The liberal tradition in question: Anthropology and Epistemology in the thought of George Eliot and John Henry Newman.

摘要

George Eliot and John Henry Newman are centrally interested in the same Victorian and modern problem: Is it possible to take a unified view of human life within the dominant intellectual milieu of liberalism? In order to frame this question, I offer in the first chapter a brief intellectual history of modern liberalism, primarily as it unfolded in Great Britain. While of course the account touches upon various political questions, my primary interest is in the anthropology and epistemology developed by the tradition in its two primary strains, classical and progressive liberalism. The second and third chapters then present accounts of George Eliot's anthropology and epistemology, respectively, both of which strain against certain elements in the liberal tradition, yet remain within its boundaries. Her anthropology I present as primarily defined by the influence of culture, the force of the emotions, and the sheer fact of non-teleological evolution. Her epistemology I explicate in terms of her peculiar views of myth, of science, and of the possibility of progress. In the fourth and fifth chapters, I then discuss John Henry Newman's anthropology and epistemology, thinking of them in light of Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics and Rhetoric. Newman's anthropology I address in relation to Aristotelian epsilonnuepsilonrhogammaepsiloniotaalpha, etathetaо&sfgr;, and alpharhochialphaiota. His epistemology I lay out in terms of probability, thetarhoоnuetasigmaiota&sfgr;, epsilonpiiotasigmatauetamueta and enthymeme. Throughout the Newman chapters I continually refer his ideas back to Eliot's. My conclusion is that Newman achieves a kind of anthropological and epistemological unity unavailable to Eliot because the Aristotelian metaphysical structure he accepts as underlying ethical character allows him to take seriously all kinds of phenomena she considered unavailable or dubious. Because he accepts a certain amount of implicit ethical structure, Newman is able to describe an every-day, unitary epistemology based on Aristotelian practical reasoning, while Eliot's skepticism forces her to fall back on an undesirable vision of the ignorant masses, governed by an elite, knowledgeable few.