I. Guyau and Naturalism

In Guyau’s time there are important debates on the relation between ethics or moral philosophy and the new scientific insights into life. There are important dialogues and cross-fertilizations between German and French philosophy at this time, and for a number of thinkers in both Germany and France the concept of life becomes central as well as the meaning of naturalism and its application to moral phenomena; issues of egoism and altruism and of freedom and determinism. Modern naturalism holds the world of experience, the empirically given coherence of nature, to be the one reality.Footnote ⁵ It is accepted at this time that naturalism can assume different philosophical articulations. Three forms of naturalism are identified, which are idealism, materialism, and monism, and these are seen to generate three systems of thought: theism, atheism, and pantheism. Emerson, for example, was taken to be a representative of idealist naturalism.Footnote ⁶ Guyau writes succinctly on his naturalism as follows:

Guyau takes naturalism to consist in the scientific view that nature, together with the beings that compose it, make up the sum total of existence. The problems that confront the philosophical naturalist include determining the essential character of existence (for the likes of Guyau and Nietzsche this takes the form of developing a notion of ‘life’), ascertaining which mode of existence is most typical, and seeking to determine whether existence is material or mental, or perhaps both. The dominant view at the time is a double-aspect theory centred on the two inseparable correlatives of the subjective and the objective, or consciousness and motion (a view held, for example, by the likes of Taine and Théodule Ribot). The task is one of determining which one of these is the most original and primary, and this gives rise to the two main philosophical positions of idealism and materialism. Where idealism dissolves reality into thought (psychical existence is a matter of thinking, feeling, and willing, in which life is the subject of conscious effort), materialism accords consciousness and will a merely epiphenomenal status.

Guyau’s philosophical motivation for adopting a naturalistic approach is his rejection of what he sees as the limitations of idealism and materialism. Modern science, especially in evolutionary theory, offers a promising way of overcoming the limitations of idealism and materialism and offering a genuine naturalism. In fact, Guyau argues that the two aspects should be viewed as possessing a certain unity and the human mind needs to follow out the two lines to the point of their intersection: ‘We live in the universe, and the universe lives in us’ (ibid.: 481). Guyau refuses to choose between idealism or materialism simply because he thinks our knowledge of reality has a long way to go. There is a form of idealism that is least incompatible with the theory of evolution and the facts of both natural and human history and paying attention to these facts is Guyau’s primary concern in order to defeat transcendentalism. This kind of idealism also allows scope for the religious sentiment freed from mysticism and transcendence. The problem with materialism is its dependence on one of the most vague terms in science, namely, matter, and he recommends that materialism and atheism need to enlarge themselves to stop themselves from becoming dogmatic. A key question facing naturalists and evolutionists is whether the universe is made up solely of dead matter or whether the universe is everywhere alive. If we declare matter to be the sole reality analyzable into force, do we not then have to recognize that force is a primitive form of life? A problem that occupies a number of philosophical minds at this time, and in the decades to come (Bergson, for example), is the need to think of life and evolution in a way that is attentive to the problem of anthropomorphism. For example, when pure materialism results in an abstract mechanism is this actually the case with respect to reality or are we simply abbreviating reality so it accords with the laws and mechanisms of human logic and thought?Footnote ⁸ Guyau’s worry is that materialism, no less than idealism, belongs to the ‘poetry of metaphysics’ (ibid.: 490), and he thinks that both science and philosophy will make more progress if they now work with a concept of life and investigate it free of moral and metaphysical prejudices. This will have enormous implications, he thinks, for our understanding of morality and of the human animal as the moral animal: ‘Morality in the beginning is simply a more or less blind, unconscious, or at best, subconscious, power’ (ibid.: 496).

The basic principle of Guyau’s naturalism is the one established by modern science: man is not a separate being different to the rest of the world and the laws of life are the same from the top downwards on the ladder of life (Reference GuyauGuyau: 86; 73). Guyau’s appeal at the time was as the ‘Spinoza of France’. His aim was to promote a renewal of ethics in the face of the rise of mechanical materialism to a position of intellectual dominance in which there would be a focus on emotional and reflective activity in contrast to the exclusive attention paid to physical and external phenomena. The influence of Darwin and evolutionary theory on Guyau is immense. He makes frequent recourse to natural and sexual selection to explain various human phenomena, including moral ones such as courage for example. His appropriation of the Darwinian revolution for ethics is incisive and novel. In the preface to his book, Guyau expresses his chief concern:

Statements such as this resonate with the perspective Nietzsche develops in chapter five of Beyond Good and Evil, starting with aphorism 186 and its criticism of any and all attempts to establish ethics (der Ethik) on a real foundation (das eigentliche Fundament), which is something, Nietzsche claims, moralists have been seeking for thousands of years like the philosophers’ stone. For Guyau a scientific conception of morality cannot be expected to agree with the general conception of morality since the latter is composed for the most part of prejudices and feelings. Attempts have been made to do this in ethics, such as Bentham’s utilitarianism, but, Guyau argues, this has been at the expense of violating the facts. Moreover, for him the scientific spirit is ‘the revolutionary spirit’ since it is the enemy of all instinct, the dissolving force of everything nature has bound, and the struggle against the spirit of authority that is at the root of all societies and also that which is in the depths of conscience (132; 111). In following habits, instincts, and sentiments human beings, he argues, are obeying not some mysterious obligation, but ‘the most general impulses of human nature’ along with the ‘most just necessities of social life’ (4; 2).

Guyau’s thinking takes its bearings from a number of influences. On the one hand he is strongly influenced by naturalist and positivist developments and on the other by an idealist legacy. He has respect for three works of modern moral philosophy: Spencer’s Data of Ethics; Hartmann’s The Phenomenology of the Moral Conscience; and Alfred Fouillée’s The Criticism of Contemporary Moral Systems. Naturalism offers, to its credit, no unchangeable principles either with regards to obligation or sanction; idealism can furnish at best only hypothetical and not categorical imperatives. As one commentator on Guyau has noted, his goal is to provide a satisfactory holistic approach to modern ethics since positivist and idealists consider only one aspect, either the factual or the ideal, at the expense of the other. Thus a proper account of the dynamics of moral life must account for both moral ideas and moral actions.Footnote ⁹ For Guyau the reign of the absolute is over in the domain of ethics: ‘whatever comes within the order of facts is not universal, and whatever is universal is a speculative hypothesis’ (6; 4). For Guyau, a chief characteristic of the future conception of morality will be ‘moral variability’: ‘In many respects this conception will not only be autonomous but anomos’ (ibid.).Footnote ¹⁰ Spencer’s theory is to be preferred over Hartmann’s metaphysical monism, which posits the folly of the will to live and the duty of nirvana logically imposed by reason, since the latter rests on ‘transcendent speculations’ and the former can admit of an empirically demonstrable and verifiable plurality of values and value-systems. He departs from Spencer, however, in his conception of the conciliation of individual and social life, though the grounds on which he does this I am unable to explore here.

II. Guyau and Ethics

The absolute has changed its abode, passing from the domain of religion to that of ethics. Although this absolute may call forth a generous ‘enthusiasm’, it may also give rise to a certain kind of fanaticism – perhaps less dangerous than the religious kind but not without its dangers and inconveniences (62; 53). According to Guyau, we are witnessing today the decline of religious faith and this faith is being replaced by a dogmatic faith in morality. Although its fanaticism may be less dangerous than the religious sort it is equally menacing. The new voice is conscience and the new god is duty:

The belief in duty is so questionable because it is placed above the region in which both science and nature move (64; 55). Guyau maintains that all philosophies of duty and of conscience are, in effect, philosophies of common sense and are thus unscientific, be it the Scottish school of ‘common sense’ derived from Thomas Reid or neo-Kantianism with its assumption that the impulse of duty is of a different order to all other natural impulses. Phrases such as ‘conscience proclaims’, ‘evidence proves’, ‘common sense requires’ are as unconvincing as ‘duty commands’, ‘the moral law demands’. Guyau, by contrast, appeals to scientific truth, which he conceives not as brute fact but as a ‘bundle of facts’, a ‘synthesis’ not simply of the felt and the seen but of the explained and connected. What lies outside the range of our knowledge cannot have anything obligatory about it, and science needs to replace habituated faith. Like Nietzsche, Guyau recognises the paradox – we immoralists remain duty-bound and freely impose on ourselves a new, stern duty (Beyond Good and Evil 226). Guyau calls this ‘the duty of being consistent to ourselves, of not blindly solving an uncertain problem, of not closing an open question’. In short, the new method of doubt is not without its obligations and cannot be (68; 58). The extent to which Nietzsche empathized with Guyau on these issues cannot be underestimated.

Guyau asks, ‘what is the exact domain of science in moral philosophy (la morale)?’ (83; 71) Metaphysical speculation beyond the empirically given and ascertainable can be permitted in moral philosophy but the most important task is to work out how far an exclusively scientific conception of morality can go. Guyau inquires into the ends pursued by living creatures, including humankind. The unique and profound goal of action cannot, he argues, be ‘the good’ since this is a vague conception which, when opened up to analysis, dissolves into a metaphysical hypotheses. He also rules out duty and happiness: the former cannot be regarded as a primitive and irreducible principle, whilst the latter presupposes an advanced development of an intelligent being. Guyau, then, is in search of a natural aim of human action. The principle of hedonism, which argues for a minimum of pain and a maximum of pleasure, can be explained in evolutionary terms in which conscious life is shown to follow the line of the least suffering. To a certain extent Guyau accepts this thesis but finds it too narrow as a definition since it applies only to conscious life and voluntary acts, not to unconscious and automatic acts. To believe that most of our movements spring from consciousness, and that a scientific analysis of the springs of conduct has only to reckon with conscious motives, would mean being the dupe of an illusion (87; 74). Although he does not enter into the debate regarding the epiphenomenalism of consciousness, except to note it as a great debate in England (he refers to the likes of Henry Maudsley and T. H. Huxley), he holds that consciousness embraces a restricted portion of life and action; acts of consciousness have their origins in dumb instincts and reflex movements. Thus, the ‘constant end of action must primarily have been a constant cause of more or less unconscious movements. In reality, the ends are but habitual motive causes become conscious of themselves’ (ibid.).

Guyau contends that when conceived as the ‘systematization of moral evolution in humanity’ the science of ethics will come to exert an influence on this very evolution and alter the human animal in the process: ‘The gradual and necessary disappearance of religion and absolute morality has many … surprises in store for us. If there is nothing in this to terrify us, at least we must try to foresee them in the interest of science’ (135; 114). The chief problem thrown up by the new scientific approach to morality is the question Nietzsche also focuses on: why obedience? Why submission? The only form morality can assume for us today is as a critique of morality (Dawn preface; Kritische Studienausgabe 12 2 [191]; The Will to Power 399). This is perceived to be our problem today by Guyau because we are bound by an impulse or inward pressure which has only a natural character, not a mystical or metaphysical one that can be completed by any extra-social sanction (140; 117). Guyau’s conception of the future of morality differs from Nietzsche in placing the emphasis on an expansion of the social and sociability: ‘Develop your life in all directions, be an “individual” as rich as possible in intensive and extensive energy; therefore be the most social and sociable being’ (140-1; 117). Science can only offer ‘excellent hypothetical advice’ and not anything that would purport to be categorical or absolute. If we wish to promote the highest intensity of life, then we have to experiment, that is, if we take the realm of the practical seriously we must recognize that a scientific conception of morality cannot give a definite and complete solution of moral obligation (160; 134). A mature humanity is one that will decide for itself what it wishes to obligate itself to and on the basis of the insights secured by scientific knowledge (for example, placing the stress on questions of hygiene) and in terms of an experimentation:

Morality in the future will move in the direction not simply of autonomy but of anomy in which the differences between individuals and temperaments are taken into account along with the absence of fixed and apodictic laws and rules. Although Kant begins a revolution in moral philosophy by seeking to make the will autonomous, as opposed to bowing before a law external to itself, he stops halfway with the constraint of universality of the law. This supposes ‘that everyone must conform to a fixed type; that the ideal “reign” of liberty would be a regular and methodical government’ (ibid.). Guyau argues that true autonomy must produce individual originality and not universal uniformity. The future of intelligence demands that we allow for genuine pluralism of values and ideals freely chosen and rationally deliberated over, as opposed to a uniformity that can only annihilate intelligence. Guyau’s hope is that heterodoxy and non-conventional living will in the future become the true and universal religion or way of life. He envisages an end to penal justice (182; 154), which again brings him remarkably close to Nietzsche who expresses the desire to restore innocence to becoming and purify psychology, morality, history, and nature of the concepts of guilt and punishment (The Will to Power, section 765). Moreover, his championing of a ‘truly scientific and philosophic mind’ as one which does not entitle itself to possession of ‘the whole truth’ and whose only faith is that of continual ‘searching’ brings Guyau close to the free spirit Nietzsche celebrates in aphorism 347 of The Gay Science as the enemy of fanaticism (170; 143).

Ethics concerns itself with achieving harmony between the two spheres of existence, unconscious and conscious, and this may reside in living life in ‘the most intensive and extensive possible’ so as to increase the force of life (245; 209). In the sphere of life we necessarily deal with ‘antinomies’ (conflicts, contestations, etc.); the moralist is always tempted to resolve them once and for all by appealing to a law superior to life: ‘an intelligible, eternal, supernatural law’ (ibid.). But we need to give up making this appeal to such a law. The only possible rule for an exclusively scientific moral philosophy is that it is a more complete and larger life that is able to regulate a less complete and smaller life. Again, we find this echoed in Nietzsche when he writes in the 1886 preface to volume one of Human, all too Human that it is necessary, ‘to grasp the necessary injustice in every for and against … life itself is conditioned by the sense of perspective and its injustice’. The greatest injustice is to be found in a state ‘where life has developed at its smallest, narrowest, and neediest’. Nietzsche wishes to aid the cause of what he calls the ‘higher, greater, and richer’ life.

III. Contra Kant

With respect to Kant, Guyau notes, like philosophical predecessors such as Hegel, the formalist character of his ethics. With its stress on the absolute character of the imperative independent of the idea of its object and application, such an ethics makes appeal to natural or empirical facts virtually worthless since it is always possible to find an answer by appealing to the distinction between the alleged intention behind the act and the act itself: ‘If the act is practically harmful, the intention may have been morally disinterested, and that is all that the moral philosophy of Kant demands’ (57; 48). Furthermore, the good intention of the feeling of obligation in Kant must make an appeal to a supra-sensible reality. Guyau corrects Kant on this point:

Guyau points out that the feeling of obligation is not moral but sensible, that is, the moral sentiment is, as Kant himself concedes, pathological. Kant’s position is distinctive in holding this sentiment to be aroused by the mere form of the moral law and not its subject matter. This generates a mystery, as Kant fully acknowledges: an intelligible and supra-natural law generates a pathological and natural sentiment, namely, respect. How does a pure idea that contains nothing sensible produce within us a sensation of pleasure and pain? Kant acknowledges that he cannot explain why and how the universality of a maxim, and consequently morality, interests us.Footnote ¹¹

Guyau cannot see any reason a priori why we should connect sensible pleasure or pain to a law that would, hypothetically, be suprasensible. Equally, can duty be detached from the character and qualities of the things we have to do and the actual people to whom we have obligations? Like Hegel, Guyau appeals to ‘social life’ (what Hegel calls Sittlichkeit) as the context in which duties and obligations find their sense. The ‘moral law’ can only be a ‘social law’; just as we are not free to get outside the universe, so we are not free (in our thinking) to get outside society (232-3; 198). Moreover, even if we were to suppose that the universal, qua universal, produces in us a logical satisfaction this itself remains ‘a satisfaction of the logical instinct in man’ and ‘is a natural tendency’ because it is ‘an expression of life in its higher form … favourable to order, to symmetry, to similitude, to unity in variety … ’ (59; 50).

For Guyau, and contra Kant, moral sentiment is not to be explained rationally and a priori. It is impossible to prove by fact ‘the act of respect for a pure form’ (58; 49). The sentiment that Kant wishes to attach either to pure reason or to pure will can be accounted for in terms of appealing to the natural interest we experience in our superior faculties, and in our intellectual life: ‘We cannot be indifferent to the rational exercise of our reason, which, after all, is a more complex instinct, nor to the exercise of the will, which, indeed, is a fuller force and a potentiality of effects anticipated in their cause’ (61; 52). Indeed, if pureness were pushed to its utmost limit we would have the indifference of the senses and the intellect, and not ‘that definite state of the intelligence and the senses which is called the affirmation of a law and the respect of a law’ (ibid.); in short, there would be nothing for human judgment and sentiment to work upon.

In addition, we can state the critical point that the will cannot be indifferent to the aims it is seeking to pursue or promote. Guyau contends that a purely formal practice of morality, as Kant’s ethics demands, would ironically prove demoralizing to an agent: ‘it is the analogy of the labour which the prisoners in English prisons are obliged to do, and which is without aim – to turn a handle for the sake of turning it!’ (Ibid.; see also 218-20; 186-8.) Nietzsche describes Kant’s ethics a form of ‘refined servility’ (GS 5). Guyau makes the same criticism of Kant when he questions the performance of duty for the sake of duty, which he regards as pure tautology and a vicious circle. We might as well say be religious for the sake of religion, or be moral for the sake of morality (67; 57). He then closely echoes Nietzsche when he argues, ‘While I believe it to be my sovereign and self-governed liberty, commanding me to do such and such an act, what if it were hereditary instinct, habit, education, urging me to the pretended duty?’ (Ibid.)Footnote ¹² As Nietzsche points out, one’s judgment that ‘this is right’ has a pre-history in one’s instincts, likes and dislikes, experiences (including the lack of them), and so on (The Gay Science: 335).

Guyau does not dispute that Kant’s thinking on ethics is without importance or merit; indeed, he holds the theory of the categorical imperative to be ‘psychologically exact and deep’ and the expression of a ‘fact of consciousness’. What cannot be upheld, however, is the attempt to develop it without the requisite naturalistic insight in which what we take to be a practical, internal necessity will be demonstrated to be an instinctive, even mechanical, necessity (102-3; 89).Footnote ¹³ In short, Guyau holds that there is within us a primitive, impersonal impulse to obey that is prior to philosophical reasoning on ‘goodness’, but our understanding of this needs to be opened up to naturalistic and critical inquiry. For Guyau this inquiry into the sentiment of obligation is to take the form of a ‘dynamic genesis’ in which we come to appreciate that we do not follow our conscience but are driven by it and in terms of a ‘psycho-mechanical power’ (117; 98). In addition questions of evolution – the evolution of the species and of societies – also need to be taken into account. What kind of ‘impulse’ is duty? How has it evolved? And why has it become for us a ‘sublime obsession’? (121; 101) Ultimately, Kant’s ethics, Guyau argues, must be seen as belonging to an age that future humanity will outgrow. It is ‘a moral philosophy similar to ritualist religions, which count any failure in ceremonial as sacrilege; and which forget the essence for the sake of the form’; it is thus ‘a kind of moral despotism, creeping everywhere, wanting to rule everything’ (170; 144).

IV. Life and Pleasure: Beyond Epicurus

As I have already noted, Guyau is in search of a natural aim of human action. The principle of hedonism, which argues for a minimum of pain and a maximum of pleasure, can be explained in evolutionary terms in which conscious life is shown to follow the line of the least suffering. To a certain extent Guyau accepts this thesis but finds it too narrow as a definition since it applies only to conscious life and voluntary acts, not to unconscious and automatic acts. To believe that most of our movements spring from consciousness, and that a scientific analysis of the springs of conduct has only to reckon with conscious motives, would mean being the dupe of an illusion (87; 74). For Guyau the cause operating within us before any attraction of pleasure is ‘life’ (247; 210). Pleasure is but the consequence of an instinctive effort to maintain and enlarge life, and nature is to be regarded as self-moving and self-governing. Guyau writes:

For Guyau, Epicurus, along with his faulty thinking about evolution, in which pleasure is said to create an organ’s function, needs correcting on this point. In addition, he argues contra Bentham that ‘to live is not to calculate, it is to act’ (247; 211). An essentially Spinozist position – the tendency to persist in life is the necessary law of life – is deduced: ‘The tendency of the creature to continue in existence is at the root of all desire, without forming in itself a determinate desire’ (92; 79). Guyau takes this tendency to be one that goes beyond and envelops conscious life, so it is ‘both the most radical of realities and the inevitable ideal’ (88; 75). Therefore, Guyau reaches the conclusion that the part of morality that can be founded on positive facts can be defined as, ‘the science which has for object all the means of preserving and enlarging material and intellectual life’ (ibid.). His ethics centre, then, on a desire to increase ‘the intensity of life’ which consists in enlarging the range of activity under all its forms and that is compatible with the renewal of force (89; 76). Like Spinoza and Nietzsche, Guyau thinks that ‘becoming-active’ is the cure to many of life’s ills and to passive pessimism (see also 175-8; 148-51).Footnote ¹⁴ When Guyau argues that all action is an ‘affirmation’, a kind of choice and election, this elicits from Nietzsche one of only four ‘bravos’ he makes in the margins of his copy of the book (77; 66).Footnote ¹⁵ A ‘superior being’ is one that practices a variety of action; thought itself is nothing other than condensed action and life at its maximum development. He defines this superior being as one which ‘unites the most delicate sensibility with the strongest will’ (42; 35). This finds an echo in Nietzsche when he entertains the idea of a future superior human being as one composed of ‘the highest spirituality and strength of will’ (The Will to Power: 957).

It is clear that Guyau’s approach to ethics has its basis in a philosophy of life. For him this rules out any appeal to a supernatural principle to explain morality:

Guyau is interested in the evolution of human life and how this leads to ethical transformations. Although the evolved human being possesses a source of varied enjoyment in its own activity, this does not mean that such a human being will decide to shut itself up in itself, establishing an autarchic realm of self-sufficiency, like some Stoic sage. For Guyau, intellectual pleasures are both the most inward pleasures and also the most communicative, being both individual and social. The bonds that the sharing of the higher pleasures can generate create a particular kind of obligation: ‘an emotional bond – a union produced by the complete, or partial, harmony of sentiments or thoughts’ (113; 94-5). Guyau does not, of course, deny that there is often conflict and disagreement over values and ideals, but at the same time he insists new bonds between individuals arise from the sharing of the higher pleasures. Indeed, he maintains that the higher we rise in the scale of evolution, the more we see the highly social and sociable character of the pleasures of humankind.

We moderns are becoming more intellectual in our enjoyments and tastes, and with this arises a ‘universal consciousness,’ in which consciousness becomes easier of penetration (114; 95). It’s on this point that Guyau thinks we are going beyond the life of pleasures envisaged by Epicurean philosophy. In modern conditions of human social evolution we find that the self distinguishes itself less and less from other selves and, in fact, has more in need of them so as to form itself and flourish. Here Guyau locates an important principle of human evolution: although the point of departure is selfishness, it is such ‘by virtue of the very fecundity of all life,’ and it is ‘obliged to enlarge itself, to create outside of itself new centres of its own action’ (ibid.). For Guyau, then, human evolution is on the way to an epoch in which primitive selfishness will more and more recede. Compared to the selfish component of our existence, the sphere of altruism is becoming considerably larger and even the so-called purely physical pleasures, such as eating and drinking, only acquire their full charm when one shares them with others. The social sentiments are, then, of crucial importance for understanding the character of our enjoyments and pains: ‘Neither my sufferings nor my pleasures are absolutely my own’ (115; 96).

There is for Guyau an abundance of life that motivates us to care and work not only for ourselves but for others. This is, in large part, what he means when he seeks to locate ‘morality’ – the sphere of the social expansion of the human animal and of other-regarding actions – within life itself. Life has two main aspects: nutrition and assimilation, on the one hand, and, production and fecundity on the other. The more a life form takes in, the more it needs to give out. He maintains:

Even in the life of the cell we can locate a principle of expansion and one that prevents any individual being sufficient unto itself. Moreover, the ‘richest life’ is to be found in the life that lavishly spends itself, sacrificing itself within certain limits, and sharing itself with others. The most perfect organism will also be the most sociable being: not simply because this carries with it certain evolutionary advantages but also because it is part of the higher moral development of life itself. It’s on this point that Guyau sharply distinguishes himself from the likes of Bentham and the school of utilitarianism. It is within ‘the very depths of our being’ that the instincts of sympathy and sociability emerge and that the English school has shown us to be more or less artificially acquired in the course of human evolution, so being little more than adventitious in consequence.

For Guyau the higher life is that which expands beyond the narrow horizon of the individual self. We have, he thinks, a need to go out of ourselves to others: ‘we want to multiply ourselves by communion of thoughts and sentiments’ (98; 84). We enjoy others knowing that we exist, feel, suffer, and love. In this respect, then, ‘we tear the veil of individuality,’ and this is not simple vanity but a fecund desire to ‘burst the narrow shell of the self’ (ibid.). Guyau, however, is not utterly naïve in his appreciation of life: he draws our attention to the phenomenon of ‘affective debauchery’ in which ones lives too much for others and neglects a healthy care of self (99; 85). So, although he is keen to attack what he sees as the dogmatism of egoism (76; 65), he also appreciates the need for a healthy form of egoism consisting in the cultivation of a care of self.

Guyau is inspired by the idea, which he partly derives from his stepfather Alfred Fouillée, of making the moral ideal strictly immanent, for example, that it is derived from experience. He puts it in his own philosophical language as follows: ‘It is from life that we will demand the principle of morality’ (81; 70). By this he means that although the communicability of emotions of thoughts can be explained on its psychological side as a phenomenon of nervous contagion, it can also be explained as an integral feature of the evolution of life itself, that is, ‘by the fecundity of life, the expansion of which is almost in direct ratio to its intensity’ (ibid.). Guyau is attempting to explain phenomena of morality, such as sympathy and altruism, including intellectual altruism, in terms of this conception of the development of life. If sympathy of feeling can be regarded as ‘the germ of the extension of consciousness,’ in which to understand is also to feel, and to understand others is to feel ourselves in harmony with them, then this can be explained by the fecund character of life itself.

Guyau’s overriding aim is to establish the foundations of an understanding of moral development through a philosophy of life. Its moral ideal is ‘activity’ and in all its variety of manifestations; to increase the intensity of life means to enlarge the range of activity in all its forms (89; 76). There is a culture of human activity in this principle of ‘to act is to live’, in which, from its point of view, the worst of all vices is laziness and inertia. But what is its relation to hedonism or the moral philosophy of pleasure? Here Guyau is very delicate in his thinking. He argues that there are two principal kinds of pleasure: first, the kind that corresponds with a particular and superficial form of activity, such as eating and drinking, and this is the pleasure of the senses; second, the kind that is connected with the very root of that activity such as the pleasure of living, willing, and thinking. The latter is the more deeply ‘vital’ and the more independent of exterior objects for its fulfilment and expression, indeed, ‘it is one with the very consciousness of life’ (90; 77). The hedonists and utilitarians grant too much importance to the first kind of pleasure, and Guyau insists that we do not always act with the view of seeking the satisfaction of a particular pleasure. Rather, we act on occasion for the pleasure of acting and we live for the pleasure of living. Here, there ‘is in us an accumulated force which demands to be used’ (90; 77). Indeed, he maintains that where the expenditure of this force is impeded it becomes desire or aversion: pleasure where the desire is ultimately satisfied and pain where the contrary takes place. The key point is this: from this it does not at all follow that the stored-up activity unfolds itself solely or largely for the sake of pleasure and with pleasure as the motive: ‘Life unfolds and expresses itself in activity because it is life…Before all we must live; enjoyment comes after’ (ibid.). If there is pleasure then this is something that accompanies the search after life and does not provoke it. The basic idea is that nature is self-moving and self-governing, and as such it becomes superfluous to appeal to a particular motive, such as any special pleasure (91; 78). Whilst it can be acknowledged, in accordance with the English school, that consciousness only comes into being with some sensation of pleasure or pain, and in which to act and react is always to enjoy or to suffer, to desire or to fear, it does not follow that this can explain the movement of life: instead of being the deliberate end of action, enjoyment is, like consciousness, merely an attribute of it. Only the distinction between consciousness and the unconscious can make this fact of life intelligible: ‘Action springs naturally from the working of life, which is, to a considerable extent, unconscious’ (92; 79). Guyau is ultimately a Spinozist and re-works Spinoza on this point: ‘The tendency of the creature to continue in existence is at the root of all desire, without forming in itself a determinate desire’ (ibid.). In short, Guyau is giving priority to a philosophy of life over a philosophy of pleasure. In this philosophy of life a ‘science’ of morals replaces a ‘metaphysics ‘ of morals, with morality being placed at the limit between the unconscious and conscious spheres, that is, of instincts, habits, and dumb perceptions on the one hand and of reasoning and thoughtful will on the other.

V. Guyau and Nietzsche

Nietzsche does not refer to Guyau anywhere in his published writings. What can be ascertained of his thoughts about him and his work comes from a few unpublished notes and from the marginal remarks he makes in his copy of Guyau’s Sketch (Esquisse). Nietzsche’s attitude towards Guyau is ambivalent. On the one hand he calls him ‘brave Guyau’, and regards him as a courageous thinker who has written one of the few genuinely interesting books on ethics of modern times.Footnote ¹⁶ On the other hand he thinks Guyau is caught up in the Christian-moral ideal, and partly for this reason he is only a free thinker and not a genuine free spirit. Having noted in this essay a set of affinities between Guyau and Nietzsche, one cannot overlook the differences that ultimately separate the two thinkers. Guyau’s philosophy of life departs from the core assumptions of Nietzsche’s thinking. For him, life is expansive in the sense of a need to share: ‘It is as impossible to shut up the intelligence as to shut up flame’ (247; 210). For Guyau human nature is sociable and cannot be entirely selfish even if it wished to be: ‘We are open on all sides, on all side encroaching and encroached upon … Life is not only nutrition; it is production and fecundity’ (ibid.). It is this fecundity of life that reconciles egoism and altruism for Guyau. He thinks that an evolutionary growth can be located in the development of human nature in which from a growing fusion of sensibilities and the increasingly sociable character of elevated pleasures there arises a superior necessity, a kind of duty in fact, which moves us towards others and does so naturally and rationally: ‘We cannot enjoy ourselves in ourselves as on an isolated island … Pure selfishness … instead of being a real affirmation of self, is a mutilation of self’ (249; 212). Guyau objects to any ethics of pure egoism: ‘We cannot mutilate ourselves, and pure egoism would be meaningless, an impossibility. In the same way that the ego is considered an illusion by contemporary psychology, that there is no personality, that we are composed of an infinite number of beings and tiny consciousnesses, in the same way we might say that egoist pleasure is an illusion: my pleasure does not exist without the pleasure of others … My pleasure, in order to lose nothing of its intensity, must maintain all of its extension’. Guyau regards morality conceived as caritas as the great ‘flower of life’:

Nietzsche finds this aspect of Guyau’s thinking ‘incredible’. Like Guyau he wishes to push life in the direction of a maximization of individual difference or ‘individual speculation’. Yet in opposition to Guyau, Nietzsche often seems to assume that this entails a radical form of self-sufficiency, associability and incommunicability. Nietzsche stresses that his model of individual experimentalism is incompatible with all or most forms of shared sentiment, especially shared suffering (Mitleid).

The difference between Guyau and Nietzsche – at least so far as the thinking on life we encounter in Nietzsche’s middle period – centres on their different receptions of Epicurean teaching. It’s not that Nietzsche simply puts the emphasis on pleasure, though he certainly wishes his readers to practice a modest existence in accordance with Epicurean principles, and also a non-political existence entailing social withdrawal and seclusion. The set of commitments Nietzsche displays in his middle period, especially Dawn, to small doses, slow cures, and the setting up of ourselves as small, experimental states, is indicative of an Epicurean scepticism about politics on his part. Continuing well into 1883 Nietzsche will write to Peter Gast inquiring as to where and when they will set up their Epicurean garden. By contrast Guyau assimilates core aspects of Epicurean doctrine but goes well beyond it. In particular he criticizes the Hellenistic ideal of self-sufficiency, be it Stoic or Epicurean.

Guyau’s attempt to locate the sources of morality in life is ultimately anathema to Nietzsche (life is will to power, he insists in his marginal notes on Guyau’s text). For him free spirits need to resist the lure of the altruistic drives and affects, obviously compassion but also sympathy, philanthropy and love. However, let me ask in conclusion: would Nietzsche’s ethics, as we encounter this in the middle period, have benefitted from following Guyau in recognizing the value of shared sentiment for human flourishing? Perhaps Guyau’s ethics help to clarify an important inconsistency in Nietzsche’s perspective. In The Gay Science Nietzsche is acutely aware that the Stoic strategy of eliminating the passions, conceived as a capacity to be affected by external causes, significantly limits on our capacity to flourish (GS: 12, 306, 326). Yet Nietzsche follows just this course in rejecting Mitleid or shared suffering as a pathological affect that only leads to ill-health (Dawn: 134). If, as Nietzsche argues strongly elsewhere overcoming one’s own suffering is a necessary condition of individual flourishing then prime facie there is good reason for supposing that receptivity to and overcoming others’ suffering can also contribute to one’s own and others’ flourishing. Nietzsche’s justified suspicion that in some cases pity or compassion merely masks envy should have led him to criticize inauthentic compassion and friendship, not to mistakenly and inconsistently sever the ties between shared suffering and shared joy. Even if we are destined to forget Guyau as an intellectual figure, we should not forget his warning that we mutilate ourselves without sharing others’ pleasures and pains.