Scepticism of Scepticism: On Mendelssohn’s Philosophy of Common Sense

In a seemingly contradictory manner, Moses Mendelssohn steadfastly argued for classical metaphysical postulates such as God, providence and immortality on the one hand, and held a sceptical approach towards metaphysics on the other. This tension is resolved through the appraisal of Mendelssohn’s position as sceptical of what he took to be exceedingly speculative thinking in general, and the overly abstruse arguments sceptical philosophers have used to attack commonsensical truths, which he depicted as simple and self-evident, in particular. At first sight, Mendelssohn’s scepticism of scepticism and its turn towards a philosophy that emphasizes not only the trustworthiness but also the truthfulness of commonsensical thinking, seems to radically subvert scepticism. Yet, Pyrrho’s philosophy, widely perceived to be the foundation of the sceptical tradition in Western philosophy, also very much relied on common sense, a reliance which suggests it might have tacitly adhered to the epistemological principles Mendelssohn explicitly advocates. Rather than subverting scepticism, Mendelssohn’s scepticism of scepticism therefore reflects a characteristically moderate and nuanced approach, one offering a profound reappraisal of what scepticism is in thought, and what it ought to be in life. A striking common characteristic of philosophers advocating common sense in their philosophies is that their common sense is of a rather uncommon kind. After all, those who these philosophers themselves would have considered to be common people, do not necessarily begin to think commonsensically about the world after having reflected on the possibility of rather more metaphysically exotic or otherwise esoterically laden perspectives. The “common” common sense is thought of as being of a more primary kind, something akin perhaps to a healthy reflex of the mind which leads it, when facing reality, to apodictically accept the obvious. While Berkeley, for example, famously claimed to “side in all things with the mob,”1 and emphasized the importance of “the high-road of plain common sense,”2 such healthy minded reflexes seem not to have acted on the Bishop of Cloyne when he embarked on the kind of speculation which would eventually lead him to his immaterialism. Both the path and its goal, after all, are commonly untrodden. So even if Berkeley is telling us that philosophy’s role is to lead us back to common sense, it does not make the enterprise itself commonsensical. Nor indeed, does it make the conclusion his philosophy and others present as commonsensical, genuinely so in any meaningful sense of the word. Philosophers’ conception of what is commonsensical could, and seems indeed to reliably have been, rather different than what would be reflected by, * PhD candidate and teaching fellow at the Department of Jewish Philosophy, Tel Aviv University. Email: jeremy fogel@gmail.com 1 George Berkeley, “Commonplace Book,” in The Works of George Berkeley Bishop of Cloyne, 4. vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1901), vol. 1, 25. 2 George Berkeley, “A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge,” in The Works of George Berkeley Bishop of Cloyne, 4 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1901), vol. 2, 328. MELILAH MANCHESTER JOURNAL OF JEWISH STUDIES 12 (2015) 54 say, the beliefs shared by any community larger than the philosopher in question and his immediate circle. It is therefore perhaps not surprising that while Berkeley seems to have been genuinely convinced common sense leads to his immaterialism, Moore, in his “A Defense of Common Sense,” exemplified propositions he holds to be commonsensically “quite certainly true” with “there are and have been many material things.”3 While commonsense philosophers might very well suggest positions held more or less only by themselves, it is also at least possible some such thinkers will propose propositions or conceptions that do genuinely reflect an understanding common to humanity or, at the very least, to a significant segment of it. Yet, even if the propositions or ideas presented as commonsensical are in fact genuinely so, the common sense of commonsense philosophers remains of a different kind because it is reflective. Most people would commonsensically accept, for example, the chair for what it is and use it appropriately. Some people, probably not very many, would find a reason to doubt the chair’s existence, reflect profoundly on its nature and attributes, or seek out the most judicious understanding of the chair’s being. If a philosopher ultimately reaches the conclusion that the chair is best accepted uncritically, that the common people are right about the chair, she does so after an uncommon reflective process. Though common to all commonsense philosophers, this reflective process differs among them. This paper will explore the sceptical reasoning behind Mendelssohn’s philosophy of common sense and seek to understand why it lead Mendelssohn to endorse what he thought of as commonsensical thinking. I will therefore be arguing that in spite of his reputation as a dogmatic pre-critical philosopher and his steadfast conviction in several undeniably metaphysical postulates, Mendelssohn actually holds a rather sceptical approach towards metaphysics in general, and towards what he took to be the overly abstruse arguments sceptical philosophers have used to attack commonsensical truths in particular. While at first sight, this scepticism of scepticism and its relapse into common sense might seem to radically subvert scepticism, the paper will argue that the relation between common sense and scepticism is by no means of a simply contradictory nature. Accordingly, in basing his acceptance of commonsensical beliefs on a sceptical appraisal of metaphysics, Mendelssohn provides not only a characteristically nuanced understanding of both what scepticism is in the context of philosophical thinking and what it ought to be existentially, but also reflects the complex relation of sceptical thinking and common sense which has accompanied scepticism since its dawn in ancient Greek philosophy. I. The Sceptical Metaphysician In his Discourses on Metaphysics, Leibniz states that “the conception of God which is the most common and the most full of meaning is expressed well enough in the words: God is an absolutely perfect being.” 4 He thereby suggests a theological position enthusiastically adopted by Mendelssohn. Indeed, given Mendelssohn’s commonsensical sensitivities, it is 3 George Edward Moore, “A Defense of Common Sense,” in Philosophical Papers (New York: Routledge, 2010), 59. 4 Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Discourse on Metaphysics, in Discourse on Metaphysics; Correspondence with Arnaud; Monadology, trans. George R. Montgomery (La Salle: The Open Court Publishing Company, 1973), §I, 3. SCEPTICISM OF SCEPTICISM (FOGEL) 55 not surprising that his notion of God reflects characterizations that are widely perceived to be commonly held; “Maximum perfection,” “Maximum Good” and the “Maximum wisdom” are therefore “inseparable attributes of the All Perfect being, without which nothing can exist.”5 These are the most simple, commonly held truths reflecting the reality of the divine. The fact of the matter is, Mendelssohn repeatedly points out, that the reality of such an all perfect being, all knowing and supremely good, is widely accepted by sincere human beings of all cultures, even if at first sight it does not always seem that way.6 God is for Mendelssohn both the primal cause and the absolute best.7 Accordingly, the ground of actuality is supreme goodness.8 A critical implication is that God’s providence is complete; Mendelssohn’s Leibnizian God, could simply not have created beings whose happiness he would not have ensured. His providence is therefore expressed primordially in the reality of the best of possible worlds, wherein we are all directed towards the most supreme good of felicity; “if it is true that an all-good and all-wise being has brought us into existence, then by virtue of His unalterable attributes, he could not have fixed our destiny otherwise than for happiness.”9 Mendelssohn not only believed God created man for eternal happiness or felicity,10 but also that the very universe was created for that experience to be realized, or as his Socrates explains, “so that there are reasonable beings, which progress from step to step, gradually increase in perfection, and in this increase may find their felicity.” 11 Furthermore, as immortality is absolutely necessary for this gradual increase in perfection felicity consists of, it would be inconceivable that “these beings stop dead completely still in the middle of their course, not only stand still, but are all at once be pushed back into the abyss, and should lose all the fruits of their efforts.”12 In Morning Hours, after stating that God must have destined us for happiness, he adds that “if this happiness cannot come to pass if the human being is not destined to live on eternally, then this annihilation is in direct conflict with God’s recognized attributes.”13 Mendelssohn, accordingly, was not merely absolutely convinced of the existence of a providential God and an afterlife, he felt these to be indispensable for human felicity in general, and his own in particular. As he put it in Jerusalem: Without God, providence, and a future life, love of our fellow man is but an innate weakness, and benevolence is little more than a foppery into which we seek to lure one another so that the 5 Moses Mendelssohn, Phädon or On the Immortality of the Soul, trans. Patricia Noble (New York: Peter Lang, 2007), 80. German text in Moses Mendelssohn, Gesammelte Schriften: Jubiläumsausgabe (henceforth JubA), ed. Alexander Altmann et al. (Stuttgardt-Bad Cannstatt: F. Frommann, 1971), 3.1:52. 6 In Jerusalem, for example, Mendelssohn shows how a foreign visitor to Dessau’s temple of providence could honestly mistake, were he not to recognize our alphabetic script for what it