquisition there, to root out Jewish and muslim converts to
Christianity but suspected of adhering to their traditional faiths in secret. The
"Spanish Inquisition" (of which the Portuguese Inquisition was an off-shoot) was
especially famed for its impatience with due process and its predilection for
torture as an interrogation technique.
(3) the Dominicans: members of the monastic Order of St. Dominic. It was
generally Dominicans who, from the beginning, were commissioned by the
popes to administer the various inquisitions.
(4) the Moors: These were the Arab muslim rulers of much of the Spanish
peninsula for several centuries. Their last stronghold fell to the forces of
Ferdinand and Isabella in 1492 -- the same year as Columbus's first voyage.
(5) Jacobins: Here, a Dominican, and by extension an activist in the
Inquisition (whether lay or clerical). The term jacobin had this meaning only in
France, however, deriving from the fact that the first Dominican convent in
Paris was in the Rue St. Jacques. It was to the Dominican Order that Pope
Gregory IX entrusted the Inquisition, Later in the Eighteenth Century, during
the French Revolution, the meaning of the term there shifted to something
quite different still: the most radical faction of the National Assembly (because
this faction met as a caucus in a coffeehouse located in the same Rue St.
Jacques).
(6) Cicero: Marcus Tullius Cicero (106-43 BC) was one of the greatest of the
Roman senators. He lived towards the very end of the Republican period
before it turned into the Empire under the Caesars (first Julius and then his
adopted nephew Augustus). Cicero's writings -- including his addresses to the
Roman Senate in several famous trials -- were considered models of Latin
argument, and from the Renaissance forward were much favored as texts for
study in the schools. Cicero was also the author of a number of philosophical
books, particularly on ethical matters. His pagan stoicism was served as one
impressive model of pagan virtue, much admired by Voltaire and other
partisans of the idea that it was possible to be a non-Christian and be a noble
man. Cicero vehemently opposed what he saw as the subversion of republican
political institutions in his day, wrought by the cunning of military strongmen

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like Julius Ceasar and Augustus. He was eventually assassinated by the forces
of Marcus Antonius in the power struggle that turned into the Civil War which
brought an end to real republican government. The fact that Medroso has
never even heard of Cicero means that the Inquisition has successfully
prevented the Renaissance from ever taking hold in Portugal, or rolling it back
if it ever made any successful inroads in the first place.
(7) Tiberius: Tiberius Julius Caesar Augustus (43 BC - AD 37) was the
successor (14-37) to Augustus as Roman Emperor. His reign thus
encompasses the career of Jesus. Return.