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The-Determination-of-Locke-Hume-and-Fielding - William-Walker
Walker The Determination of Locke, Hume, and Fielding EighteenthCentury Life 20:2
Copyright © 1996 The Johns Hopkins University Press. All rights reserved.
EighteenthCentury Life 20.2 (1996) 7093
The Determination of Locke, Hume, and Fielding
William Walker
A common practice of critics of the eighteenthcentury English novel from Watt to McKeon is
to describe the new literary form in relation to British empiricism. 1 In this essay, I, too, will
engage in this practice, but in a way which challenges: 1) the methods by which these critics
usually arrive at an understanding of British empiricism; 2) their general interpretation of this
epistemology; and 3) their understanding of how a particular eighteenthcentury novel is
related to it. The methodological challenge is constituted by the kind of attention I give to a
single but crucial word in the empiricists' vocabulary: "determination." This is a
methodological challenge because, although some scholars trained in literary criticism have
begun to confront specific problems of reading the major texts of empiricism, most critics who
discuss the novel in relation to them do not. 2 And rather than making grand claims about
empiricism on the basis of scant considerations of the major texts and of authoritative
historians of epistemology such as Heidegger, Rorty, and Foucault, I propose to discredit one
particular grand claim about empiricism which is forwarded by these authorities and which is
prominent in novel criticism. The claim is that British empiricism defines knowing as the
having and judging of representations (that British empiricism is a representational
epistemology), and I will discredit it by arguing that besides defining knowing as an act of
judgment, the word "determination" in the text of empiricism defines knowing as an act of will
such as legislation or stipulation. Finally, on the basis of these challenges to the general
methodology and interpretations that underwrite much eighteenthcentury novel criticism, I
will proceed to discuss Tom Jones in relation to empiricism more properly understood.
Observing that "determination" in this novel poses the same problems as it does in the text of
British empiricism, I will argue that we must revise our understanding of this novel's plot,
aesthetics, and hermeneutics.
Let us begin with horos, a Greek ancestor of "determination" that sets the conceptual limits
within which we will proceed. Horos ( ) in classical Greek is used to mean "limit" or
"boundary" and is the stem of the verb horizein ( ), the root of our word "horizon." This
verb is used to mean to "divide or separate from," as a boundary or border separates two areas
of land, or as a line bounds a circle. But the term is also used to mean types of human
stipulation: to deify, to banish, to lay down, to ordain, to [End Page 70] appoint, to
appropriate, to mark out by boundaries. The verb could thus be used in locutions meaning to
be a boundary, or ones meaning to lay down, posit, and stipulate a boundary. This verb occurs
in Sextus Empiricus' Outlines of Pyrrhonism as part of one of the standard expressions of the
skeptics. The first Latin translators and printers of Sextus translated it as definire, so that the
skeptic's expression, ouden horizo, was rendered nihil definio. This Latin translation would
seem to have set up an English translation of horizein as "to define," but in the first surviving
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complete English translation of the Outlines, part twelve of Thomas Stanley's The History of
Philosophy (London, 165659), this is not the case: horizein is translated as "to determine."
Ouden horizo hence becomes "I determine nothing," a translation that R. G. Bury kept in his
modern Loeb translation of the Outlines. 3
Sextus explains the act which he calls horizein and which we have named "to determine" in the
short chapter devoted to the expression "I determine nothing." "'To determine,'" Sextus tells us
in Bury's translation,
is not simply to state a thing but to put forward something nonevident combined
with assent. For in this sense, no doubt, it will be found that the Sceptic
determines nothing, not even the very proposition 'I determine nothing'; for this is
not a dogmatic assumption, that is to say assent to something nonevident, but an
expression indicative of our own mental condition. So whenever the Sceptic says
'I determine nothing,' what he means is 'I am now in such a state of mind as
neither to affirm dogmatically nor deny any of the matters now in question.' And
this he says simply by way of announcing undogmatically what appears to himself
regarding the matters presented, not making any confident declaration, but just
explaining his own state of mind. (pp. 11517)
For the skeptic, determining involves belief and acts of assertion. To determine is to believe in
a proposition about the nonevident and to put forward or state this proposition. And if belief in
a proposition is belief in the truth of a proposition, if stating a proposition is stating that
proposition to be true, then a determined proposition would be either true or false. What would
make such a proposition true or false is presumably the state of affairs of the nonevident. As an
account of believing about, discerning, and making claims about an ostensibly independently
existing state of affairs, Sextus' explanation of horizein hence mutes the connotations of
stipulation. These connotations are, however, still audible in the alignment of determination
with what Bury calls "confident declaration." The Greek verb thus translated is apophainein (
) which is used to mean not just "to display," but also "to produce," "to proclaim," "to
declare elected," "to define," and, in the passive, "to be named or appointed." The translations
of horizein into the Latin definire and the English "to determine" pick up on these
connotations. For, besides describing something in accordance with independently existing
lines and limits of the real, besides representing the lines of the real, the mind that defines may
be positing or stipulating those lines. And, as we shall see, the [End Page 71] mind that
determines may be both discerning something about reality and instituting it. Sextus describes
the act from which the skeptic abstains as one that is primarily an act of judgment and
assertion, but his own names for this act and the names it is given in translation intimate that it
is also an act of stipulation, positing, and appointment.
Stanley's name for Sextus' horizein pervades the writing of the British empiricists. In Of the
Advancement of Learning, Bacon occasionally uses inflections of "to determine" to mean acts
of describing or establishing, but more commonly to describe something that is limited,
bounded, finite: he refers to "a cave or strait determined and bounded," "quantity determined,"
"quantity determinate," and forms "determined by matter." 4 In the opening book of Leviathan,
Hobbes conforms with Bacon's usage when, in his "Register of Science," he defines various
branches of natural philosophy in terms of consequences from motion and quantity that are
either limited or unlimited. 5 For Hobbes, the first foundation of philosophy is knowledge of
"consequences from Quantity, and Motion indeterminate." Knowledge of "consequences from
Motion, and Quantity determined" is broken down, depending on what limits the quantity and
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"Determination" is a central term in Locke's An Essay Concerning Human Understanding and
complicates these distinctions by invoking the full semantic strength of horizein. In so doing,
this term challenges the interpretation of empiricist epistemology as a representational
epistemology. In the chapter on power, determination is identified with will: will is a faculty
that is "a Power, the power of the Mind to determine its thought, to the producing, continuing,
or stopping any Action, as far as it depends on us"; "Volition is nothing but the determination
of the mind." 6 As an act of will, determination can take various forms, including institution,
establishment, legislation, and stipulation. When, for example, Locke claims that no one has
"an Authority to establish the precise signification of Words, nor determine to what Ideas any
one shall annex them" (p. 479), he is using the verb "to determine" to mean such an actionto
determine that something is the meaning of a word is not to observe that it is, but to will and
stipulate that it be so. This sense of determination as some kind of stipulative, legislative act
moving out of will is strong in Two Treatises where Locke more explicitly discusses the
relations among will, law, authority, and power. In this text, Locke commonly identifies law as
[End Page 72] that which determines. Speaking of the right of Adam's heirs to authority over
the world and all men, Locke writes, "if he had [such a right], there being no Law of Nature
nor positive Law of God that determines, which is the right Heir in all Cases that may arise,
the Right of Succession, and consequently of bearing rule, could not have been certainly
determined." 7 Later, in his discussion of the state of war, Locke writes, "when the actual force
is over, the State of War ceases between those that are in Society, and are equally on both sides
Subjected to the fair determination of the Law" (p. 322). And the "Civiliz'd part of mankind" is
that part which "made and multiplied positive Laws to determine Property" (p. 331).
Now, for Locke, law, whether it be natural or civil, is, or is the declaration of, will: in Two
Treatises, Locke claims that the rules men make for other men must be conformable to "the
Law of Nature, i.e. to the Will of God" (p. 403); "the will of the Society [is] declared in its
Laws" (p. 414); the laws passed by the Legislative "are the Will of the Society" (p. 456). Since
law is will, and since law determines, will determines. And the product of the act of
determination grounded in will is neither true nor false, neither accurate nor inaccurate, for it is
not a proposition or judgment, but a law or rule:
But the Husband and Wife, though they have but one common Concern, yet
having different understandings, will unavoidably sometimes have different wills
too; it therefore being necessary, that the last Determination, i.e. the Rule, should
be placed somewhere, it naturally falls to the Man's share, as the abler and the
stronger. (p. 364)
As a rule, law, or fiat, as that which arbitrates between conflicting wills, determinations are
rather binding or nonbinding, authoritative or nonauthoritative, successful or unsuccessful.
But in "Of Power," Locke also explains determination as an act of judgment: he refers to "the
last determination of the Judgment" (p. 267) and "the determination or judgment of another"
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(p. 274). He claims that "judging is, as it were, balancing an account, and determining on
which side the odds lies" (p. 278). As an act of judgment, determination can take various
forms, including perception, discovery, discernment, insight, observation, or recognition.
When, for example, Locke asks, "who is there quicksighted enough to determine precisely,
which is the lowest Species of living Things..." (p. 666), he is using the verb "to determine" to
mean such an actionto determine which is the lowest species of living things is not to ordain
something, but to discern or judge of something. This kind of determination is true or false,
accurate or inaccurate, since rather than being a law or rule that is brought into being through
the very act of determination, it is a proposition or judgment about a state of affairs that exists
independently of the act of determination. Because judgment is defined in the Essay as an act
or faculty of understanding, determination falls under both of Locke's general categories,
adopted from Descartes, for mental action: [End Page 73]
The two great and principal Actions of the Mind, which are most frequently
considered, and which are so frequent, that every one that pleases, may take notice
of 'em in himself, are these two:
Perception, or Thinking, and
Volition, or Willing.
The Power of Thinking is called the Understanding, and the Power of Volition is
called the Will, and these two Powers or Abilities in the Mind are denominated
Faculties. (p. 128)
Determination, then, can be an act of perception grounded in the faculty of understanding, or
an act of volition grounded in the faculty of will.
Though some grammatical contexts of this term in the Essay strongly enforce either the
conative or perceptive sense, others do not. The result is that the act of knowing exists
uncertainly within the conceptual parameters of willing and thinking. In Book IV of the Essay,
Locke defines "Matter of Reason," which is distinct from "Matter of Faith," as "all
propositions, whereof the Mind, by the use of its natural Faculties, can come to determine and
judge, from naturally acquired Ideas" (p. 695). And having defined knowledge as "the
perception of the connexion and agreement, or disagreement and repugnancy of any of our
Ideas" (p. 525), Locke goes on to write that where this perception is not compelled by ideas
themselves, it is a determination: men "determine of the Agreement or Disagreement of two
Ideas..." (p. 653). In some passages, that is, Locke defines knowing as the mind's
determination of the relations between ideas. Now, if we read the verb "to determine" in these
passages as the name of an act of understanding, such as perception or judgment, and, if we
take the idea to be some kind of representation, knowledge, as the determination of the
agreement or disagreement of ideas, is a perception or judgment of representations. The truth
of this knowledge would consist in the correctness of the judgment of the relation between
ideas.
This reading of "determination" in the Essay would make Locke conform with Richard Rorty's
influential view of him in particular and Western epistemology in general. According to Rorty,
because Locke identifies the mind as a mirror of nature, he is compelled to understand the
content of knowledge, what Locke refers to as ideas, as representations that are analogous to
reflections in that mirror. Locke attempts to describe knowing as the mind's having these
representative ideas within itself, comparable to a mirror's having reflections within itself. But
because the content of knowledge consists of representations, Locke, says Rorty, could not get
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by on this account of knowing as the simple having of representations: "he needed a faculty
which was aware of the representations, a faculty which judged the representations rather than
merely had themjudged that they existed, or that they were reliable, or that they had such
andsuch relations to other representations." Locke could not openly admit such a faculty,
however, since it would postulate a kind of a priori agency that Locke wanted to avoid.
Locke's epistemology is thus a representational epistemology that is torn between an account
of knowing [End Page 74] as the mind's having representations in itself, and the mind's
judging representations that it has. This representational epistemology makes veilofideas
skepticismthe problem of knowing whether or not our inner representations are accuratethe
problem of postRenaissance philosophy. 8
The weakness of a reading of "determination" in the Essay that makes it conform with Rorty's
account of Lockean epistemology is that it fails to recognize that Locke uses this term to mean
acts of will besides acts of understanding. If the term is read as the name of an act of will, such
as stipulation, legislation, institution, or positing, the mind's determination of the agreement or
disagreement of ideas would not be the mind's judgment or perception of the relation between
representations (nor would it be its simple having of those representations); it would be the
mind's stipulation of the relation between representations. The knowing mind would not
perceive relations between ideas which existed independently of it but would bring relations
between ideas into existence through an act of its own will. As stipulated relations between
ideas, knowledge would not correspond to relations between ideas that existed independently
of acts of stipulation and so would be neither true nor false. Rather, the act of knowing, the act
of willing the relations between ideas, would be binding or nonbinding, authoritative or phony,
successful or unsuccessful. And knowledge, as stipulated relations between ideas, would then
be meaningfully described as being useful or useless, interesting or uninteresting, fruitful or
unfruitful.
Because the grammar of "determination" opens the difference between passivity and active
agency, besides that between will and understanding, it also works to compromise the
definition of the idea itself as a representation that, like reflections in a mirror, is clear, inert,
and inanimate. In "The Epistle to the Reader" at the beginning of the fourth and following
editions of the Essay, Locke proposes "determinate or determined" instead of the Cartesian
"clear and distinct" as the standard predicates for that idea "such as it is at any time objectively
in the Mind and so determined there [that] it is annex'd, and without variation determined to a
name or articulate sound, which is to be steadily the sign of that very same object of the Mind,
or determinate Idea." In Book IV of the Essay, Locke follows this rule in claiming that "for the
attaining of Knowledge and certainty it is requisite, that we have determined Ideas" (p. 565).
Apart from the problem of identifying exactly what has been done to the idea that is
determined is the problem of deciding whether something has been done to the idea or whether
the idea itself is in the state of being determined and resolved. For the phrase "determined
Idea" may name an object of another agent's act of determination, or an agent that, in and of
itself, is determined. That is to say that this expression, which pervades the entire Essay,
allows for both the idea and some other thing (presumably the mind) to be the subject in which
the power of determination inheres. And where this agent is taken to be the idea, where the
idea is understood not as the object of a transitive verb but as an autonomous subject, the
phrase, "determined idea" [End Page 75] would mean an idea that is strongly resolved and
intent upon doing something. Understood in this way, the determined idea is quietly
transformed from inert representation to will or, if it continues to exist as representation,
representation that bears within it its own principle of animation.
It may seem that though the grammar of the expression makes it possible to read "determined
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idea" as a reference to an idea which in and of itself has some kind of inner will, intent,
resolve, drive, or force, it is still perverse to read it in this way: how could an idea be
determined in the sense of being resolved, intent, willful? As long as we are in the hold of the
view that the Lockean idea is a representation (like a reflection in a mirror), this question may
seem pointed. But Rorty and company notwithstanding, over the course of the Essay Locke
does not consistently describe the idea as a representation. He also describes it as a woman,
material substance in which men claim property by virtue of laboring over it, and a moving
material object that strikes with force or weighs upon other material objects. 9 Given these
conceptions of the idea, it is not so strange to postulate an idea with some kind of inner drive,
force, or power. The determined idea, the idea that has fixed resolve and will, is only another
version of the idea that has force and weight: both are answerable to Locke's notion of ideas as
things that act upon the mind and can cause it to do things, such as to believe and to know. The
reading of "determined idea" as the name of a willful idea is thus permitted by the grammar of
the phrase, but it also conforms with dimensions of Locke's figurative description of ideas and
his general concept of them as things that can compel the mind. To put it another way, there
are things in the Essay that encourage us to read "determined idea" not as the name of
something that has been limited, but as the name of something that wills, not as the name of an
object of another subject's power, but as the name of a subject that itself has and exercises
power. An understanding of Locke's account of knowing as an account modeled on the vision
of reflections fails to register the will which is named by "determination" and which inhabits
not just the mental agent that is supposed to be merely having and judging representations, but
also those things that are supposed to be inert representations.
Locke's determination also poses problems for the conception of the agent that knows as a
hermetic person or eye that has, sees, and judges reflections in a mirror and that is not subject
to any external forces save those exerted upon it by the representations themselves. This is
especially clear in the long chapter "Of Power" in which Locke uses "determination" very
heavily. Referring here to "the determination of the will" and "the determination of the mind,"
he appears to be speaking not of some other agent's domination or influence over the will and
mind, but of the mind's or the will's own determination. (Strictly speaking, it would have to be
the mind's determination, since, in this chapter, Locke recognizes the mind as the only agent of
mental action and recognizes will and liberty as powers of this agent.) For, in the definition of
will as the power of determination, this power is not exerted upon the will or mind, but by
[End Page 76] them. Moreover, "the Idea of Liberty is the Idea of a Power in any Agent to do
or forbear any particular Action, according to the determination or thought of the mind,
whereby either of them is preferr'd to the other" (p. 237). Clearly, it seems, the mind and will
are not thought and determined by something else, but think and determine, and the mind's
liberty is defined in terms of its power to determine. Thus, when Locke refers to "the
determination of the will," and "the determination of the mind," he would seem to be referring
to the will and mind as the agents that are doing the determining, the subjects in which
determination, whether it be will or thought, inheres. Depending upon the determination of the
mind and the determination of the will, liberty and voluntary action thus depend upon a mental
agent that has the power to determine. But Locke also frequently speaks of the mind or will as
that which is determined by something else: "uneasiness determines the will and sets us upon
those actions we perform" (p. 250); "hunger moves and determines the will" (p. 252); "the
uneasiness of desire determines the will" (p. 256); "every man must be determined in willing
by his own Thought and Judgment" (p. 264); we have "a power to suspend desire and keep it
from determining the will" (p. 266); "the result of our judgment upon that Examination is what
ultimately determines the Man who could not be free if his will were determin'd by any thing,
but his own desire guided by his own Judgment" (p. 283). These locutions, and many others in
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"On Power," indicate that when Locke refers to "the determination of the will," he may be
referring not to the will's power of determination, but to the determination of the will by
thought, judgment, desire, hunger, and uneasiness. Since they depend on what Locke calls "the
determination of the mind" and "the determination of the will," then, liberty and voluntary
action may depend on the mind's being determined by something else. As a kind of voluntary
action judgment may thus be answerable to the kind of autonomous agent postulated by Rorty,
but it may also be answerable to one that is subject to the determination of other powers.
Locke's knowing subject, whether it is conceived of as the inner mirror itself or the inner eye
that inspects the reflections within this mirror, is caught in the grammar of "determination"
which both asserts and compromises its claim to be the autonomous subject that has, perceives,
and judges representations.
"Determination" thus challenges not only the interpretation of Lockean knowing as the judging
of representations and the interpretation of Lockean ideas as inert representations, but also the
interpretation of the Lockean subject that knows as a person or eye that has, judges, and
perceives representations. In short, "determination" challenges the understanding of Lockean
epistemology as a representational epistemology. For besides being judgments or perceptions
of the relations among ideas, the determinations of the mind may be institutions, legislations,
and stipulations of that relation; besides being determinations performed by the mind or its
own will, they may be determinations performed by another agent or power upon the mind;
besides being discrete, separate, limited, inert representations, the determined idea that is the
substance of linguistic [End Page 77] meaning and the known may itself be an agent that acts
upon the mind, not as sunlight acts on the eye, but as an agent endowed with will, authority,
and power acts upon another agent. The reading of "determination" that allows Lockean
epistemology to conform with representational epistemology ignores these possibilities which
are grounded in his own variegated use of this term in his epistemological and political
writing.
* * *
If thinking about Locke's empiricism as a philosophy of will seems strange, thinking about
Hume's empiricism in this way may seem more strange. For as Hans Oberdieck claims, "in
moving from Descartes to Mill...the will shrinks in importance. Indeed, it virtually becomes a
vestigial organ: while once central to a sound understanding of mind, the will comes to be
regarded either as the last appetite in deliberation (Hobbes), the greatest apprehension of
apparent good (Locke and Edwards), or little more than a vague causally impotent feeling
accompanying action (Hume and Mill)." And the ostensible dissolution of the will in custom,
passion, and the mechanisms of association is what makes it reasonable for Barry Stroud to
distinguish Hume from Descartes in terms of Hume's marginalization of the will. But Jerome
Christensen's perception of radical ambition at the core of Hume's plump, still body gives
pause to question these views. 10 So does Hume's own use of the word "determination" in the
most powerful and extensive epistemological meditation of the Treatise. Concerning the
necessity ascribed to cause, Hume writes:
For, after a frequent repetition [of observing "like objects always existing in like
relations of contiguity and succession"] I find, that upon the appearance of one of
the objects, the mind is determin'd by custom to consider its usual attendant, and
to consider it in a stronger light upon account of its relation to the first object. 'Tis
this impression, then, or determination, which affords me the idea of necessity. 11
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Necessity, he later claims, "is nothing but an internal impression of the mind, or a
determination to carry our thoughts from one object to another" (p. 165); "either we have no
idea of necessity, or necessity is nothing but that determination of the thought to pass from
causes to effects and from effects to causes, according to their experienc'd union" (p. 166). In
attributing efficacy and power to objects in the world, "we are led astray by a false
philosophy," for "we transfer the determination of the thought to external objects, and suppose
any real intelligible connexion betwixt them; that being a quality, which can only belong to the
mind that considers them" (p. 168).
First, what is the determination of which Hume speaks in this celebrated passage? An
impression. But what kind of impression? Perhaps it is the impression of discovery, judgment,
or perception. This seems a reasonable [End Page 78] conjecture, given that Hume elsewhere
in the Treatise writes that we "are at a loss to determine whether any image proceeds from the
fancy or the memory" (p. 85) and "that 'tis impossible to determine, otherwise than by
experience, what will result from any phœnomenon, or what has preceded it" (p. 111). But
perhaps it is the impression of volition, propensity, or resolve that the mind feels within itself.
This seems a reasonable conjecture given that elsewhere in the Treatise Hume writes that "we
immediately feel a determination of the mind to pass from one object to its usual attendant," a
determination that Hume proceeds to call a "propensity" (p. 165). In addition, the grammar of
the phrase, "the determination of the mind to pass," seems to enforce the meaning of the mind's
resolve, will, or intent to do so. Second, where does this determination reside, or, who is doing
the determining? That this determination, be it resolve or decision, resides in or is made by the
mind is permitted by the grammar of these phrases and is strongly indicated by Hume's
references to: we as the ones who determine (pp. 85, 111, 127); "this habit or determination"
that is ours (p. 134); and those "determinations, where the mind decides from contrary
experiments" (p. 154). But pervasive references to reason, principles of association, causes,
force, the idea of cause, custom, nature, and habit as what "determine" the mind to pass from
the idea of cause to the idea of effect define determination as a power or act by something else
on, against, or over the mind (pp. 88, 92, 98, 108, 128, 133, 134, 138, 156, 170, 172, 183).
Because Hume's usage, like Locke's, establishes radically different meanings for
"determination," it is not clear what Hume is talking about when he uses the term in his
account of necessary connection. To put it another way, the remarkable semantic richness of
this term makes it difficult to know how to read some crucial passages in Hume's text. To read
Hume's account of the mind reasoning about cause and effect as simply an account of an agent
that is resolved and intent upon moving from one idea to another would be to remain oblivious
to the act of judgment that "determination" in some cases clearly names. But to read Hume's
account of the mind reasoning about cause and effect as simply an account of an agent that
judges representations would be to remain oblivious to the will that "determination" in some
cases clearly names. Similarly, to read Hume's account of necessity as an account of the mind's
own determination (be it decision or will) to pass from one idea to another would be to ignore
his description of how other things determine the mind, while to read it as an account of the
mind's subjection to the determination of these other things would be to discount Hume's
descriptions of the mind as that which determines itself, as that which in and of itself is
determined. That is to say that Hume's use of the word "determination" as a name of necessity
suspends necessity and all of the knowledge grounded in the relation of causation between will
and judgment, between activity and passivity.
That Hume, if not Locke and Berkeley, does not designate will by "will" but only by a term
which also designates its urbane counterpart, understanding, could be viewed as being
symptomatic of Hume's general strategy [End Page 79] as a man of letters that Christensen
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characterizes as a transformation of "violent method into mild technique" and as "a wish to
dominateeffortlessly, invisibly, and naturally, without intrigue, scepter, or histrionics" (pp.
13, 4). By duplicitously naming will, Hume can cover a potential scene of violent struggle,
exertion, resolve, intent, intrigue, and domination with one of deliberations to pass, as custom
would have it, from here to there. But the more general reason that will, conceived as invisible
power, driving force, animus, cannot be properly named in empiricism is that the mind has no
idea of it. The will continually conjured by "determination" is, in accordance with the
empiricists' law of no idea without an antecedent impression, unrepresentable. Locke, for
instance, tries to give an account of the idea of will as an idea of reflection, an idea of an active
power "that we find in our selves to begin or forbear, continue or end several actions of our
minds, and motions of our Bodies, barely by a thought or preference of the mind ordering, or
as it were commanding the doing or not doing such or such a particular action" (p. 236). But
what is an active power? Our idea of active power, Locke tells us, derives from "the Idea of
the beginning of motion [which] we have only from reflection on what passes in our selves,
where we find by Experience, that barely by willing it, barely by a thought of the Mind, we
can move the parts of our Bodies, which were before at rest" (p. 235). Our idea of will, that is
to say, is an idea of active power that is the idea of will and the beginning of motion. When the
redundancy of the definition is observed, what remains is a definition of will in terms of the
ideas of thinking and bodily motionthere seems to be nothing identifiable apart from the
objects of these ideas in which to ground the idea of power and will.
Both Berkeley and Hume recognize Locke's problem. Berkeley responds by insisting that
because all ideas are passive, no idea can represent what is active: "No Perception according to
Locke is active. Therefore no perception (i.e. no Idea) can be the image of or like unto that
which is altogether active and not at all passive i.e. the Will." This does not, however, prevent
him from positing an active agent that he often identifies as the will:
The Will is purus actus or rather pure Spirit not imaginable, not sensible, not
intelligible, in no wise the object of the understanding, no wise perceivable.
The Spirit, the Active thing, that which is Soul and God, is the Will alone. The
Ideas are effects impotent things. 12
Hume also claims that we have no idea of power, but infers from this that it is illegitimate to
posit power or will. When we refer to the will, Hume asserts, we refer not to some power or
active agent of which we have no idea, but only to "the internal impression we feel and are
conscious of, when we knowingly give rise to any new motion of our body, or new perception
of our mind. This impression, like the preceding ones of pride and humility, love and hatred,
'tis impossible to define, and needless to describe any farther" [End Page 80] (p. 399). This
impression, moreover, considered as a cause, "has no more a discoverable connexion with its
effects than any material cause has with its proper effect" (pp. 63233). While the text of
empiricism implicitly and explicitly raises the ghost of will as power, then, it simultaneously
ensures that this will remains a ghost. Shelley's spokesman for the skeptical side of British
empiricism, Demogorgon, should say not that the truth is imageless, but that the will is.
But the fact that the mind cannot have an image of the will does not mean that the empiricists
dispense with it or relegate it to a minor role. On the contrary, "determination" implants it in
the knower, the knowing, and the known of empiricist epistemology. That this will itself
resides outside the system of representation that is supposed to be constituted by the
empiricists' way of ideas is just one more indication of the shortcomings of the conception of
empiricism as a representational theory of knowledge. While one reading of "determination" in
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empiricism places it squarely in the classical episteme which Foucault understands to assert
"the continuum of representation and being, an ontology defined negatively as an absence of
nothingness, a general representability of being, and being as expressed in the presence of
representation," another reading of this term challenges it. This alternative reading shunts
empiricist epistemology out of the classical episteme forward into the nineteenthcentury
episteme in which
representation itself was to be paralleled, limited, circumscribed, mocked perhaps,
but in any case regulated from the outside, by the enormous thrust of a freedom, a
desire, or a will, posited as the metaphysical converse of consciousness.
Something like a will or a force was to arise in the modern experience
constituting it perhaps, but in any case indicating that the Classical age was now
over, and with it the reign of representative discourse, the dynasty of a
representation signifying itself and giving voice in the sequence of its words to the
order that lay dormant within things. 13
As a name of both will and understanding, "determination" is the empiricist epiphany of
horizein that, in folding quick sight upon authority, discovery upon legislation, epistemology
upon politics, cuts across the strata of Foucault's epistemological archaeology.
* * *
Tom Jones has been understood as a novel that resembles, follows, or conforms with the
British empiricist tradition by virtue of its author's "formal realism," his skepticism, his
concern with problems of signification, his moral theory, his narrative practice, and his
understanding of belief. 14 But Fielding shares something more basic with the British
empiricistsvocabularyand one of the terms of this shared vocabulary is "determination."
But in his novel, the power and ambiguity of this term [End Page 81] challenge not so much
our understanding of a general theory of knowledge, as our understanding of a particular plot,
aesthetics, and hermeneutics. This is because Fielding uses "determination" to name not the
acts and states of an anonymous mind, but the acts and states of particular characters, himself,
and the reader.
The determination of Fielding's characters cleaves in ways that by now will be familiar to us.
In some cases, the grammar of "determination" seems to coincide with that of a will which
exists over time: after Sophia tells her "I am resolved to go," Mrs. Honour sees "her mistress
so determined [that] she desisted from any further dissuasions"; 15 Mrs. Honour decides to get
herself fired upon finding Sophia "positively determined" (p. 322); Partridge says to Tom
"since you are determined to go on, I am as much determined to follow" (p. 393); Allworthy
says "I am determined she [Sophia] shall suffer no more confinement" (p. 855). In other cases,
"determination" seems less a name of will than a name of other mental operations and states:
Mrs. Wilkins "brought back such a confirmation of the schoolmaster's guilt, that Mr.
Allworthy determined to send for the criminal, and examine him viva voce" (p. 104); "I have
determined to say a few words," Allworthy announces on his ostensible deathbed (p. 227); in
his story, the Man of the Hill says it "is difficult to determine" what happened to the money on
the table at which he was gambling (p. 417); Mrs. Fitzpatrick "will not determine" whether the
mirth of her husband was from art or nature (p. 519); speaking to Allworthy concerning Tom's
hopes, Sophia says "I have determined at present to listen to no such proposals from any
person" (p. 848). In these cases, rather than referring to a powerful will, persisting over time,
to get something done or to prevent something from occurring, "determination" seems to refer
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to a momentary decision to do something, a discernment, or a judgment. Thus, like Locke and
Hume, Fielding uses "determination" as a name of acts of both will and understanding. And
like Locke and Hume, he sometimes uses the term in ways that make it difficult to tell about
which kind of act he is talking. When, for example, near the end of the novel, Allworthy
commands Tom "to abide intirely by the determination of the young lady [Sophia], whether it
shall be in your favour, or no," we may well wonder if everything depends on a judgment (of
Tom's moral character for example) or a will (to live with or without Tom). The vagaries of
"determination" here suspend the outcome of the love story between judgment and will,
between a single mental act performed in an instant, and a mental state that will have to persist
over time.
There is a further conceptual cleavage in the semantics of this term that is close to but
significantly different from the instantaneous/duration difference. When Tom is determined to
go to sea, he is prospective, he is looking to the future as the time of his journey toward and
arrival at the sea, he is at the beginning of an action whose end or telos is the arrival at sea.
This prospective, originary dimension of "determination" makes it reasonable for Hume and
Fielding to refer to their own determinations as forms of origin: in the "Advertisement" at the
opening of the Treatise, [End Page 82] Hume writes that "the approbation of the public I
consider as the greatest reward of my labour; but am determin'd to regard its judgment,
whatever it be, as my best instruction" (p. xii); in the dedication to Tom Jones, Fielding claims
he is "determined to follow the example of all other dedicators" (p. 36); early in the novel,
Fielding claims "we determined when we first set down to write this history to flatter no
man..." (p. 123). But this dimension of "determination" is surprising given its alliances with
"resolution" and its own Latin etymology: to determine < OF determiner <L determinare < de
(completely) + terminare (to end) < terminus (limit). The sense of an ending evident in this
etymology is also current in Fielding's use of "determination" as a designation of a final and
binding decision or judgment, a commitment or will that, even if it does reside at the beginning
of one action, is arrived at as the end of processes of conversation, deliberation, debate, and
experience. This cleavage impinges on the meaning of Fielding's account of the determination
of his characters, particularly at the conclusion of the novel where the term frequently occurs.
Because the resolution of the novel is achieved in the form of descriptions of the determination
of characters, it is not simply an account of the termination of their history. It is, in addition to
such a description of closure, a designation of wills and decisions as the origins of action that,
penetrating into the future, surpass the horizon defined by the "end" of the novel. Similarly, the
various origins and beginnings designated as determinations penetrate into the past since they
designate wills and decisions which thoroughly terminate a past experience. Being determined,
the action of Fielding's characters is constituted in the moment and over time as both starts and
finishes. 16
These characters also suffer the vagaries of the empiricists' determined agent. For besides
being readable as the subjects of determination, they are readable as the objects of another
agent's power and decision. The prospect of reward, the danger of the escape, the uncertainty
of success, and the fear"so forcibly did all these operate upon her [Mrs. Honour], that she
was almost determined to go directly to the squire, and to lay open the whole affair" (p. 323);
"something very extraordinary must have determined you to this course of life" Tom cries to
the Man of the Hill (p. 402); news that the rebels were moving on London "determined the
opinion of" the landlord (p. 515); Fielding will not assert whether Fortune, who "had
determined not to let him [Squire Western] overtake his daughter, might not resolve to make
him amends some other way" (p. 554). These identifications of agents which exert the power
of determination over the characters enforce a hesitation over references to, for example, Tom
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"being determined to go to sea" (p. 330) and "the determination of the young lady [Sophia]" (p.
854). In these and many other cases where "to determine" is used as a participial adjective
("determined") or as a noun with a possessive "of" ("the determination of"), the sense of a state
of will or intent that endures over time appears to predominate. But it is just at these moments
when a character's determination seems identifiable as his/her will that the problem of agency
intervenes: determination [End Page 83] may be the will of the character, but it may also be
the power or influence exerted upon that character by something else. Given Fielding's own
usage of the term and his own playfulness in connection with providence and his narrative
power, Tom's "being determined to go to sea" may mean that Tom himself was resolute in the
intention to go to sea or that something had made or compelled Tom to go to sea. Where
Fielding's grammar appears to let a character's "determination" settle into that character's will,
it also conjures the liquidation of that will and the subjugation of the character to other agents
such as Fortune, the passions, or the news.
Or the reader, for he/she, too, is a determiner: "from what oracle he [Captain Blifil] received
this opinion [that Allworthy would oppose a match between the captain and Bridget], I shall
leave the reader to determine" (p. 80). In this case, it is the origin or cause of a character's
belief that is left to the reader's determination. The realm of cause, motivation, and origins, as
distinct from the realm of matter of fact, is again at the reader's disposal when, concerning
Tom's failure to court Sophia, the narrator writes, "I shall set forth the plain matter of fact, and
leave the whole to the reader's determination" (p. 167). But given that some readers are "men
of intrigue," even some matters of fact are answerable to this power of determination. After
Tom has received two letters from Bellaston, the narrator writes, "to the men of intrigue I refer
the determination, whether the angry or the tender letter gave the greatest uneasiness to Jones"
(p. 659). And besides different dimensions of the world presented by the novel, the aesthetic
judgment of the author of that world is also open to the reader's will and judgment: "we shall
leave to the reader to determine with what judgment we have chosen the several occasions for
inserting these ornamental parts of our work" (p. 152).
If "determination" could confidently be read to mean an act of decision, judgment, or
understanding, its occurrence as a name of the reader's activity would cohere with the
narrator's repeated references to and invocation of the reader's sagacity, judgment, penetration,
discernment, reflection, conjecture, and understanding. Such a reading would also confirm the
view of those critics who find understanding and judgment to stand at the center of Fielding's
hermeneutics. It would confirm Leo Braudy's view, for instance, that one aspect of the narrator
is that of "the good perceiver whose penetration and judgment are goals which the reader is
expected to approximate through the course of the novel's length," and his claim that it is the
reader's "sympathy and understanding" that the novel aims to develop through his participation
in the novel. Such a reading could be cited as evidence by John Preston when he claims that
we are to appreciate in Tom "the discernment and judgment we ourselves are expected to
display in our reading of the novel," and by Susan McNamara who finds that by the end of the
novel, the reader "judges the fictions of the novel at the same time he suspends judgment."
This reading would also confirm Patrick Reilly's assertion that "Fielding summons us to
judge," Mark KinkeadWeekes' view of Fielding as one who makes things difficult for the
reader in Tom Jones in order "to test whether he has [End Page 84] learnt to judge both with
honour and with love," and Lothar Cerny's view that the reader of this novel "is, and even
ought to be, primarily an understander." 17
But such a reading of "determination" gives short shrift to the ambiguities which attend the
term in the novel, in British empiricism, and in common usage. 18 A reading which is sensitive
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to these ambiguities recognizes that, in calling reading "determination," the novel may be
defining reading as an act of will. And if "determination," as a name of reading, is understood
in this way, then the reader's determination of the origins of Blifil's opinion, of Tom's state of
mind, and of Fielding's aesthetic judgment must not be understood as some kind of
observation, discernment, perception, or judgment, but as an act of stipulation, positing, or
legislation. As distinct from determining in the sense of judging what is the case, of making an
assessment of states of affairs that exist independently of that assessment, the reader may be
determining in the sense of bringing into being a state of affairs that does not exist prior to and
independently of this act of determination. Rather than being like a detective who is
investigating a reality that exists independently of him/her and who is attempting to discern its
true shape and nature, the reader would be like the novelist himself, bringing into existence a
reality (a fictional reality) through his/her own act of will. That reading is determination means
both that will, besides judgment, may be implicated in reading, and that some features of the
fictional world presented by the novel are not to be discerned, discovered, and observed by the
reader, but posited by him/her. As the name of reading, that is, "determination" designates both
an understanding or perception of a fictional world existing independently of reading, and a
fiat that establishes this world. The reader may still be said to know the reality he/she makes,
as God knows the world he creates through his fiats, but this knowledge follows upon an act of
positing and is not simply the achievement of careful investigation and judgment. Defining
reading as perceiving and making, Fielding defines a representational and a
nonrepresentational, an epistemological and a politicotheological hermeneutics.
This dimension of positing emerges with particular force and complexity where the author
explicitly abrogates the responsibility of identifying cause, intention, and motive. In the
standard assertion of this abrogation, the narrator identifies a number of possible causes,
refrains from "determining" the real cause, but concludes by asserting some matter of fact. For
example, "whether Mrs. Blifil had been surfeited with the sweets of marriage, or disgusted by
its bitters, or from what other cause it proceeded, I will not determine; but she could never be
brought to listen to any second proposals" (p. 139). 19 This locution subscribes to Fielding's
commitment "to relate facts, and...leave causes to persons of much higher genius" (p. 95). Fact
is secure and asserted; causation is dubious because it resides within the scope of a
determination that is left for someone or something else to perform. Not only is cause left
unidentified, but the act of identifying it is left to define itself as "determination." The narrator
[End Page 85] may thus be refraining from identifying the cause, which in the fictional world
exists autonomously, of Mr. Blifil's refusal, or he may be refraining from simply stipulating a
cause that, independently of such stipulating, would not exist as a cause. Read as open
invitations to determination, these refrains may move the reader to attempt to discover the
causal links, or to ordain them.
In submitting causation to determination, Fielding is not, as Braudy claims, someone who "like
Hume, believes that causality is more important as a means of explanation rather than an
inherent characteristic of nature" (p. 167). For Hume, causality could not be a means of
explaining anything because, having no idea of it, we have no rational grounds to think it
exists. After arguing that we have no idea of causation (of the necessity uniting cause and
effect), Hume explains why we mistakenly believe we do have such an ideaHume's account
of human nature, his science of humanity, is what explains the fiction of causation. Fielding's
"determination" of causal connection seems to be open to Hume's critique because, whether it
is a form of discovery or stipulation, it still discovers or posits a particular relation that is taken
to be causation. There are causes and effects in Tom's worldit is just that some are discovered
to exist, and others are made to exist by stipulations of reader and author. But by so
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conspicuously refusing to perform this determination himself and by using Hume's term to
name the establishment of the relation of causation, Fielding may also here be aligning himself
with the Humean critique. If Fielding's "determination" is read as a reference to Hume's
"determination," then causation in Tom Jones is reduced to nothingnothing, at least, but the
determination of the mind, whatever that may be. One of the novel's narrative formulae (which
is a version of Sextus' skeptical formula) thus makes causation a relation that is both known
and stipulated to exist, but that also may vanish in a world composed only of heterogeneous
events, the mind's determination to pass between ideas of them, and the mind's
misunderstanding of its own determination.
Refusing to determine some things, the narrator, it may be inferred, is determining others.
Indeed, because some cases of Fielding's refusal to determine cause are ironic,
nondetermination ends up as determination. This is the case, for example, when Fielding
writes, "whether a natural love of justice, or the extraordinary comeliness of Jones, had
wrought on Susan to make the discovery, I will not determine..." (p. 493). As Eric Rothstein
remarks, "who does not know which of the two has 'wrought on Susan' despite Fielding's wink
of restraint?" 20 This identification of the narrator's activity as determination works to include
him in the set of agents such as Fortune, the news, and the reader which compete with the
characters for the agency that opens up in the grammar of expressions such as "the
determination of the young lady" (p. 854). In addition, the specific literary form of the novel is
answerable to the narrator's determination. As we have seen, he begins "determined to follow
the example of all other dedicators" (p. 36). Later, he writes that "as we determined when we
first sat down to write this history to flatter no man, but to guide our [End Page 86] pen
throughout by the directions of truth, we are obliged to bring our heroe on the stage in a much
more disadvantageous manner than we could wish..." (p. 123). The initial essays, moreover,
"we have determined to be essentially necessary to this kind of writing, of which we have set
ourselves at the head.... For this our determination we do not hold ourselves strictly bound to
assign any reason; it being abundantly sufficient that we have laid it down as a rule, necessary
to be observed in all prosaicomiepic writing" (p. 199).
At this point it becomes clear that besides challenging an understanding of the act of reading as
judgment and perception, "determination" in Tom Jones challenges the novel's general claim to
represent the real, its claim to truth. If determination were purely a form of judgment and
penetration anchored in the faculty of perception or understanding, Fielding's identification of
writing as determination would be consistent with his claim to be telling a true story, to be
relating matter of fact, to be investigating, discovering, and communicating what really
happened. For, as Hume puts it in one of his essays, "all determinations of the understanding
are not right; because they have a reference to something beyond themselves, to wit, real
matter of fact; and are not always conformable to that standard." 21 That is to say, because the
categories of truth and falsity apply to determinations of the understanding, the narrator can
reasonably claim that what he determines is true, is conformable to matter of fact. But these
epistemological categories, as we have seen, do not apply to determinations of the will (unless
these categories themselves are understood to have been radically redefined in terms of
authority and success). To lay down, to ordain, to appoint, to mark out by boundaries, to
legislate, to instituterather than referring to a reality beyond themselves and conforming with
matter of fact, these activities bring reality, matter of fact, and law into being. That writing can
be determining in this sense, that it can be not an act of constating but one of performing, is
made explicit by Fielding when he explicates his determination to write introductory essays as
the laying down of a rule (p. 199) and as an act of institution (p. 475), and when, in the essay
opening the final book of the novel, he refers to his writing as "my own performances" (p.
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814). The conspicuous designation of narration as "determination" is one way in which the
fictions of reference, discovery, revelation, history, fidelity to matter of fact, research, inquiry,
communication of truthin short, the fiction of representation is simultaneously asserted and
withdrawn.
This designation also works to complicate the account of artistic production presented in the
introductory essays. Although problems of irony attend this presentation, Fielding does not
seem to be entirely joking when he identifies principles, such as that of the imitation of nature
(pp. 52, 137, 153, 344, 592, 656, 768) and contrast (p. 201), and mental capacities, such as
genius (which comprehends invention and judgment), learning, knowledge (or experience),
and a good heart (humanity), as the grounds of the aesthetic (pp. 43539, 60809). But given
that determination as stipulation, institution, and legislation is an act of will rather than [End
Page 87] an act of understanding, Fielding's designation of creation as determination locates
the faculty of will at the origins of the aesthetic. Where this will is identified by Fielding as a
legislator, an instituter of law, that which lays down rules for writing, the implication is that
Fielding's writing is also an act of conformity with the law passed by his own will. Creation,
the aesthetic act, then, consists in the individual's laying down of law and his/her acting in
conformity with it. Describing himself as a determiner, Fielding postulates an aesthetic
grounded in the categories of legislation and obedience. 22
This observation that Fielding qualifies his commitment to represent the real, to bear the truth
about the real through mimesis, is hardly new. Under the rubric of "Fielding's departure from
the canons of formal realism," Watt discusses Fielding's essayistic interventions and "ironical
attitude" toward the reality of his characters. Several critics have since presented their version
of, to use the title of Michael Irwin's book, Henry Fielding: The Tentative Realist (1967).
Besides the metafictional introductory essays in Tom Jones, it is the moral intention, the comic
intention, the symbolic, analogical, or metaphorical mode of representing the real, and the
inclusion of Fielding's own mind and act of fictionalizing in the reality that is represented,
which have been identified as the elements in Fielding's fiction that compromise the equation
of his artifact with representation conceived as a reflection that resembles but is not part of
reality. 23 But "determination" in Fielding's text names a faculty, an act, and an artifact that
abolish representation in general. And if authority, legislation, and law are understood to fall
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under the general concept of the [End Page 88] political, "determination" names politics as the
conceptual ground of aesthetics. Because this term names epistemology besides politics,
however, it will not suffice to understand Tom Jones, as Carol Kay understands other
eighteenthcentury novels, in terms of categories drawn solely from politics, nor to claim more
specifically, as Richetti does, that "the ideal reader of Tom Jones may be said, finally, to
understand that the narrator speaks in a political mode." 24 The ideal reader of the novel rather
ordains or understands that Fielding speaks in a mode that passes imperceptibly between
politics and epistemology.
Fielding's aesthetic may hence be called an empiricist aesthetic, as it always has been, but the
reasons for asserting this connection have changed. For the alliance cannot be grounded in a
conception of empiricism as a representational epistemology, even when it is described, as it is
by Michael McKeon, in terms of a dialectic of idealism, naive empiricism, and skepticism. If
McKeon had devoted more than a short chapter to the principal seventeenthcentury
epistemological texts, he might not have so uncritically invested in Rorty's vision of
philosophy in the seventeenth century, a vision McKeon presents as follows:
For what is most important about this [the seventeenthcentury philosophical]
revolution is that it entails a transformation from metaphysics and theology to
epistemology. Henceforth the process of coming to a knowledge of truth will be
understood according to a tacitly assumed metaphor of visual sense perception, so
that knowing something will consist in having it 'in mind,' and knowing it well
will require that we refine the capacity of our ideas for the accurate, inner
representation of external objects. (p. 83)
We have seen that in many different ways, the text of British empiricism does not bear out this
view that "the new philosophy" is an unqualifiedly representational one that conceives of
knowing as visually assessing the accuracy of reflections and that defines skepticism as the
view that there is no way of telling if any reflection accurately reflects objects or reflects
anything at all. This is why Rorty's history of philosophy and McKeon's account of the
epistemological origins of the novel are seriously flawed. The claim to representation is made
by the empiricists, but it is complicated by, among other things, its own oblique index to what
can rule representation, stand within it, stand beyond it, and negate itwill. Naming not only
will, but also understanding, "determination" is an important common ground of empiricism
and Fielding's greatest novel: as this term in empiricism defines knowing as an act of
perceiving or stipulating, so it defines reading and writing in Tom Jones; as it names in
empiricism an act done or suffered by the mind, so it names acts done or suffered by
characters, authors, and readers in Tom Jones; as in empiricism it defines the known as a
limited representation or a willing subject, so it defines the fictional world and the novel itself
as a limited representation or posited being in Tom Jones. The mirror of eighteenthcentury
aesthetics and epistemology is thus not broken by the determination of these texts. It is just
[End Page 89] that, however impossible it may be to imagine and represent, the reflections in
this mirror have a pulse.
Finally, since these claims about Tom Jones proceed from a reading of one term in it, they
hardly amount to a reading of the novel. They are not intended to; they are rather meant simply
to live up to the strength of one of its central terms. If this project of understanding a single
term and its implications in Tom Jones is charged with being narrow, its defense is that some
terms bear and demand such a project. That is to say that its defense is the philology "which
demands of its votaries one thing above all: to go aside, to take time, to become still, to
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become slow." 25 As a reading that moves out of a sense of the force of a particular word, this
project thus presents itself as, if not an attack on, then a supplement to the method of critics
from Watt to McKeon who want to define this literary form in relation to the new
epistemology but who generally eschew the specific problems involved with reading the major
epistemological texts and the vocabulary they share with literature. In implicitly urging this
methodological point, this reading of "determination" makes one step toward a reading of the
entire novel and challenges some elements of readings that have already been offered. But it
also directs us to see how formidable a task it is to give what we casually call "a reading of
Tom Jones."
University of Canterbury
Notes
1. See, e.g., Ian Watt, The Rise of the Novel: Studies in Defoe,Richardson, and Fielding (1957;
repr. N.Y.: Penguin, 1963); Ronald Paulson, Satire and the Novel in EighteenthCentury
England (New Haven: Yale Univ., 1967); John A. Dussinger, The Discourse of the Mind in
EighteenthCentury Fiction (The Hague: Mouton, 1974); W. Austin Flanders, Structures of
Experience: History, Society, and Personal Life in the EighteenthCentury British Novel
(Columbia: Univ. of South Carolina, 1984); Eve Tavor, Scepticism and the EighteenthCentury
Novel (London: Macmillan, 1987); John Bender, Imagining the Penitentiary: Fiction and the
Architecture of Mind in EighteenthCentury England (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago, 1987);
Michael McKeon, The Origins of the English Novel, 16001740 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins
Univ., 1987); Ann Jessie Van Sant, EighteenthCentury Sensibility and the Novel (Cambridge:
Cambridge Univ., 1993).
2. For the major efforts of scholars trained in literary criticism to readempiricism, see John
Richetti, Philosophical Writing: Locke, Berkeley, Hume (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ.,
1983); Peter Walmsley, The Rhetoric of Berkeley's Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ.,
1990); Cathy Caruth, Empirical Truths and Critical Fictions: Locke, Wordsworth, Kant, Freud
(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ., 1991); Richard Kroll, The Material Word: Literate Culture
in the Restoration and Early Eighteenth Century (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ., 1991);
Jules David Law, The Rhetoric of Empiricism: Language and Perception from Locke to I. A.
Richards (Ithaca: Cornell Univ., 1993); Adam Potkay, The Fate of Eloquence in the Age of
Hume (Ithaca: Cornell Univ., 1994); William Walker, Locke, Literary Criticism, and
Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ., 1994).
3. The works of Sextus Empiricus were first published by Henri Estienneand Gentian Hervet
during the 1560s in Latin translation. The Chouet brothers first published the Greek text, along
with a Latin translation in Geneva in 1621. This 1621 Latin translation of the Outlines is the
translation of Estienne (who goes by the name of Henrico Stephano on the title pages of these
edns.) which he published in 1562 and which is the one wherein I find horizein translated as
definire.
There were 4 edns. of Thomas Stanley's The History of Philosophy: 165562; 1687; 1701;
1743. I have consulted a facsimile of the 3rd edn. of 1701 (N.Y.: Georg Olms Verlag, 1975).
The English translation of Outlines of Pyrrhonism that I cite is R. G. Bury's (1933; London:
Heinemann, 1976). It should be noted that Bury uses "to determine" to translate not just ouden
horizo, but also the skeptic's phrase panta estin aorista. Whereas Stanley translates this as "all
are undefinable" and "all things are indefinite," Bury gives "all things are undetermined." For
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further bibliographical information on Sextus Empiricus, see Richard H. Popkin, The History
of Scepticism From Erasmus to Spinoza (1960; 2nd. rev. edn. Berkeley: Univ. of Calfornia,
1979).
5. Leviathan (N.Y.: Penguin, 1985), p. 149.
6. An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, ed. Peter Nidditch(1975; repr. Oxford:
Clarendon, 1982), pp. 241, 250. Further refs. are to this edn. and are included in the text.
7. Two Treatises of Government, ed. Peter Laslett (1960; repr. N.Y.: Mentor, 1965), p. 307.
Further refs. are to this edn. and are included in the text.
8. Rorty, Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (Princeton: PrincetonUniv., 1979), pp. 13948.
9. See Walker, pp. 31127. Although Rorty claims that Westernfoundationalist epistemologists
understand the representation as something that can force and compel the mind, he does not
wonder how something that is supposed to be like a reflection in a mirror could do this. That is
to say that he sees no serious inconsistency between the discourse of vision and the discourse
of force in Western epistemological tradition, but sees them uniting to produce the western
representational, foundationalist epistemology that he feels has had its day. Both Nietzsche and
Derrida, however, recognize that talking about knowing in terms of vision is in fundamental
ways inconsistent with talking about it in terms of force. As Derrida asks, "how can force or
weakness be understood in terms of light and darkness?" (L'Ecriture et la Différence [Paris:
Seuil, 1967], p. 45). The point is that Rorty seems unaware of the tension between his account
of Western (and so Lockean) epistemology as a representational epistemology dictated by the
picture of the mind as a mirror and the representation as a reflection in a mirror and his
account of it as a foundationalist epistemology dictated by the picture of the representation as
something that can force, compel, and "grip" us. For Rorty's postulation of the gripping
representation, see Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, pp. 156, 159.
10. See Oberdieck, "The Will," in An Encyclopedia of Philosophy,ed. G. H. R. Parkinson
(London: Routledge, 1988), p. 474; Stroud, Hume (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1977),
pp. 1214; Christensen, Practicing Enlightenment: Hume and the Formation of a Literary
Career (Madison: Univ. of Wisconsin, 1987). Kroll's observations in The Material Word on
the voluntarism that characterizes emergent postRenaissance Epicurean culture is a further
reason one might have for reconsidering the will in 18thcentury epistemology. It is also worth
recalling Jean Starobinski's general vision of 18thcentury Western European culture: "the
evolution of the century...appears to be one from the subjectivity of sensation to the
subjectivity of willing" (L'invention de la Liberté [Genève: Editions D'Art Albert Skira, 1964],
p. 204).
11. A Treatise of Human Nature, ed. L. A. SelbyBigge; 2nd. edn.,rev. P. H. Nidditch (Oxford:
Clarendon, 1978), pp. 15556 (Hume's emphasis). Further refs. are to this edn. and are
included in the text.
13. Foucault, The Order of Things: An Archaeology of the HumanSciences (1970; repr. N.Y.:
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Vintage, 1973), pp. 20609.
14. See Watt, The Rise of the Novel; Leo Braudy, Narrative Formin History and Fiction:
Hume, Fielding, and Gibbon (Princeton: Princeton Univ., 1970); Glenn W. Hatfield, Henry
Fielding and the Language of Irony (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago, 1968); Tavor, Scepticism,
Society and the EighteenthCentury Novel.
15. Tom Jones, ed. R. P. C. Mutter (N.Y.: Penguin, 1985), p. 322.Further refs. are to this edn.
and are included in the text.
16. Note that some of these ambiguities also attend "resolution," anotherterm that Fielding uses
very heavily throughout the novel, but especially at the end.
17. Braudy, pp. 15256; Preston, The Created Self (N.Y.:Barnes & Noble, 1970), p. 130;
McNamara, "Mirrors of Fiction Within Tom Jones: The Paradox of SelfReference,"
EighteenthCentury Studies 12 (1979): 389; Reilly, "Fielding's Magisterial Art," in Henry
Fielding: Justice Observed, ed. K. G. Simpson (London: Vision, 1985), p. 78; Kinkead
Weekes, "Out of the Thicket in Tom Jones," in Henry Fielding: Justice Observed, p. 149;
Cerny, "Reader Participation and Rationalism in Fielding's Tom Jones," Connotations 2
(1992): 141. Though Cerny is critical of Wolfgang Iser, Iser, too, emphasizes imagination,
judgment, observation, discernment, reflection, and deduction in his account of reading Tom
Jones (The Implied Reader [Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ., 1974], pp. 2956).
18. The extensive OED definitions of "determination" and "determine"commonly break down
into pairs grounded in willing/perceiving and active/passive differences. Hence, the leading
definition of "determination" is "the action of determining, the condition of being determined,"
and the subsequent listings are clearly bifurcated into "action" and "result." And meaning "to
resolve upon, on, of (course of action)," the word "determine" is said to appear to combine
other senses of the term "and to pass imperceptibly from the sense of decide to that of resolve."
The problem of understanding "determination" in the texts of Locke, Hume, and Fielding,
then, is the same as the problem of understanding the term in common usage. Though those,
including Locke, who wanted a technical and more precise vocabulary for philosophy might
not like it, common usage is a common ground of the difficulties and pleasures of British
epistemological texts and English literature.
19. For other examples of this kind, see pp. 85, 90, 164, 168, 251, 357,451, 464, 731, 796.
21. "Of the Standard of Taste," in Essays Moral, Political, andLiterary, ed. Eugene Miller
(Indianapolis: Liberty Classics, 1985), p. 230.
22. Richetti, Rothstein, Cerny, and Bell recognize the force of thesecategories in Tom Jones
and consider them in connection with Fielding's ideology and drive for authority. See Richetti,
"The Old Order and the New Novel of the MidEighteenth Century: Narrative Authority in
Fielding and Smollett," EighteenthCentury Fiction 2 (1990): 18396; Rothstein, pp. 99126;
Cerny, pp. 14446; Ian Bell, Henry Fielding: Authorship and Authority (N.Y.: Longman,
1994), pp. 167213. Fielding's aesthetic of legislation and obedience would also conform in
important respects with Terry Eagleton's account of a "notion of autonomy or self
referentiality which the new discourse of aesthetics is centrally concerned to elaborate." And if
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Fielding the determiner who sets his own laws and obeys them is considered as a form of
subjectivity, he will be seen to conform with the mode of subjectivity with which Eagleton
sees the aesthetic providing the middle class, a "mode of being which is entirely selfregulating
and selfdetermining." On the other hand, it must be observed that Fielding does not give up on
the claim to representation, a claim that flagrantly violates the claim to autonomy. Fielding
makes it clear, moreover, that, as a determiner, he must compete with the determinative force
of the other determiners in the novel, namely, his characters and readersthat Fielding
determines in the sense of stipulating does not mean that he is the only one who does so. And
because one of the things up for grabs in the game of determination is the novel itself, the
novel cannot claim to be entirely selfregulating and selfdetermining. Finally, although
Fielding does not commonly implicate himself in those expressions which complicate the
agency of determination, his characters, as we have seen, are deeply compromised in this way.
Read as a gloss on subjectivity, phrases such as "the determination of the young lady" both
assert and deny the autonomy which Eagleton understands to constitute 18thcentury aesthetics
and subjectivity. See Eagleton, The Ideology of the Aesthetic (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1990),
p. 9.
23. Watt, pp. 297300; Irwin, Henry Fielding: The TentativeRealist (Oxford: Clarendon,
1967). See Martin C. Battestin, The Providence of Wit: Aspects of Form in Augustan
Literature and the Arts (Oxford: Clarendon, 1974), pp. 14163; Braudy, p. 145; Mary Poovey,
"Journeys from this World to the Next: The Providential Promise in Clarissa and Tom Jones,"
ELH 43 (1976): 30015; Thomas Lockwood, "Matter and Reflection in Tom Jones," ELH 45
(1978): 22635; McNamara, "Mirrors of Fiction Within Tom Jones"; Leopold Damrosch Jr.,
God's Plot and Man's Stories: Studies in the Fictional Imagination from Milton to Fielding
(Chicago: Univ. of Chicago, 1985), pp. 289, 300; Bell, pp. 170, 17678.
24. Kay, Political Constructions: Defoe, Richardson, and Sterne inRelation to Hobbes, Hume,
and Burke (Ithaca: Cornell Univ., 1988); Richetti, "The Old Order," p. 190.
25. Friedrich Nietzsche, Daybreak: Thoughts on the Prejudices ofMorality, trans. R. J.
Hollingdale (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ., 1982), p. 5.
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