Jonathan Swift: Gullivers Travels

Jonathan Swift is responding to the Modern Revolution in western thinking (see here
for a diagram on the relations of The Modern Revolution and English Literary
History).
Swift uses satire as a way to protest the developments of modernity that had
taken place in the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries.
Swift does so in deference to an older tradition, one reaching back to Socrates
and Plato. Our weakness in terms of virtue and reason is seen in sharp contrast
with these ancient models.
In this sense, Swift takes the side of the Ancients in the Quarrel of Ancients and
Moderns that was taking place at that time (more on this later).
But Swift is not preaching simple nostalgia; he is aware that we cannot simply
return to medieval or Greek times and pretend that modern science and
technology do not exist.
He does, however, wish to vex humanity, rather than divert it (Letter to Pope)
that is, there is a bitter realization that human nature is corrupt and
corruptible; a realization that in our optimistic turn to a new rationality and in
the abandonment of classical rationalism we have lost something quite
fundamental; and a realization that, given that we are weaker than those who
went before us (i.e., that we are merely dwarves on the shoulders of giants), we
can never recover that lost wisdom even if a Swift vexes us by pointing out
our folly.

Historical Context:
Dates: 1667 1745
Born and lived most of his life in Ireland
Born just after the English Civil War (1642 1660): a battle between Royalist and
Parliamentary (or, Republican) forces
Grandfather, Thomas Swift, was supportive of the Royalist cause
Jonathan Swift as a Tory (Royalist) and Anglican priest publicly there are
indications, however, that he was in fact a republican and a non-believer

Tim Wilson 2017-07-10 1

 Glorious Revolution (1688-89): saw the deposition of the Catholic James II by
the Protestant William
James II in exile in France leads to almost constant state of war between
England and France, much decried by Swift
Swift also protested the treatment of Ireland by England as colonized subject
Through a friend, Swift was well acquainted with the work of the Dublin
Philosophical Society, which maintained close intellectual linkages with the Royal
Society of London, undertaking studies in natural science (Isaac Newton,
famously, demonstrating the laws of gravitation in his Principia Mathematica
(1687)).

Quarrel of Ancients and Moderns

The Querelle des Anciens et des Modernes took place at the turn of the eighteenth
century. It was referred to as the Battle of the Books in England and had two
fundamental dimensions:
Philosophical knowledge and the natural sciences did the ancients know more
than the moderns?
Literature and the arts had the ancients perfected these areas, or is the study of
modern literature worthwhile?

Other questions related to modernitys attack on the ancients:

What are the merits of authority and the imitation of authority, versus
innovation and creativity>
o Related to this, is the question of the value of the tradition; the moderns
felt that worship of the ancients creates a burden from which we need to
be freed.
Is humanity, in terms of its knowledge and morals, progressing or, is it static or
even regressing (i.e., the negative view of history)>
o Related to this, the ancients felt that moderns were merely dwarves
perched on the shoulders of giants; the moderns felt if Homer et al were
indeed giants, which is doubtful, then anyone perching on their shoulders
must be able to see farther than they did.

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 Who is the arbiter of culture and values: the aristocracy or the masses?

Most of the critiques of ancient learning grew out of Francis Bacons inductive method
and Descartes system of methodical doubt. Francis Bacon complained that no
progress in natural science, no advancement in learning of any kind, was possible when
men accepted authority unquestioningly. Similarly, in Descartes The Passions of the
Soul (1649) he asserted, What the ancients have taught is so scanty and for the most
part so lacking in credibility that I may not hope for any kind of approach toward truth
except by rejecting al the paths which they have followed.

The roots of this debate can be found in the modern revolution in thinking ushered in
by figures such as Machiavelli, Bacon and Descartes. These thinkers undertook a reversal
of several key concepts of classical philosophy. Namely, for classical authors, things were
defined in terms of their ends; the virtue (arte) of the eye, for instance, is in its ability
to see. Wisdom arises as the ability to discern the ends of things, including ones own
ends or virtue. Modern thinking disposes of the notion that things have an end proper to
themselves (on the classical point of departure, see also What is Philosophy and The
Quarrel of Philosophy and Poetry).

The Modern Revolution (Machiavelli to Hobbes)

Beginning with Machiavelli, the classical tenets of political philosophy were to be
discarded; rather than an analysis of the best regime or the way in which human life
should be ordered, the wise man, according to Machiavelli, should inquire into the ways
in which human practices actually are undertaken so as to best maximize the benefits to
oneself and ones community the ought was replaced by the is; the kernel was
replaced by the shell.

Machiavelli for Machiavelli, the attempt to account for and secure the final ends of
humanity within the political community had been misguided and unrealistic. The
notion that man has an excellence or virtue (arte) that is proper to him must be
abandoned in order to accommodate the accomplishment of more modest goals (The
Prince, chapter 15). In this way, Machiavelli consciously lowers the standards of social
action. He lowers the standards such that the actualization of those standards is more

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possible, more in accordance with that aspect of fortune that can be shaped by human
willing (cf. Strauss 1983, 213).
I compare fortune to one of those dangerous rivers that, when they become
enraged, flood the plains, destroy trees and buildings, move earth from one place
and deposit it in another. But this does not mean that, when the river is not in
flood, men are unable to take precautions, by means of dykes and dams, so that
when it rises next time, it will either not overflow its banks or, if it does, its force
will not be so uncontrolled or damaging (chapter 25).
Fortuna can be shaped, within limits, by a certain virt. Of course, this is a new sense of
virtue than that described by the classical political philosophers. Virtue is no longer
considered ones proper end (telos) that has been allotted by fate or that is fixed in
accordance with ones nature. Rather, virtue is now considered the active power of self-
determination. For this re-thinking of virtue to become possible, and through it the
Machiavellian lowering of the horizon for social action, man in his essence had to be seen
as Protean. This decisive modern insight was, of course, articulated by Pico della
Mirandola. In his Oration on the Dignity of Man, he has God say the following words to
Adam: We have made you neither heavenly nor earthly, neither mortal nor immortal, so
that, more freely and more honourably the moulder and maker of yourself, you may
fashion yourself in whatever form you shall prefer (478). For Machiavelli, too, mans
ends, or the virtue and dignity proper to man, were malleable; they can be moulded by
the proper institutions as long as we do not set our sights too high.

Bacon This occurrence in the realm of political thinking found its corollary in natural
philosophy. There, too, beginning with the thought of Bacon, the search for the ends or
final causes of things had to be discarded in order to achieve a foundational knowledge
that would benefit man here and now (New Organon 1.65). It is for this reason that
Bacon sees Machiavelli as a father of the inductive method in the realm of civil
philosophy. That is, Machiavelli uses histories and examples, not general unfounded
axioms. We are much beholden to Machiavel and others that write what men do, and
not what they ought to do (III.430).

The classical attempt to understand the why or the ultimate purpose behind the
phenomena was an abstraction from nature as it is in itself. Bacon claims that his
method of eliminative induction is a way of encountering nature as it shows itself; it is a

Tim Wilson 2017-07-10 4

true interpretation of nature, unclouded by prior theoretical prejudices, as opposed to
what he calls Anticipations of Nature (New Organon 1.25). In order to interpret nature
as it shows itself, we must be content to wait upon nature instead of vainly affecting to
overrule her (Great Instauration 298-99). Although the ostensible modality of this
interpretation is one of servitude to nature, the ultimate goal of this scientific
interpretation of nature is a certain, secured power over and commanding of nature:
For the end which this science of mine proposes is the invention not of arguments but of
arts, not of things in accordance with principles but of principles themselves, not of
probable reasons but of designations and directions for works. And as the intention is
different, so accordingly is the effect, the effect of the one being to overcome an opponent
in argument, of the other to command nature in action (Great Instauration 314). Bacon
sums up this paradoxical relation between his method and the purposes of human
mastery to which it is directed: Nature to be commanded must be obeyed (New
Organon 1.3). One cannot simply observe nature empirically, however, in order to know
and control her. Nature is much too self-concealing and subtle (New Organon 1.10). The
ability to command nature will only arise through the methodological approach to
studying nature: Our steps must be guided by a clue, and the whole way from the very
first perception of the senses must be laid out upon a sure plan (Great Instauration
307). Gradually, through the rigour of research, we will build our knowledge from the
particular to the more general and all-embracing truth; eventually we will be able to
know the forms or necessary conditions of all things (New Organon 2.4-5). By means of
a rigorous research plan that follows a careful framework, Bacon proposes to establish
progressive stages of certainty (New Organon, Preface 327).

Thus, in Bacons natural philosophy, as in Machiavellis political philosophy, the source

of the order or virtue of the things themselves was seen to be replaced by the operation of
a certain human action. Things do not have a proper nature within themselves; rather,
their identity and meaning arise only within the realm of knowledge as moulded by a
human, experimental ground plan. The projected third part of Bacons Great
Instauration was to embrace the Phenomena of the Universe; that is to say, experience
of every kind, and such a natural history as may serve for a foundation to build
philosophy upon (318). This embracing of phenomena, this natural history as the
foundation of a new philosophy, was to be a history not only of nature free and at large
(when she is left to her own course and does her work her own way) ... but much more of

Tim Wilson 2017-07-10 5

nature under constraint and vexed; that is to say, when by art and the hand of man she is
forced out of her natural state, and squeezed and moulded. ... Nay (to say the plain truth)
I do in fact (low and vulgar as men may think it) count more upon this part both for
helps and safeguards than upon the other, seeing that the nature of things betrays itself
more readily under the vexations of art than in its natural freedom (320). Nature is
experienced here as that which can be forced, through a certain human moulding and
measuring, to betray itself, or show itself in a way that is not natural, that is outside of
its own limit and measure. Within Baconian science, beings are drag[ged] into light
(320) and are not granted the withdrawal and limits which make them what they are.

Descartes The modern revolution in philosophy, then, is marked by the refusal to

consider the final cause of things; rather than having ends within themselves, things
arise only as moulded by a certain human activity or ground plan. It was Machiavelli who
first took this approach with respect to the political things and it was Bacon who first
took this approach with respect to the things of nature. With the thinking of Descartes
we see the first articulation of the broader metaphyscial point of departure that this
modern revolution in thinking assumes. For Descartes it is not a particular realm of
things that arises as defined by its relation to a human moulding; rather, existence itself,
truth itself, is defined by means of a determinative relation to the human subject.

Descartes begins his Meditations by applying himself to the general destruction of all
[his] former opinions (95). The First Meditation, then, concerns itself with the
destruction of the foundation of all knowledge. Because he is destroying the foundation
of knowledge, truth, and Being, he does not have to concern himself with individual
propositions that would be derived from that foundation: the destruction of the
foundation necessarily brings down with it the rest of the edifice (Descartes 95). This
foundation will have to, in turn, be reconstructed on a new ground. Descartes finds a new
Archimedean point for the truth of beings in the Second Meditation: Archimedes, in
order to take the terrestrial globe from its place and move it to another, asked only for a
point which was fixed and assured. So also, I shall have the right to entertain high hopes,
if I am fortunate enough to find only one thing which is certain and indubitable (102).
This Archimedean point of security and certainty, and with it the founding of modern
metaphysics, stands in Descartes statement: Ego cogito, ergo sum, I think, therefore I
am. Here, the locus of truth is shifted to the subject in its certain representing. All

Tim Wilson 2017-07-10 6

consciousness of things and of beings as a whole is referred back to the self-
consciousness of the human subject as the unshakable ground of all certainty
(Heidegger 1982, 86; cf. 1977a, 127-28). The essence of truth becomes this self-asserted
certainty. For the Greeks, human existence consists of a certain receptivity to that which
presences in unconcealment (altheia). The medieval metaphysics founded by the Latin
translation of altheia into verum-falsum, and prepared for by the Platonic-Aristotelian
assertion of truth as homoiosis, still echoes this receptivity inasmuch as the true and the
fallen are taken to be that which are given by God; they are not products of human
representing. The salvation to be secured in medieval metaphysics, for instance, is
grounded in revelation as interpreted and consolidated in Christian doctrine. 1 In modern
metaphysics, however, the modern subject becomes the self-secured locus of certainty as
well as the measure and setting of beings (Heidegger 1977a, 131-32).2

Hobbes and Locke Given that, within this modern revolution of thinking, the thing
itself in its nature can no longer be defined in terms of its own end or virtue, it comes to
be defined as the means to any end that may be posited by the human subject modern
rationalism replaces classical rationalism by being instrumental. The state does not
exist, for instance, to foster ones virtue; it exists to provide the means to the individual
pursuit of ones own ends. Since various, individually chosen, ends cannot be
unqualifiedly affirmed by the community, the means (wealth, fame etc.) become the
virtues of the modern community. These were the ultimate conclusions, building on the
insights of Machiavelli, Bacon, and Descartes, reached by Hobbes and Locke, and which
form the basic principles of modern liberalism. This is why Nietzsche, in his essay The
Greek State, refers to the modern concept of the dignity of work with such disdain.
Greek crafts or skilled labour (techn) are justified in their ends, or their products. In the
modern experience, in the absence of an agreed upon purpose to all of our mindless
activity and busy-work, the activity itself comes to be celebrated. With his discovery of
the value of work itself, outside of a purpose, modern man lies to himself and says that
he has invented happiness; however, this fiction is too transparent to nourish his self-
overcoming.

1
1. On this point, the Christian experience of truth as related to the securing of salvation, see Heidegger 1973, 19-
26; 1982, 87-89; 1977a, 89-90, 122; and 1992, 51.

2
2. On this self-grounding of knowledge and truth, see, also, Heidegger 1977b, 272.

Tim Wilson 2017-07-10 7

The problems identified here with the dignity of work also point to the reasons for
Nietzsches questioning of the dignity of man, or of the value of his existence. The
modern age is infected with the biographical plague, which forces it to quite different
and statelier thoughts as to the dignity of man than would otherwise be warranted
(Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks 4). In the context of this faith in the value of
human existence and the dignity of man, the plague of modernity reaches its fevered
pitch in the absolute denial of the possibility of transcending our individual passions
including the base desire for mere existence, rather than self-transcendence. The point of
departure of Hobbes, for instance, can be contrasted with that of the classical political
philosophers. While the latter had based their normative judgements on reflections on
the ends of man, Hobbes makes mans beginnings his basis (Strauss 1953, 180).
Hobbes point of departure is that the political community arises out of a primordial
state of nature ruled by a bellum omnium contra omnes. The state arises by means of a
social contract designed as a way of ensuring that all of the combatants in this struggle
have their most basic desire fulfilled: the desire to exist; or, more pointedly, the state has
its origin in the basest of passions: the fear of violent death (Leviathan chap. 13, 14, 27).

Locke agrees with Hobbes in every fundamental respect, but takes his conclusions
further. For Locke, as for Hobbes, one gives up the theoretical freedoms enjoyed in the
state of nature in order to make his self-preservation more secure (Second Treatise, sect.
123). However, Locke extends the pre-requisites of self-preservation: not just security
against external, physical threats is needed, one also needs nourishment, or more
generally, property. Locke introduces the value of acquisitiveness to the basic desire for
self-preservation. Acquisitiveness does not lead to happiness, however. The painful
labour to acquire possessions is a manifestation of mans negative freedom, mans
reaction to his basic and unending misery. Self-preservation as acquisitiveness marks
modern mans existence as a joyless quest for joy (Strauss 1953, 251).

Structure of the Voyages:

Gullivers Travels is a satire, which Swift defined in the following way:
Satire is a sort of glass wherein beholders do generally discover everybodys face
but their own, which is the chief reason for that kind of reception it meets in the
world, and that so very few are offended with it.

Tim Wilson 2017-07-10 8

Satire is a way of presenting and criticizing the follies of society while avoiding the
censure of that society.
On the need for political speech, see page 28: People in Power [are] very
watchful over the press; cf. page 48-9, in Lilliput, Gulliver defiles the temples of
the people and must be protected from the Rabble.

Satire is tied to the notion of irony, or ironic distance. That is, to a great extent there is
a distance between the views expressed in the satire and those of the author. Similarly,
irony indicates that what is explicitly spoken is not identical to the intentions of the
speaker. On this, we should note the ironic distance between the following authors and
their major spokesmen:
Plato and Socrates
More and Hythloday
Swift and Gulliver
Nietzsche and Zarathustra

As indicated by Swifts definition, satire / irony is tied to the quarrel of philosophy and
poetry: that is, the author will need to veil certain messages that he delivers to the many;
irony and satire are ways of performing this veiling. Also, the ironic mouthpieces listed
above are all exemplary of the philosophic transcendence of common opinion:
Socrates leaves the cave of common opinion, despite the fact he never leaves the
city per se;
Hythlodays travels to new constitute the image of this philosophical
transcendence;
Gullivers travels are also an instance of this transcendence; he then
communicates to the many via his published book.
o Like Hythloday, there is an indication that Gullivers travels have been not
in space, but through the study of the best Authors, ancient and modern
(40).
Zarathustra leaves humanity and searches for truth in solitude on the mountain;
he too must communicate his wisdom through certain, select individuals as
opposed to the many in the marketplace

Tim Wilson 2017-07-10 9

The structure of Gullivers Travels alternates between examples of moderns and ancients
respectively. Swift sided with the ancients in this quarrel and in his tale he satirizes the
extreme pettiness and narrowness of vision of modernity while contrasting them with
the overpowering greatness of the ancients:
Part I: A Voyage to Lilliput puts up a mirror to modernity, in particular its
shortness of moral and political vision
o Lilliputians see with great exactness but at no great distance this as
modernitys loss of perspective, our inability to contemplate the whole
o Gulliver, too, has this loss of perspective when regarding a womans
breast in Brobdingnag: he can see the ugly details, but not the beautiful
whole.

Part II: A Voyage to Brobdingnag contrasts the pettiness of the moderns

satirized in Part I with the greatness of moral scope of the ancients (as figured
forth by the Brobdingnaggians); note: in both parts, moral and intellectual
differences are projected in the physical dimension

Part III: A Voyage to Laputa, Balnibarbi, Luggnagg, Glubbdubdrib and Japan is

a satire on the scientific and intellectual pursuits of modernity

Part IV: A Voyage to the Country of the Houyhnhnms is a reflection on the

natural rationality of the ancients (as figured forth by the Houyhnhnms); in
addition, this section corrects some of the limitations of the city in speech set
forth in Platos Republic.

No mention is made of poetry in Lilliput and Laputa; however, Brobdingnag and the
Houyhnhnms do practice poetry the latter being of a Homeric or oral type. This points
to the greater grasp of the human spirit enjoyed by the two societies representing the
ancient world.

Tim Wilson 2017-07-10 10

Tim Wilson 2017-07-10 11
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