I have just learned that James Q. Wilson died this morning at the age of 80.
Jim Wilson was one of the greatest political scientists of the past 50 years. He grew up in Southern California. He graduated from the University of Redlands, and then went to the University of Chicago for his Ph.D. At Chicago, he took a course from Leo Strauss on Kant. I remember him telling me that he didn't understand anything in the course, except that Kant was wrong, but that was enough to satisfy Strauss.
At Chicago, he made a great impression on Edward Banfield, a professor known for his research on urban politics. When Banfield went to Harvard, he took Wilson with him. Wilson was a professor at Harvard for over 25 years. He then ended his formal teaching career at UCLA.
Wilson was best known for his work in criminology. As a young scholar, I admired his book Crime and Human Nature, which I used as a text in some of my classes as a classic of political science. I detected in this book and some of his other writings an evolutionary view of human nature.
This was confirmed in 1993 by the publication of Wilson's The Moral Sense. Wilson said that he was most proud of this book. For me, his pride was warranted. This book was crucial in shaping my thinking about the evolutionary roots of human nature, and particulary the evolutionary confirmation of the idea of the natural moral sense in Scottish moral philosophy. In many ways, this book pointed me to my book Darwinian Natural Right.
One can see in Crime and Human Nature and The Moral Sense the distinctive theme of Wilson's scholarship--an Aristotelian concern for the importance of moral character in individual and social life. He insisted that most of our problems in life come from a lack of good moral character. His famous theory of "broken windows" as a guide for community policing, which may have had some influence in reducing crime rates in cities where it was adopted, illustrates this insight.
I got to know Jim, and he was generous in supporting some of my endeavors. One of the highlights of my life was organizing a panel for an American Political Science Association convention on The Moral Sense, with Jim, Robin Fox, Robert Trivers, and myself as panelists.
Another prominent memory is of Jim at a Liberty Fund conference on the ethical and political implications of Darwinism. The organizer was John West of the Discovery Institute. Although none of the assigned readings took up the issue of "intelligent design," West had stacked the conference with about half of the participants being proponents of "intelligent design." At the first night's dinner, I warned Jim about what I feared was going to happen. Instead of talking about Darwinian ethics and politics, they insisted that we should talk about how Darwinian science was obviously false and about the superiority of "intelligent design" explanations. This ruined the discussion. Finally, at the beginning of the penultimate discussion session, Jim started off by announcing that he was leaving early because he had no interest in debating "intelligent design," and that he had been deceived into attending the conference without any warning that it would be controlled by proponents of "intelligent design." He then walked out. From that point, the Liberty Fund refused to sponsor any more conferences organized by the Discovery Institute. When West wrote his book attacking Darwin's Conservatives, Jim was a target as well as me.
I admired Jim for the power and clarity of his intellect and for his gentlemanly character. I remember as a young political scientist thinking that he was the model of the kind of political scientist that I would like to be.
I will miss him.
His obituary has been published on the front page of the New York Times.
Saturday, March 03, 2012
Friday, March 02, 2012
Do Strauss's Religious Longings Explain His Silence about Nietzsche's Darwinian Liberalism?
In reading Leo Strauss's "Three Waves of Modernity," I am reminded of my blog posts a few years ago on Strauss's religious longings, and on how those religious longings explain Strauss's attraction to Nietzsche's early and later writings, as opposed to the middle writings that show Nietzsche's embrace of Darwinian evolutionary science.
In "Three Waves of Modernity," Strauss says that Nietzsche's critique of modern rationalism created the "third wave" of modernity that was "the deepest reason for the crisis of liberal democracy," and "the political implication of the third wave proved to be fascism" (98).
Remarkably, Strauss says nothing--neither here nor anywhere else, as far as I know--about Nietzsche's moderate support for liberal democracy in his middle writings, particularly Human, All Too Human. This Nietzschean liberalism is a Darwinian liberalism, because in this book--and also in Dawn and the first four books of The Gay Science--Nietzsche writes as a Socratic "free spirit" who accepts a Darwinian science based on the general claim that "man has evolved," because "everything has evolved," and thus "there are no eternal facts" (HATH, sec. 2).
Strauss rejects this Darwinian Nietzsche, because Strauss prefers the Nietzsche of Beyond Good and Evil who affirmed "the eternal basic text of homo natura" (sec. 230). In his article on Beyond Good and Evil, Strauss stresses the importance of Nietzsche's eternalizing of human nature, his respect for the "religious instinct," and his atheistic religiosity. Like the Nietzsche of the early and later writings, Strauss was moved by a religious longing for eternity that could not accept the Darwinian "deadly truth" that human nature is enduring but not eternal.
My elaboration of these points can be found here, here, here, and here.
Nietzsche's Darwinian liberalism would resolve the "crisis of liberal democracy" by affirming that liberalism can be grounded in evolved human nature rather than a cosmic teleology of eternal order.
What would Nietzsche's Darwinian liberal democracy look like? Although Nietzsche is critical of modern democracy in much of his writing, Human, All Too Human shows a moderate acceptance of liberal democratic politics and institutions, while strongly rejecting socialism. (Here I am drawing some language from my chapter on Nietzsche in Political Questions.) He sees that in modern Europe all political parties must appeal to popular opinions because of the triumph of democracy. He accepts the political rule of the majority of the people as long as the few "free spirits" are given their freedom to keep out of politics generally, while occasionally being allowed to speak out about public issues.
Philosophers such as Plato were enemies of democracy, Nietzsche observes, because believing they possessed absolute truth, they wanted to rule over others. There were "tyrants of the spirit." But free-spirited philosophers pursue scientific knowledge in a skeptical spirit. "Free spirits" want to be free to investigate everything, but they have no desire to become tyrants. They are "oligarchs of the spirit" (sec. 261). "Free spirits" can live in a modern democracy, because they ask only for the freedom of speech and thought that liberal democracy can provide.
Previously, Nietzsche observes, the state claimed a transcendent religious authority to rule absolutely over the life of a people. Now, in modern democratic states, the state has no such transcendent authority, because the government is merely an instrument of popular will (sec. 472). Religion is a purely private matter, pursued in civil society as distinguished from the state, and therefore there is a great diversity of religious sects.
The popular distrust of central authority in a liberal democracy leads to a weakening of the state. Increasingly, the functions of government are given over to private contractors. This decline in the state gives "free spirits" a freedom that they would not have under a centralized illiberal state.
While Nietzsche welcomes the freedom provided by modern liberal democracy, he fears the tyranny to come from modern socialism. Modern socialism will require "the most submissive subjugation of all citizens to the absolute state, the like of which has never existed" (sec. 473). Since socialists will not be able to use traditional religious authority to support the state, they can only rule for short periods "by means of the most extreme terrorism." Nietzsche foresees that this socialist rule by terror will only reinforce the lesson that all accumulations of state power are dangerous, and thus the reaction against socialist state terror will promote the idea of minimizing the power of the state. We need democratic institutions, Nietzsche concludes, to combat the "lust for tyranny" (WS, sec. 289).
Thus did Nietzsche predict the rise and decline of socialist despotism in the twentieth century--both Marxist socialism and National Socialism--and the eventual revival of liberal democracy and limited government.
Nietzsche's political thinking in Human, All Too Human contradicts those German National Socialists who claimed that he was their ideological founder. Not only does he argue in favor of individual freedom and against centralized state power and rule by terror, he also rejects nationalism as an artificial obstacle to the political and cultural unification of Europe to form "a mixed European race" that will include the Jews, whom he praises for their contributions to European culture (sec. 475). Moreover, Nietzsche ridicules the idea of a "party member" as contrary to free thought. "He who thinks much is not suited to be a party member: too soon, he thinks himself through and beyond the party" (sec. 579).
In fact, some of the Nazis recognised that Nietzsche was not friendly to their cause. Ernst Krieck, a leading Nazi intellectual, remarked: "Apart from the fact that Nietzsche was not a socialist, not a nationalist, and opposed to racial thinking, he could have been a leading National Socialist thinker!"
As long as modern democracy leaves Nietzsche's "free spirits" free to pursue their lives of endless scientific and philosophic inquiry, they are not much interested in political activity. There is a kind of solitariness that characterizes this Nietzschean life, which is indicated by the last part of Human, All Too Human, entitled "Man Alone with Himself" (secs. 483-638). The "man of science" is constantly questioning his beliefs, and thus he cannot be a "man of convictions" who is absolutely certain about his beliefs, which means that the scientific man cannot be a political man, because he cannot serve a political cause with unexamined enthusiasm. Nietzsche's "free spirit" looks a lot like the Socratic philosopher as described by Strauss.
It is true, however, that some of Nietzsche's writing--his early and later writings--stirred the political enthusiasm of Nazis and other political ideologues, who looked to the "will to power" of the "Overman" to bring eternal meaning to human life.
Remarkably, its these same writings that show a spirit of atheistic religiosity that attracted Strauss.
Some of these points are developed further in my previous post on the "Nazi philosophers".
In "Three Waves of Modernity," Strauss says that Nietzsche's critique of modern rationalism created the "third wave" of modernity that was "the deepest reason for the crisis of liberal democracy," and "the political implication of the third wave proved to be fascism" (98).
Remarkably, Strauss says nothing--neither here nor anywhere else, as far as I know--about Nietzsche's moderate support for liberal democracy in his middle writings, particularly Human, All Too Human. This Nietzschean liberalism is a Darwinian liberalism, because in this book--and also in Dawn and the first four books of The Gay Science--Nietzsche writes as a Socratic "free spirit" who accepts a Darwinian science based on the general claim that "man has evolved," because "everything has evolved," and thus "there are no eternal facts" (HATH, sec. 2).
Strauss rejects this Darwinian Nietzsche, because Strauss prefers the Nietzsche of Beyond Good and Evil who affirmed "the eternal basic text of homo natura" (sec. 230). In his article on Beyond Good and Evil, Strauss stresses the importance of Nietzsche's eternalizing of human nature, his respect for the "religious instinct," and his atheistic religiosity. Like the Nietzsche of the early and later writings, Strauss was moved by a religious longing for eternity that could not accept the Darwinian "deadly truth" that human nature is enduring but not eternal.
My elaboration of these points can be found here, here, here, and here.
Nietzsche's Darwinian liberalism would resolve the "crisis of liberal democracy" by affirming that liberalism can be grounded in evolved human nature rather than a cosmic teleology of eternal order.
What would Nietzsche's Darwinian liberal democracy look like? Although Nietzsche is critical of modern democracy in much of his writing, Human, All Too Human shows a moderate acceptance of liberal democratic politics and institutions, while strongly rejecting socialism. (Here I am drawing some language from my chapter on Nietzsche in Political Questions.) He sees that in modern Europe all political parties must appeal to popular opinions because of the triumph of democracy. He accepts the political rule of the majority of the people as long as the few "free spirits" are given their freedom to keep out of politics generally, while occasionally being allowed to speak out about public issues.
Philosophers such as Plato were enemies of democracy, Nietzsche observes, because believing they possessed absolute truth, they wanted to rule over others. There were "tyrants of the spirit." But free-spirited philosophers pursue scientific knowledge in a skeptical spirit. "Free spirits" want to be free to investigate everything, but they have no desire to become tyrants. They are "oligarchs of the spirit" (sec. 261). "Free spirits" can live in a modern democracy, because they ask only for the freedom of speech and thought that liberal democracy can provide.
Previously, Nietzsche observes, the state claimed a transcendent religious authority to rule absolutely over the life of a people. Now, in modern democratic states, the state has no such transcendent authority, because the government is merely an instrument of popular will (sec. 472). Religion is a purely private matter, pursued in civil society as distinguished from the state, and therefore there is a great diversity of religious sects.
The popular distrust of central authority in a liberal democracy leads to a weakening of the state. Increasingly, the functions of government are given over to private contractors. This decline in the state gives "free spirits" a freedom that they would not have under a centralized illiberal state.
While Nietzsche welcomes the freedom provided by modern liberal democracy, he fears the tyranny to come from modern socialism. Modern socialism will require "the most submissive subjugation of all citizens to the absolute state, the like of which has never existed" (sec. 473). Since socialists will not be able to use traditional religious authority to support the state, they can only rule for short periods "by means of the most extreme terrorism." Nietzsche foresees that this socialist rule by terror will only reinforce the lesson that all accumulations of state power are dangerous, and thus the reaction against socialist state terror will promote the idea of minimizing the power of the state. We need democratic institutions, Nietzsche concludes, to combat the "lust for tyranny" (WS, sec. 289).
Thus did Nietzsche predict the rise and decline of socialist despotism in the twentieth century--both Marxist socialism and National Socialism--and the eventual revival of liberal democracy and limited government.
Nietzsche's political thinking in Human, All Too Human contradicts those German National Socialists who claimed that he was their ideological founder. Not only does he argue in favor of individual freedom and against centralized state power and rule by terror, he also rejects nationalism as an artificial obstacle to the political and cultural unification of Europe to form "a mixed European race" that will include the Jews, whom he praises for their contributions to European culture (sec. 475). Moreover, Nietzsche ridicules the idea of a "party member" as contrary to free thought. "He who thinks much is not suited to be a party member: too soon, he thinks himself through and beyond the party" (sec. 579).
In fact, some of the Nazis recognised that Nietzsche was not friendly to their cause. Ernst Krieck, a leading Nazi intellectual, remarked: "Apart from the fact that Nietzsche was not a socialist, not a nationalist, and opposed to racial thinking, he could have been a leading National Socialist thinker!"
As long as modern democracy leaves Nietzsche's "free spirits" free to pursue their lives of endless scientific and philosophic inquiry, they are not much interested in political activity. There is a kind of solitariness that characterizes this Nietzschean life, which is indicated by the last part of Human, All Too Human, entitled "Man Alone with Himself" (secs. 483-638). The "man of science" is constantly questioning his beliefs, and thus he cannot be a "man of convictions" who is absolutely certain about his beliefs, which means that the scientific man cannot be a political man, because he cannot serve a political cause with unexamined enthusiasm. Nietzsche's "free spirit" looks a lot like the Socratic philosopher as described by Strauss.
It is true, however, that some of Nietzsche's writing--his early and later writings--stirred the political enthusiasm of Nazis and other political ideologues, who looked to the "will to power" of the "Overman" to bring eternal meaning to human life.
Remarkably, its these same writings that show a spirit of atheistic religiosity that attracted Strauss.
Some of these points are developed further in my previous post on the "Nazi philosophers".
Wednesday, February 29, 2012
Leo Strauss's Significant Silence about Aristotle's Biology
I cannot understand Leo Strauss's silence about Aristotle's biology. In Natural Right and History, for example, there are many citations of Aristotle's writings, and yet there is only brief citation of his biological writing: on page 121, Strauss cites Aristotle's Parts of Animals, 642a28-30. This citation is in the context of Strauss's account of how Socrates is said to have brought philosophy down from heaven to investigate the human things. For Strauss this is a turn from philosophy as the study of nature to political philosophy as the study of natural right. For Strauss, "the primary object of philosophy" is "the heavens and the heavenly bodies," as in the cosmological science of Plato's Timaeus (PAW, 16, 20; "Farabi's Plato," 364-65, 382-83, 390-91). In making this assumption, Strauss ignores Aristotle's claims in his biological writings that the natural science of living beings--as opposed to physical cosmology--is "nearer to us and more akin to our nature," that Socrates was wrong to identify "nature" with astronomy, and that the cosmic teleology of Plato's Timaeus is indefensible (PA, 642a28-30, 644b22-46a5; Meta, 987a30-b20). Strauss is aware of what's at issue here, because he wrote in a letter to Kojeve that "the difference between Plato and Aristotle is that Aristotle believes that biology, as a mediation between knowledge of the inanimate and knowledge of man, is available" (On Tyranny, 279). Apparently, Strauss embraced a dualistic separation between the study of physics and cosmology, on the one hand, and the study of the human things, on the other; and thus he rejected Aristotle's view of biology as the bridge between the physical sciences and the human sciences. But if this is so, it is strange that Strauss never explicitly defends this position by indicating what he thought was wrong with Aristotle's biology.
In Natural Right and History, Strauss's silence about Aristotle's biology weakens the argument for natural right at crucial points where an appeal to Aristotelian biology would strengthen the argument.
For example, as I have indicated in many posts, Strauss's claim at the beginning of his book that the teleology of natural right depends on the science of the heavens ignores Aristotle's argument for a purely biological teleology.
A second example is the passage where Strauss appeals to "an empirical science of man" based on man's natural sociality. Strauss writes:
Both Aristotle and Darwin saw that the natural sociality of human beings was an extension of the first social bond between parents and offspring. The affiliative bonding of parents and children is extended over ever-larger groups. As compared with other animals, the extended period of offspring dependence on parental care and the complexity of the social learning during this period manifests the connection between human sociality and human rationality, in that human reason is adapted for navigating through the intricacies of human social life. The Darwinian understanding of this link between rationality and sociality has been deepened by contemporary Darwinian scientists exploring the "social brain" hypothesis. The fundamental conclusion of this Aristotelian and Darwinian understanding is that human beings are by nature the most rational animals because they are by nature the most political animals.
If "man's natural sociality" is "the basis of natural right in the narrow or strict sense of right," then Aristotelian and Darwinian biology supports natural right by explaining the biological nature of this natural sociality and the natural rationality to which it is tied.
A third example in Natural Right and History of where Strauss is unreasonably silent about Aristotle's biology is in the account of Locke. Strauss assumes that Locke's political philosophy rejected the rule of nature in favor of the rule of convention. This reading of Locke is mistaken, because it fails to recognize that in criticizing the Platonic naturalism of eternal essences, Locke is defending a biologically empirical science of natural history that points back to Aristotle and ahead to Darwin.
I have elaborated this last point in a previous post.
My general conclusion is that Aristotle helps us to see that the study of the human things and of the human quest for natural right is a biological study of human beings compared with other animals.
"In the works of nature, purpose and not accident is predominant; and the purpose or end for the sake of which those works have been constructed or formed has its place among what is beautiful. If, however, there is anyone who holds that the study of animals is an unworthy pursuit, he ought to go further and hold the same opinion about the study of himself" (PA, 645a25-28).
In Natural Right and History, Strauss's silence about Aristotle's biology weakens the argument for natural right at crucial points where an appeal to Aristotelian biology would strengthen the argument.
For example, as I have indicated in many posts, Strauss's claim at the beginning of his book that the teleology of natural right depends on the science of the heavens ignores Aristotle's argument for a purely biological teleology.
A second example is the passage where Strauss appeals to "an empirical science of man" based on man's natural sociality. Strauss writes:
The phenomenon of admiration of human excellence cannot be explained on hedonistic or utilitarian grounds, except by means of ad hoc hypotheses. These hypotheses lead to the assertion that all admiration is, at best, a kind of telescoped calculation of benefits for ourselves. They are the outcome of a materialistic or crypto-materialistic view, which forces its holders to understand the higher as nothing but the effect of the lower, or which prevents them from considering the possibility that there are phenomena which are simply irreducible to their conditions, that there are phenomena that form a class by themselves. The hypotheses in question are not conceived in the spirit of an empirical science of man.Strauss is drawing here from Aristotle's famous passage in Politics (1253a7-38) about man as being by nature the most political animal. But Strauss does not indicate that for Aristotle this "empirical science of man" is part of the biological science of political animals, which Aristotle lays out in his biological writings (HA, 488a8-14, 553a26-54b26, 588b23-89a9, 614b19-26, 623b26-29a30). If Strauss had done that, he might have raised the question as to whether modern Darwinian biology supports this. And he might have noticed that in the Descent of Man, Darwin agrees with everything that is said in the above passage--the inadequacy of hedonistic utilitarianism in explaining the human admiration for excellence, the natural sociality of human beings, the importance of language in distinguishing human beings, the moral sentiments ("love, affection, friendship, pity"), and the naturalness of moral judgement as rooted in human nature. Moreover, Strauss might have noticed that the modern idea of emergent evolution recognizes that the higher phenomena of the living world are irreducible to the lower phenomena of the physical world.
Man is by nature a social being. He is so constituted that he cannot live, or live well, except by living with others. Since it is reason or speech that distinguishes him from the other animals, and speech is communication, man is social in a more radical sense than any other social animal: humanity itself is sociality. Man refers himself to others, or rather he is referred to others, in every human act, regardless of whether that act is 'social' or 'antisocial.' His sociality does not proceed, then, from a calculation of the pleasures which he expects from association, but he derives pleasure from association because he is by nature social. Love, affection, friendship, pity, are as natural to him as concern with his own good. It is man's natural sociality that is the basis of natural right in the narrow or strict sense of right. Because man is by nature social, the perfection of his nature includes the social virtue par excellence, justice; justice and right are natural. All members of the same species are akin to one another. This natural kinship is deepened and transfigured in the case of man as a consequence of his radical sociality. In the case of man the individual's concern with procreation is only a part of his concern with the preservation of the species. (128-29)
Both Aristotle and Darwin saw that the natural sociality of human beings was an extension of the first social bond between parents and offspring. The affiliative bonding of parents and children is extended over ever-larger groups. As compared with other animals, the extended period of offspring dependence on parental care and the complexity of the social learning during this period manifests the connection between human sociality and human rationality, in that human reason is adapted for navigating through the intricacies of human social life. The Darwinian understanding of this link between rationality and sociality has been deepened by contemporary Darwinian scientists exploring the "social brain" hypothesis. The fundamental conclusion of this Aristotelian and Darwinian understanding is that human beings are by nature the most rational animals because they are by nature the most political animals.
If "man's natural sociality" is "the basis of natural right in the narrow or strict sense of right," then Aristotelian and Darwinian biology supports natural right by explaining the biological nature of this natural sociality and the natural rationality to which it is tied.
A third example in Natural Right and History of where Strauss is unreasonably silent about Aristotle's biology is in the account of Locke. Strauss assumes that Locke's political philosophy rejected the rule of nature in favor of the rule of convention. This reading of Locke is mistaken, because it fails to recognize that in criticizing the Platonic naturalism of eternal essences, Locke is defending a biologically empirical science of natural history that points back to Aristotle and ahead to Darwin.
I have elaborated this last point in a previous post.
My general conclusion is that Aristotle helps us to see that the study of the human things and of the human quest for natural right is a biological study of human beings compared with other animals.
"In the works of nature, purpose and not accident is predominant; and the purpose or end for the sake of which those works have been constructed or formed has its place among what is beautiful. If, however, there is anyone who holds that the study of animals is an unworthy pursuit, he ought to go further and hold the same opinion about the study of himself" (PA, 645a25-28).
Wednesday, February 22, 2012
Why is Natural Right a Problem for Leo Strauss?
In my seminar on Leo Strauss, we are now reading Natural Right and History. Reading it again reminds me of what a strange book it is. The first paragraph of the Introduction creates the impression that this is going to be a book defending natural right (particularly, as expressed in the American Declaration of Independence) against historicism (particularly, as expressed in German thought). But then, after speaking of the "need for natural right" and the "disastrous consequences" of the "rejection of natural right," Strauss indicates that even if belief in natural right is "indispensable for living well," that might mean that it is a "salutary myth" that is not really true. He then concludes the Introduction by speaking of "the problem of natural right."
The problem is that while "natural right in its classic form is connected with a teleological view of the universe," it seems that modern natural science has refuted this cosmic teleology. From the point of view of Aristotle, Strauss explains, how we settle this issue will be decided by "the manner in which the problem of the heavens, the heavenly bodies, and their motion is solved." Consequently, "an adequate solution to the problem of natural right cannot be found before this basic problem has been solved."
The reader might expect, then, that Strauss is going to solve this basic problem in this book. On the contrary, Strauss denies this expectation in the last paragraph of the Introduction: "Needless to say, the present lectures cannot deal with this problem. They will have to be limited to that aspect of the problem of natural right which can be clarified within the confines of the social sciences." And, indeed, when the reader reaches the end of the book, it seems that the problem of natural right is still an unsolved problem.
This has led some of Strauss's readers to suspect that Strauss was a nihilist who saw natural right as nothing more than a "salutary myth." Some readers have found support for this suspicion in Strauss's claim that the cause of natural right might be "hopeless," because "there cannot be natural right if all that man could know about right were the problem of right" (24).
Moreover, in the "Preface to the 7th Impression" of Natural Right and History that Strauss wrote in 1970, just three years before his death, he stated: "Nothing that I have learned has shaken my inclination to prefer 'natural right,' especially in its classic form, to the reigning relativism, positivist or historicist." To identify this as his "preference" sounds like the historicist position as he describes it in his book (47). But what would it mean for a historicist to "prefer" natural right over historicism? (I thank David Bahr for drawing my attention to Strauss's Preface of 1970.)
As I have indicated in some previous posts, I believe that the only solution to the problem of natural right that affirms the truth of the idea of natural right is Darwinian natural right. Furthermore, I believe that Strauss points to that solution in Natural Right and History, although he does not clearly and fully embrace it. He can't embrace it for two reasons. First, he fears that Darwinian science is a "deadly truth" that is deadly because it denies the popular belief in the cosmic teleology of intelligent design or divine creation. Second, he agrees with Heidegger's historicism in rejecting evolutionary biology as degrading in its reductionistic account of human beings as different in degree but not in kind from other animals.
In Natural Right and History, Strauss points to Darwinian natural right in various ways. First of all, he points to the idea that Aristotelian natural right does not really require a cosmic teleology as long as we can understand the natural good as what is naturally desirable for human beings. He writes:
Strauss refuses, however, to openly and fully embrace that conclusion.
I will have more to say about this in some future posts.
The problem is that while "natural right in its classic form is connected with a teleological view of the universe," it seems that modern natural science has refuted this cosmic teleology. From the point of view of Aristotle, Strauss explains, how we settle this issue will be decided by "the manner in which the problem of the heavens, the heavenly bodies, and their motion is solved." Consequently, "an adequate solution to the problem of natural right cannot be found before this basic problem has been solved."
The reader might expect, then, that Strauss is going to solve this basic problem in this book. On the contrary, Strauss denies this expectation in the last paragraph of the Introduction: "Needless to say, the present lectures cannot deal with this problem. They will have to be limited to that aspect of the problem of natural right which can be clarified within the confines of the social sciences." And, indeed, when the reader reaches the end of the book, it seems that the problem of natural right is still an unsolved problem.
This has led some of Strauss's readers to suspect that Strauss was a nihilist who saw natural right as nothing more than a "salutary myth." Some readers have found support for this suspicion in Strauss's claim that the cause of natural right might be "hopeless," because "there cannot be natural right if all that man could know about right were the problem of right" (24).
Moreover, in the "Preface to the 7th Impression" of Natural Right and History that Strauss wrote in 1970, just three years before his death, he stated: "Nothing that I have learned has shaken my inclination to prefer 'natural right,' especially in its classic form, to the reigning relativism, positivist or historicist." To identify this as his "preference" sounds like the historicist position as he describes it in his book (47). But what would it mean for a historicist to "prefer" natural right over historicism? (I thank David Bahr for drawing my attention to Strauss's Preface of 1970.)
As I have indicated in some previous posts, I believe that the only solution to the problem of natural right that affirms the truth of the idea of natural right is Darwinian natural right. Furthermore, I believe that Strauss points to that solution in Natural Right and History, although he does not clearly and fully embrace it. He can't embrace it for two reasons. First, he fears that Darwinian science is a "deadly truth" that is deadly because it denies the popular belief in the cosmic teleology of intelligent design or divine creation. Second, he agrees with Heidegger's historicism in rejecting evolutionary biology as degrading in its reductionistic account of human beings as different in degree but not in kind from other animals.
In Natural Right and History, Strauss points to Darwinian natural right in various ways. First of all, he points to the idea that Aristotelian natural right does not really require a cosmic teleology as long as we can understand the natural good as what is naturally desirable for human beings. He writes:
. . . The denial of natural right thus appears to be the consequence of the denial of particular providence. But the example of Aristotle alone would suffice to show that it is possible to admit natural right without believing in particular providence or in divine justice proper.
For, however indifferent to moral distinctions the cosmic order may be thought to be, human nature, as distinguished from nature in general, may very well be the basis of such distinctions. To illustrate the point by the example of the best-known pre-Socratic doctrine, namely, of atomism, the fact that the atoms are beyond good and bad does not justify the inference that there is nothing by nature good or bad for any compounds of atoms, and especially for those compounds which we call "men." In fact, no one can say that all distinctions between good and bad which men make or all human preferences are merely conventional. We must therefore distinguish between those human desires and inclinations which are natural and those which originate in conventions. Furthermore, we must distinguish between those human desires and inclinations which are in accordance with human nature and therefore good for man, and those which are destructive of his nature or his humanity and therefore bad. We are thus led to the notion of a life, a human life, that is good because it is in accordance with nature. Both parties to the controversy admit that there is such a life, or, more generally expressed, they admit the primacy of the good as distinguished from the just. The controversial issue is whether the just is good (by nature good) or whether the life in accordance with human nature requires justice or morality. (94-95)In saying that the good is rooted in the "human desires and inclinations" of human nature, Strauss adds in a footnote that "this notion was accepted by 'almost all' classical philosophers," as indicated in Cicero's De finibus (5.17). In this passage, Cicero writes:
Now almost all have agreed that the subject with which prudence is occupied and the end which it desires to attain is bound to be something intimately adapted to our nature. It must be capable of directly arousing and awakening a desire of the mind [appetitum animi], what in Greek is called horme. But what it is that at the first moment of our existence excites in our nature this impulse of desire--as to this there is no agreement. It is at this point that all the difference of opinion among students of the ethical problem arises. Of the whole inquiry into the ends of goods and bads and the question which among them is ultimate and final, the fountainhead is to be found in the earliest instincts of nature.If the good is the desirable, and the naturally good is the naturally desirable, and if the naturally desirable is rooted in our natural human instincts, then the question of natural right becomes the question of how best to understand the range of our instinctively natural desires. This assumes an immanent teleology of human nature that does not require a "teleological view of the universe." And while cosmic teleology has been refuted by modern natural science, the immanent teleology of evolved human nature can be supported by modern evolutionary science.
Strauss refuses, however, to openly and fully embrace that conclusion.
I will have more to say about this in some future posts.
Saturday, February 11, 2012
The Birthday of Abraham Lincoln and Charles Darwin
It's that time of the year when I traditionally observe the birthday of Abraham Lincoln and Charles Darwin, who were born on February 12, 1809.
I see at least six points of similarity between Darwin and Lincoln. (1) Both saw the universe as governed by natural laws, which included the natural laws for the evolution of life. (2) Both were accused of denying the Biblical doctrine of Creation. (3) Both spoke of God as First Cause. (4) Both appealed to the Bible as a source of moral teaching, even as they also appealed to a natural moral sense independent of Biblical religion. (5) Both abhorred slavery as immoral. (6) Both were moral realists.
I have elaborated each of these points in previous posts, some of which can be found here and here.
I see at least six points of similarity between Darwin and Lincoln. (1) Both saw the universe as governed by natural laws, which included the natural laws for the evolution of life. (2) Both were accused of denying the Biblical doctrine of Creation. (3) Both spoke of God as First Cause. (4) Both appealed to the Bible as a source of moral teaching, even as they also appealed to a natural moral sense independent of Biblical religion. (5) Both abhorred slavery as immoral. (6) Both were moral realists.
I have elaborated each of these points in previous posts, some of which can be found here and here.
Sunday, February 05, 2012
Strauss's Secret: "The Most Terrible Truth"
This semester, I am teaching a graduate seminar on Leo Strauss and the debate over Strauss and his legacy. One of the crucial issues in that debate is whether Strauss was a secret writer.
One of Strauss's most famous claims is that many of the classic writers of political philosophy have practiced an art of secret writing, by which they could convey an esoteric teaching that is unpopular or heterodox to a few careful readers who are philosophic, while conveying an exoteric teaching that is more popular or orthodox to the many careless readers who are unphilosophic. This claim--elaborated in Strauss's Persecution and the Art of Writing (1952)--suggests the question of whether Strauss himself was a secret writer with a secret teaching. If he was, then what's the big secret that would be so disturbing to most readers that it needs to be hidden from their view?
Some of Strauss's critics insist that his secret teaching was his promotion of fascist or Nazi ideas as an alternative to modern liberal democracy. One piece of evidence for this is in a letter to Karl Lowith in May of 1933, in which he endorses "the principles of the right . . . fascist, authoritarian and imperial principles," and declares that "there is no reason to crawl to the cross, neither to the cross of liberalism, as long as somewhere in the world there is a glimmer of the spark of Roman thought." Another piece of evidence is Strauss's interest in Carl Schmitt, who became a leading Nazi theoretician. In his "Notes on Carl Schmitt, The Concept of the Political," Strauss seemed to endorse Schmitt's argument that liberalism had failed and that the bourgeois values of liberalism were decadent. Strauss sought "a radical critique of liberalism" and a "horizon beyond liberalism," although he thought Schmitt had not gone far enough beyond liberalism. When the students of Strauss speak about the "problem of the bourgeois," they seem to be following Schmitt in his scorn for bourgeois liberalism.
In Strauss's lecture on "German Nihilism" in 1941, he traced this disdain for bourgeois life to Nietzsche as a formative influence on the "young nihilists" of Germany, and Strauss suggested his partial agreement with their "heroic nihilism": "I take it for granted that not everything to which the young nihilists objected, was unobjectionable, and that not every writer or speaker whom they despised, was respectable." The Straussian allure of "heroic nihilism" is manifested in Harvey Mansfield's account of the "manly nihilism" of Nietzsche and Teddy Roosevelt, and in Mansfield's praise of George W. Bush's "one-man rule" in advancing the imperial power of the United States.
These and other lines of evidence have led people like William Altman (in The German Stranger) to charge that Strauss was a Jewish Nazi. I am not yet convinced that there is enough evidence to support such an inflammatory accusation.
If Strauss had a big secret, I think, it's to be found elsewhere--in what he identified as "the most terrible truth." When a writer has a deeply disturbing message that he wants to transmit to his philosophic readers while hiding it from his vulgar readers, Strauss suggested, there are various techniques available to him. A writer can convey his own views through writing interpretive commentaries on the texts of other writers, so that only careful readers will notice his implicit endorsement of ideas attributed to others. A writer can also hide his most unpopular views by putting them at the center of his text, because careless readers tend to pay more attention to the beginning and ending of what they read than to the middle. In Strauss's Liberalism Ancient and Modern (1968), the central chapter--and the longest chapter--is a commentary on Lucretius's On the Nature of Things. The exact center of the book is page 135, where Strauss concludes his study of Lucretius by explaining "the most terrible truth."
As I have indicated in some earlier posts, Strauss saw Lucretius as the exponent of "liberalism ancient and modern," because Lucretius was the one premodern thinker who came closest to modern liberal thought, particularly as based on modern natural science. The central insight of Lucretius's argument is that "nothing lovable is eternal or sempiternal or deathless, or that the eternal is not lovable" (LAM, viii). Lucretius proves the mortality of the world as a product of emergent evolution from atoms in motion: "the world is one of the many arrangements of atoms which in a very long time came about through the furious clashes of the blind atoms without the intervention of an ordering mind or a peaceful agreement agreement between the atoms; and once it has come about, it preserves itself for a long time" (123). Since the world is not the product of an ordering mind, the world is not teleological, although it contains intelligent species--particularly, human beings--that have evolved to be teleological in their natural striving to satisfy their natural desires (125-26). Since the world is not intelligently designed by a divinely providential mind, the world is indifferent to human beings and thus provides no cosmic support for human purposes. Moreover, while the world is enduring, it is not eternal. The world and everything in it--including the human species and all other species of life--will eventually collapse into the ceaseless motion of atoms that will then produce another world. This is, Strauss believes, "the most terrible truth." He writes:
"Lucretius does not speak here [in Book 6], as he did in the section on the thunderbolt, of men's tracing the terrifying phenomenon to the wrath of the gods; he only alludes to men's believing that the gods in their kindness vouch for the sempiternity of the world (601-602); on the other hand, he says explicitly that men 'fear to believe' that the world will die a natural death (565-567). It is this fear for the world, that is, for this world, for everything that is a man's own or his nation's own, which gives rise to the belief in gods and therewith also to fear of the gods; the fear of gods is not the fundamental fear. The fundamental fear gives rise in the first place to fear of that very fear, to fear of the most terrible truth." (LAM, 135)
In his footnote to this passage, Strauss cites Aristotle, Metaphysics, 1050b22-24, and On the Heaven, 270b1-16. Aristotle indicates that "eternal movement, if there be such" depends on the eternity of the heavens, and he identifies the eternity and divinity of the outermost heaven as an ancestral belief based on faith or trust (pistis).
Strauss hints that he agrees with this teaching of Lucretius. "Lucretius' poetry makes bright and sweet the obscure and sad findings of the Greeks, that is, of the philosophers" (83). "One may therefore say that philosophy is productive of the deepest pain. Man has to choose between peace of mind deriving from a pleasing delusion and peace of mind deriving from the unpleasing truth. Philosophy which, anticipating the collapse of the walls of the world, breaks through the walls of the world, abandons the attachment to the world; this abandonment is most painful" (85). "Religion thus appears to be a human invention which serves the purpose of counteracting the indifference of the whole to man's moral and political needs, for not all men are or can be philosophers" (100). (See also 88, 91, 95-96, 106, 119.)
Although Strauss often seems to defend religious belief by arguing that revelation cannot be refuted by reason, some of his readers have suspected that his big secret is his atheism. But even if he was an atheist, his writing on Lucretius suggests that atheism is only part of a deeper truth--"the most terrible truth" of the perishability of the world that is hidden by religious belief in an eternal order of intelligent design that cares about and for human beings.
This "most terrible truth" also illuminates what Strauss in the Introduction to Natural Right and History identified as "the problem of natural right." There he said that this problem is that "natural right in its classic form is connected with a teleological view of the universe" that seems to have been refuted by modern natural science. He explained: "From the point of view of Aristotle--and who could dare to claim to be a better judge in this matter than Aristotle?--the issue between the mechanical and the teleological conception of the universe is decided by the manner in which the problem of the heavens, the heavenly bodies, and their motion is solved" (7-8). This emphasis on cosmic teleology is reinforced by Strauss's claim that "the primary object of philosophy" is "the heavens and the heavenly bodies" (PAW, 20; "Farabi's Plato," 364-65, 382-83, 390-91).
But if Strauss agreed with Lucretius that the universe is neither eternal nor purposeful, then natural right cannot be defended unless it is rooted in the immanent teleology of human nature as an enduring but not eternal product of a natural evolutionary process.
As Strauss indicates, Aristotle spoke of the cosmology of eternal order as based largely on mythic stories and traditional religious beliefs. By contrast, Aristotle spoke of the biological study of living beings as closer to human life and more open to direct study. While Platonic cosmological science (like that of Timaeus) looks for the eternally fixed order of Being, biological science looks to the temporal flux of becoming. Empirical biology manifests an immanent teleology of enduring but not eternal species that does not depend on any cosmic teleology of eternal order.
Strauss even pushed Plato in this direction by denying that Plato believed in the eternal order of the Ideas or the immortality of the soul (PAW, 13-15; "Farabi's Plato," 364, 371, 376), which meant pushing Plato in the direction of Lucretius.
The culmination of all of this could be Nietzsche's Darwinian argument in Human, All Too Human that "everything has evolved," and that therefore there are no eternal truths, although modern science can satisfy the free-spirited philosopher in the quest for the "humble truths" of nature, which include the moral and political truths of evolved human nature.
In an earlier book, Nietzsche had warned against Darwinian evolution as a "deadly truth"--the phrase echoed in Strauss's "most terrible truth"--but Human, All Too Human shows how a "gay science" of evolution can affirm the intrinsic purposefulness of mortal human life in a mortal universe where everything evolves. Thus does a seemingly deadly truth become life-affirming.
This is what I have tried to do in defending "Darwinian natural right," in providing a scientific grounding in evolved human nature for natural right. And yet most of the Straussians scorn such an enterprise.
In fact, most of the Straussians are silent about substantive arguments for the natural ground of natural right. Does this silence point to the real Straussian secret--that the Straussians don't really believe in the truth of natural right, because they are nihilists, even if manly nihilists?
Sometimes the Straussians suggest that the only clear standard of natural right is the natural ranking of the philosophic life as the only truly good life, which includes a denigration of moral and political life as lacking any natural justification. But even here the Straussians never lay out the substantive arguments necessary to prove the natural supremacy of the philosophic life. Does this mean that they are so radically nihilistic that they regard even the choice to live a philosophic life as an arbitrary choice with no grounding in nature?
Some posts on related points can be found here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.
One of Strauss's most famous claims is that many of the classic writers of political philosophy have practiced an art of secret writing, by which they could convey an esoteric teaching that is unpopular or heterodox to a few careful readers who are philosophic, while conveying an exoteric teaching that is more popular or orthodox to the many careless readers who are unphilosophic. This claim--elaborated in Strauss's Persecution and the Art of Writing (1952)--suggests the question of whether Strauss himself was a secret writer with a secret teaching. If he was, then what's the big secret that would be so disturbing to most readers that it needs to be hidden from their view?
Some of Strauss's critics insist that his secret teaching was his promotion of fascist or Nazi ideas as an alternative to modern liberal democracy. One piece of evidence for this is in a letter to Karl Lowith in May of 1933, in which he endorses "the principles of the right . . . fascist, authoritarian and imperial principles," and declares that "there is no reason to crawl to the cross, neither to the cross of liberalism, as long as somewhere in the world there is a glimmer of the spark of Roman thought." Another piece of evidence is Strauss's interest in Carl Schmitt, who became a leading Nazi theoretician. In his "Notes on Carl Schmitt, The Concept of the Political," Strauss seemed to endorse Schmitt's argument that liberalism had failed and that the bourgeois values of liberalism were decadent. Strauss sought "a radical critique of liberalism" and a "horizon beyond liberalism," although he thought Schmitt had not gone far enough beyond liberalism. When the students of Strauss speak about the "problem of the bourgeois," they seem to be following Schmitt in his scorn for bourgeois liberalism.
In Strauss's lecture on "German Nihilism" in 1941, he traced this disdain for bourgeois life to Nietzsche as a formative influence on the "young nihilists" of Germany, and Strauss suggested his partial agreement with their "heroic nihilism": "I take it for granted that not everything to which the young nihilists objected, was unobjectionable, and that not every writer or speaker whom they despised, was respectable." The Straussian allure of "heroic nihilism" is manifested in Harvey Mansfield's account of the "manly nihilism" of Nietzsche and Teddy Roosevelt, and in Mansfield's praise of George W. Bush's "one-man rule" in advancing the imperial power of the United States.
These and other lines of evidence have led people like William Altman (in The German Stranger) to charge that Strauss was a Jewish Nazi. I am not yet convinced that there is enough evidence to support such an inflammatory accusation.
If Strauss had a big secret, I think, it's to be found elsewhere--in what he identified as "the most terrible truth." When a writer has a deeply disturbing message that he wants to transmit to his philosophic readers while hiding it from his vulgar readers, Strauss suggested, there are various techniques available to him. A writer can convey his own views through writing interpretive commentaries on the texts of other writers, so that only careful readers will notice his implicit endorsement of ideas attributed to others. A writer can also hide his most unpopular views by putting them at the center of his text, because careless readers tend to pay more attention to the beginning and ending of what they read than to the middle. In Strauss's Liberalism Ancient and Modern (1968), the central chapter--and the longest chapter--is a commentary on Lucretius's On the Nature of Things. The exact center of the book is page 135, where Strauss concludes his study of Lucretius by explaining "the most terrible truth."
As I have indicated in some earlier posts, Strauss saw Lucretius as the exponent of "liberalism ancient and modern," because Lucretius was the one premodern thinker who came closest to modern liberal thought, particularly as based on modern natural science. The central insight of Lucretius's argument is that "nothing lovable is eternal or sempiternal or deathless, or that the eternal is not lovable" (LAM, viii). Lucretius proves the mortality of the world as a product of emergent evolution from atoms in motion: "the world is one of the many arrangements of atoms which in a very long time came about through the furious clashes of the blind atoms without the intervention of an ordering mind or a peaceful agreement agreement between the atoms; and once it has come about, it preserves itself for a long time" (123). Since the world is not the product of an ordering mind, the world is not teleological, although it contains intelligent species--particularly, human beings--that have evolved to be teleological in their natural striving to satisfy their natural desires (125-26). Since the world is not intelligently designed by a divinely providential mind, the world is indifferent to human beings and thus provides no cosmic support for human purposes. Moreover, while the world is enduring, it is not eternal. The world and everything in it--including the human species and all other species of life--will eventually collapse into the ceaseless motion of atoms that will then produce another world. This is, Strauss believes, "the most terrible truth." He writes:
"Lucretius does not speak here [in Book 6], as he did in the section on the thunderbolt, of men's tracing the terrifying phenomenon to the wrath of the gods; he only alludes to men's believing that the gods in their kindness vouch for the sempiternity of the world (601-602); on the other hand, he says explicitly that men 'fear to believe' that the world will die a natural death (565-567). It is this fear for the world, that is, for this world, for everything that is a man's own or his nation's own, which gives rise to the belief in gods and therewith also to fear of the gods; the fear of gods is not the fundamental fear. The fundamental fear gives rise in the first place to fear of that very fear, to fear of the most terrible truth." (LAM, 135)
In his footnote to this passage, Strauss cites Aristotle, Metaphysics, 1050b22-24, and On the Heaven, 270b1-16. Aristotle indicates that "eternal movement, if there be such" depends on the eternity of the heavens, and he identifies the eternity and divinity of the outermost heaven as an ancestral belief based on faith or trust (pistis).
Strauss hints that he agrees with this teaching of Lucretius. "Lucretius' poetry makes bright and sweet the obscure and sad findings of the Greeks, that is, of the philosophers" (83). "One may therefore say that philosophy is productive of the deepest pain. Man has to choose between peace of mind deriving from a pleasing delusion and peace of mind deriving from the unpleasing truth. Philosophy which, anticipating the collapse of the walls of the world, breaks through the walls of the world, abandons the attachment to the world; this abandonment is most painful" (85). "Religion thus appears to be a human invention which serves the purpose of counteracting the indifference of the whole to man's moral and political needs, for not all men are or can be philosophers" (100). (See also 88, 91, 95-96, 106, 119.)
Although Strauss often seems to defend religious belief by arguing that revelation cannot be refuted by reason, some of his readers have suspected that his big secret is his atheism. But even if he was an atheist, his writing on Lucretius suggests that atheism is only part of a deeper truth--"the most terrible truth" of the perishability of the world that is hidden by religious belief in an eternal order of intelligent design that cares about and for human beings.
This "most terrible truth" also illuminates what Strauss in the Introduction to Natural Right and History identified as "the problem of natural right." There he said that this problem is that "natural right in its classic form is connected with a teleological view of the universe" that seems to have been refuted by modern natural science. He explained: "From the point of view of Aristotle--and who could dare to claim to be a better judge in this matter than Aristotle?--the issue between the mechanical and the teleological conception of the universe is decided by the manner in which the problem of the heavens, the heavenly bodies, and their motion is solved" (7-8). This emphasis on cosmic teleology is reinforced by Strauss's claim that "the primary object of philosophy" is "the heavens and the heavenly bodies" (PAW, 20; "Farabi's Plato," 364-65, 382-83, 390-91).
But if Strauss agreed with Lucretius that the universe is neither eternal nor purposeful, then natural right cannot be defended unless it is rooted in the immanent teleology of human nature as an enduring but not eternal product of a natural evolutionary process.
As Strauss indicates, Aristotle spoke of the cosmology of eternal order as based largely on mythic stories and traditional religious beliefs. By contrast, Aristotle spoke of the biological study of living beings as closer to human life and more open to direct study. While Platonic cosmological science (like that of Timaeus) looks for the eternally fixed order of Being, biological science looks to the temporal flux of becoming. Empirical biology manifests an immanent teleology of enduring but not eternal species that does not depend on any cosmic teleology of eternal order.
Strauss even pushed Plato in this direction by denying that Plato believed in the eternal order of the Ideas or the immortality of the soul (PAW, 13-15; "Farabi's Plato," 364, 371, 376), which meant pushing Plato in the direction of Lucretius.
The culmination of all of this could be Nietzsche's Darwinian argument in Human, All Too Human that "everything has evolved," and that therefore there are no eternal truths, although modern science can satisfy the free-spirited philosopher in the quest for the "humble truths" of nature, which include the moral and political truths of evolved human nature.
In an earlier book, Nietzsche had warned against Darwinian evolution as a "deadly truth"--the phrase echoed in Strauss's "most terrible truth"--but Human, All Too Human shows how a "gay science" of evolution can affirm the intrinsic purposefulness of mortal human life in a mortal universe where everything evolves. Thus does a seemingly deadly truth become life-affirming.
This is what I have tried to do in defending "Darwinian natural right," in providing a scientific grounding in evolved human nature for natural right. And yet most of the Straussians scorn such an enterprise.
In fact, most of the Straussians are silent about substantive arguments for the natural ground of natural right. Does this silence point to the real Straussian secret--that the Straussians don't really believe in the truth of natural right, because they are nihilists, even if manly nihilists?
Sometimes the Straussians suggest that the only clear standard of natural right is the natural ranking of the philosophic life as the only truly good life, which includes a denigration of moral and political life as lacking any natural justification. But even here the Straussians never lay out the substantive arguments necessary to prove the natural supremacy of the philosophic life. Does this mean that they are so radically nihilistic that they regard even the choice to live a philosophic life as an arbitrary choice with no grounding in nature?
Some posts on related points can be found here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.
Saturday, January 28, 2012
Kraynak's Reply and the Three Levels of Evolution
In response to my recent post on his article--"Justice Without Foundations"--Robert Kraynak has written the following as a comment:
Contrary to what Kraynak says here, there is no evidence in Darwin's writing or in the writing on the evolutionary psychology of morality that Darwinism requires that we reject any appeal to compassion or sympathy for suffering human beings. In fact, Darwin is very clear in affirming sympathy as an expression of our evolved social instincts, and recent research on the evolution of morality is very clear about the importance of social emotions in moral experience. I have written many posts about this.
Moreover, when Kraynak refers to "a kind of Lamarckian belief that we can inherit culturally acquired values," he doesn't realize that Darwin embraced Lamarckian cultural evolution, and he doesn't realize that I have argued in many posts and in my books that to explain social order, we need three levels of order: genetic evolution, cultural evolution, and deliberate judgment.
Darwin elaborates on this throughout the The Descent of Man. He summarizes this point near the end of the book: "Important as the struggle for existence has been and even still is, yet as far as the highest part of man's nature is concerned there are other agencies more important. For the moral qualities are advanced, either directly or indirectly, much more through the effects of habit, the reasoning powers, instruction, religion, etc., than through natural selection; though to this latter agency may be safely attributed the social instincts, which afforded the basis for the development of the moral sense."
We have genetically evolved instincts for social learning and deliberate judgment, so that any Darwinian explanation of moral or political order requires moving through three levels of explanation: nature, custom (or habit), and reason. I have illustrated this throughout my writing. So, for example, in Darwinian Conservatism, I have explained the evolution of the moral sense as moving through three levels: moral sentiments, moral traditions, and moral judgments. Similarly, I have explained the evolution of property as moving from natural property to customary property to formal property. Kraynak needs to explain why this is wrong.
A sample of the many posts on these points can be found here, here, here, and here.
"The main point of my article, 'Justice without Foundations,' was to argue on philosophical grounds that post-modern relativists like Rorty and Darwinians like Dennett and Pinker have commitments to social justice, understood as democracy, human rights, and respect for human dignity that are completely inconsistent with their philosophical and scientific views. Darwinian evolution does not support democracy and human rights or the inherent dignity of the individual. If it supports any kind of moral code, it would be a code of the strong dominating the weak or one 'tribal' gene pool dominating or exterminating another tribal gene pool. Strict Darwinians should look upon, for example, the victims of the Haitian earthquake in cold rational fashion as losers in the struggle for survival, not as objects of compassion or as eliciting aid for the suffering stranger. The attachment of Darwinians to democratic values or to Christian values of universal charity is completely contradictory and irrational. Their claims to the contrary seem to reflect the secularized values of the surrounding Christian culture and a kind of Lamarckian belief that we can inherit culturally acquired values from the non-Darwinian cultures that developed through religion, philosophy, and high culture. None of the above comments [the comments on the post] are really addressing the main point--that Darwinian evolution as a 'metaphysical doctrine' does not support democracy, human rights, and universal human dignity. When Darwinians refer to 'evolved human nature' that includes democracy and human rights, they are sneaking in cultural values not inherited traits--'memes' rather than 'genes' as Dawkins likes to say, also quite inconsistently.My response to this comment should be clear to anyone who has read the posts to which I linked in my post on Kraynak's article.
Contrary to what Kraynak says here, there is no evidence in Darwin's writing or in the writing on the evolutionary psychology of morality that Darwinism requires that we reject any appeal to compassion or sympathy for suffering human beings. In fact, Darwin is very clear in affirming sympathy as an expression of our evolved social instincts, and recent research on the evolution of morality is very clear about the importance of social emotions in moral experience. I have written many posts about this.
Moreover, when Kraynak refers to "a kind of Lamarckian belief that we can inherit culturally acquired values," he doesn't realize that Darwin embraced Lamarckian cultural evolution, and he doesn't realize that I have argued in many posts and in my books that to explain social order, we need three levels of order: genetic evolution, cultural evolution, and deliberate judgment.
Darwin elaborates on this throughout the The Descent of Man. He summarizes this point near the end of the book: "Important as the struggle for existence has been and even still is, yet as far as the highest part of man's nature is concerned there are other agencies more important. For the moral qualities are advanced, either directly or indirectly, much more through the effects of habit, the reasoning powers, instruction, religion, etc., than through natural selection; though to this latter agency may be safely attributed the social instincts, which afforded the basis for the development of the moral sense."
We have genetically evolved instincts for social learning and deliberate judgment, so that any Darwinian explanation of moral or political order requires moving through three levels of explanation: nature, custom (or habit), and reason. I have illustrated this throughout my writing. So, for example, in Darwinian Conservatism, I have explained the evolution of the moral sense as moving through three levels: moral sentiments, moral traditions, and moral judgments. Similarly, I have explained the evolution of property as moving from natural property to customary property to formal property. Kraynak needs to explain why this is wrong.
A sample of the many posts on these points can be found here, here, here, and here.
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