James Fitzjames Stephen
Part of a Series on the Philosophy of History
Today is the 194th anniversary of the birth of Sir James Fitzjames Stephen (03 March 1829–11 March 1894), 1st Baronet, KCSI (which means “Knight Commander Star of India,” a chivalric order founded by Queen Victoria), who was born in London on this day in 1829.
Almost everyone has heard of John Stuart Mill, but relatively few people know who James Fitzjames Stephen was. Why is this? Why are Mill’s works considered to be classics, but it is difficult to find a copy of Stephen’s Liberty, Equality, Fraternity? This is a good opportunity to examine that annoying contemporary phrase “on the right side of history,” typically pronounced with a smug sense of self-aggrandizement, because the speaker always believes himself to be among those on the right side of history. The short answer to why John Stuart Mill is remembered, and his books are considered classics, while James Fitzjames Stephen is not as well remembered, and his books are not available in mass market paperback editions, is that John Stuart Mill was on the right side of history, while James Fitzjames Stephen was on the wrong side of history. But is it really that simple?
Does history have a single, unilinear direction, so that when you align yourself with the direction of history you are thus on the “right side” of history, and if you fail to align yourself with the direction of history you are thus on the “wrong side” of history? This touches on the problem of the directionality of history, which I have discussed especially in relation to Hugh Trevor-Roper’s “purposive movement” criterion for historicity. However, for purposes of analytical clarity we should distinguish the problem of directionality in history from the problem of purpose in history; even if the two always or mostly coincide, we can see that they two ideas are different in subtle ways.
Historians and philosophers of history today tend to dislike discussions of the unidirectionality of history, since this brings up the old problem of linear vs. cyclical history, and no one wants to take up this hackneyed old theme, but, as I have pointed out elsewhere, one of the reasons the discussion is widely disliked is because it has never neen definitively dispatched, and it has never been definitively dispatched because it has never received a fully satisfactory formulation. The problems addressed by the distinction between linear and cyclical history remain, but they are pushed beneath the surface because no one knows how to discuss these problems without entering into the same old circular discussion from which there seems no escape — in other words, the discussion itself looks a lot like cyclical history.
It is the unusual advocate for cyclical history who asserts the history is repetitive even down to the smallest details, as is memorably described by Nietzsche:
“How, if some day or night a demon were to sneak after you into your loneliest loneliness and say to you, ‘This life as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to live once more and innumerable times more; and there will be nothing new in it, but every pain and every joy and every thought and sigh and everything immeasurably small or great in your life must return to you — all in the same succession and sequence — even this spider and this moonlight betrveen the trees, and even this moment and I myself. The eternal hourglass of existence is turned over and over, and you with it, a dust grain of dust.’ Would you not throw yourself down and gnash your teeth and curse the demon who spoke thus? Or did you once experience a tremendous moment when you would have answered him, ‘You are a god, and never have I heard anything more godly’.”
Usually what we mean by cyclical history is that contingencies like a particular spider and moonlight between the trees is stripped away, and we are left with — what? Is there anything left of history when we strip away all the contingencies, or is history nothing but contingencies? Is history, as has been said, just one damn thing after another? Here is the point at which the idea of cyclical history seems to coincide with purposive movement, since “one damn thing after another” implies the absence of purpose, whereas a succession and sequence of events can exhibit purpose and rise above mere episodes that follow one upon the other without any thread of connection.
Suppose that there is some remainder after the contingencies of time are stripped away, and we have history in its essentials without addition. Suppose further than in our present history John Stuart Mill appears as the prophet of the ideals by which we live today, so that Mill is lionized while Stephen is forgotten. Mill was not only aligned with history, he pointed the way for history, while others pointing in other directions are shown to be false prophets. And yet. And yet. Let us now suppose that the society embodying the ideals eloquently given voice by John Stuart Mill runs its full course, declines, decays, and is replaced by another society. Suppose that this later society does not share the ideals of John Stuart Mill, but rather the ideas of James Fitzjames Stephen. Stephen’s books are excavated from mouldering libraries, and he is hailed as a prophet of this society, and, since he saw further into the future than Mill, Stephen was the greater visionary.
History has not yet come to an end, and, if we do not annihilate ourselves, it will not come to an end for a very long time. In the long future history that awaits our species, there may be societies to come in which thinkers forgotten today are seen as the authentic expositors of some ideal that is only, with the society in question, at long last brought to actuality. This process can continue for as long as civilizations rise and fall, and there is an historical record to which these future civilizations can refer to understand the antedents of their separate ideals. “We read to know that we are not alone,” is a quote that has been attributed to C. S. Lewis. Societies also maintain libraries of past literatures to know that they are not alone, i.e., to know that they are not the only people to have held the ideals they espouse — to know that they are not alone in history.
We can go father than this, however. We can posit a sequence of societies in which first Mill is lionized, then Stephen, then Mill again, then Stephen again, and so on, world without end. Amen. This is cyclical history. The various societies might be quite different in detail, and certainly they can be distinguished by their position in history, but if we were to reduce societies to the ideals they hold, then societies are cyclical when their ideals cycle back and forth from one ideal to another. Is there any “right side” of history to be on when the rise and fall of civilizations exhibits one side and then the other? Of course, we can pull back a bit on our claims and still defend them. We can say that someone is on the “right side” of history when they are aligned with the present trajectory of history; being aligned with something not yet in development as a social force does not count. But what is this other than a measure of conformity? Do we want conformity to be our moral yardstick? I don’t.
So what were Stephen’s ideals, and how did they differ from John Stuart Mill? To give some flavor of Stephen’s criticism of John Stuart Mill and utilitarianism I will quote a single paragraph from Chapter VI of Liberty, Equality, Fraternity. Like many of the great 19th century writers (Mill included), Stephen’s sentences and paragraphs can be quite long, but it is worth the read:
“I now come to examine the last of the three doctrines of the Democratic creed — Fraternity. That upon some terms and to some extent it is desirable that men should wish well to and should help each other is common ground to every one. At the same time I cannot but think that many persons must share the feeling of disgust with which I for one have often read and listened to expressions of general philanthropy. Such love is frequently an insulting intrusion. Lord Macaulay congratulated England on having been hated by Barere. To hate England was, he observed, the one small service which Barere could do to the country. I know hardly anything in literature so nauseous as Rousseau’s expressions of love for mankind when read in the light of his confessions. ‘Keep your love to yourself, and do not daub me or mine with it,’ is the criticism which his books always suggest to me. So far from joining in Mr. Swinburne’s odd address to France, ‘Therefore thy sins which are many are forgiven thee because thou hast loved much,’ it appears to me that the French way of loving the human race is the one of their many sins which it is most difficult to forgive. It is not love that one wants from the great mass of mankind, but respect and justice. It would be pedantic to attempt anything like a definition of love, but it may be said to include two elements at least first, pleasure in the kind of friendly intercourse, whatever It may be, which is appropriate to the position of the persons who love each other; and next, a mutual wish for each other’s happiness. If two people are so constituted that such intercourse between them as is possible is not agreeable to either party, or if their views of what constitutes happiness are conflicting, I do not see how they can love each other. Take, on the one side, a Roman Catholic priest passionately eager for the conversion of heretics, and deeply convinced that the greatest happiness of a heretic is that of being converted to the Roman Catholic religion. Take, on the other hand, a person who has long since made up his mind against the Roman Catholic religion and wishes for no further discussion upon the subject. The priest’s love to the heretic if he happened to love him would be a positive nuisance to the heretic. The priest’s society would be no pleasure to the heretic, and that which the priest would regard as the heretic’s happiness, the heretic would regard as misery.”
While this is from 150 years ago, the essential conflict it traces is a fresh as the day when Stephen wrote this. Moreover, I share Stephen’s disgust with expressions of general philanthropy and his nauseous reaction to Rousseau’s expressions of love for humanity. Anyone who has lived in the world without being sheltered knows how superficial and hollow such proclamations are. In so saying, I know that I am in a minority, and that one of the most prevalent forms of virtue signaling is to engage in expressions of general philanthropy. Perhaps that means I am on the wrong side of history. So be it. But when a society constructed upon the lies of generalized philanthropy, which correspond to no genuine human emotion, well and truly fails at an enormous cost in human suffering and misery, being on the right side of history as formerly defined will mean being complicit in this suffering and misery.
What is the foundation of Stephen’s untimely views? This is a complicated question and should be derived from a thorough knowledge of his works, which I do not possess. However, I want to make a comment about this, because I think the connection between his fundamental philosophical views and his social views are also untimely, because unexpected. In 1875 Stephen wrote the paper “Necessary Truth,” in which he made the following explicit claims near the end:
- All our knowledge comes to us througli faculties each and all of which are constantly liable to error which we cannot in all cases detect.
- All our knowledge is expressed in language which, when closely examined, may be resolved into metaphors more or less inappropriate to the matter in hand, and capable of being misunderstood and perverted by any one who looks at it from a point of view a little different from our own.
- All our knowledge includes an element of memory or anticipation, each of which is in the highest degree fallible.
- All our anticipations involve an assumption utterly incapable of proof, that the future will resemble our present conception of the past.
- Many of our anticipations involve an assumption which is probably false, that no new forces with which we are at present unacquainted will come into play and affect the results which we anticipate.
This is a thorough-going statement of fallibilism, which points to epistemic humility. I think it is important to point this out, as the heirs of Mill today who claim the label of being “progressive” also style themselves as being entirely in the spirit of scientific fallibilism (not even claiming to be “right,” they hope only to be “less wrong,” and what could be more humble than only wanting to be less wrong?). The heirs of Mill, then, would be likely to characterize their adversaries as being founded on a kind of epistemic hubris. With Stephen, we can see this is clearly not the case.
The idea is that the heirs of Mill rightly claim the epistemic humility of science; Mill and science are on the right side of history, therefore Mill’s adversaries and epistemic hubris must be on the wrong side of history. It may also be supposed that those forces that are not aligned with the preferred directionality of history must be aligned with each other. Thus you must count yourself with the angels or with the devils, tertium non datur. Is this is helpful way to understand history? I think not.
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