Brague, Nietzsche, and the Longing for Moral Cosmology

In my recent posts on Platonic cosmology as interpreted by Zuckert, Brague, and Cropsey, I have taken the side of Cropsey and Zuckert against Brague in concluding that Plato and Plato's Socrates see the cosmos as morally indifferent, and thus they do not endorse Timaeus's moral cosmology. While I disagree with the fundamental argument of Brague's book The Wisdom of the World: The Human Experience of the Universe in Western Thought, I like the book because in laying out the history of the reasoning for moral cosmology, Brague shows the weaknesses in the reasoning, although that is not his intention.

The idea of moral cosmology is that the order of the cosmos is such a model of moral perfection that human morality is to be judged by how well it imitates that cosmic model. In particular, the astronomical order displayed in the sky or the celestial realm is the highest expression of the Good. (What Brague is describing here is what Arthur Lovejoy called "the Great Chain of Being" and what C. S. Lewis celebrated as "the discarded image.")

According to Brague, this moral cosmology was first sketched out in Plato's Timaeus, where the cosmos is described as a creation of a divine craftsman who designed everything to approximate the perfect order of eternal ideas, so that Being and the Good coincide, and so that the moral and political perfection of human life comes from imitating that cosmic order of the heavenly spheres. Later, this pagan cosmology was modified by biblical theologians to conform to their theology. This cosmology then became the dominant image of the cosmos throughout the Western world from late antiquity to the end of the Middle Ages. But then, Brague argues, this cosmic image was displaced in the modern era by the idea that the cosmos is either amoral or immoral, and therefore not a suitable model for human imitation. For the moderns, therefore, Being and the Good were disconnected. Brague's main message is that this dissolution of moral cosmology and the lack of any cosmic support for morality in the modern era has promoted nihilistic chaos.

At various points in his book, Brague indicates that his analysis coincides with Nietzsche's assessment of the moral crisis that comes with the "death of God," or the death of any belief in a moral interpretation of the cosmos, which is a consequence of modern science, and particularly the "true but deadly" doctrines of Darwinian science (24, 32, 189-90, 198). Brague agrees with Nietzsche that Plato's cosmology is a fictional creation of Platonic philosophers who project their wishes onto the cosmos. But he also agrees with Nietzsche that once this Platonic cosmology is refuted by modern science and replaced by a modern conception of the universe as morally neutral or even hostile to morality, then morality collapses without cosmic support.

Brague's extremism on this point is clear when he insists that a modern scientific conception of the moral neutrality of nature dictates "natural violence" and the criminal immoralism of the Marquis de Sade (204-209)!

Brague does not question this Nietzschean analysis of moral cosmology, and he does not consider Nietzsche's claims in Human, All Too Human that modern evolutionary science can support morality as rooted in animal instincts and evolved human nature. Like many readers of Nietzsche, Brague concentrates on the early and late writings of Nietzsche--with all the fireworks about scientific nihilism--and ignores the more moderate and reasonable writings of Nietzsche's middle period where he suggests that morality does not require transcendent, cosmic support, because it can be founded in the immanent teleology of human nature rather than the cosmic teleology of a divinely perfect cosmos.

Moreover, Brague admits that the moral cosmology that he finds so attractive probably could not provide any moral rules, and thus it probably didn't improve the morality of those who believed in it. After all, what kind of moral instruction is it to be told to "imitate the sky"? Judging what is good and bad is always a matter of prudence or practical judgment, and such judgment can be carried out based upon a biological conception of human life as aiming towards human ends, without any need for a moral cosmology. In fact, Brague admits, that seems to be the case for Aristotle. Although he sometimes invoked conceptions of cosmological teleology, his Nicomachean Ethics does not seem to rely much upon the sort of cosmology that Timaeus set forth. And rather than looking to astronomy for moral and political guidance, Aristotle seemed to look more to biology as a realm of phenomena closer to human moral concerns. (See 30, 122, 126, 152-53, 201, 217.)

If this is so, then Brague is wrong to suggest that the idea of a morally neutral cosmos did not appear in Western thought prior to the modern era, and he is also wrong to argue that morality cannot be sustained without a moral cosmology.

In addition to some of my recent posts, some of my earlier posts that are pertinent to this issue can be found here, here, here, here, and here.

Obama Nominates a Theistic Evolutionist to Head NIH

President Obama has nominated Francis Collins to be the head of the National Institutes of Health. Since NIH is the single biggest funding source for science in the world, this position will give Collins immense influence on scientific research.

There are two big points of interest here. As I have noted in some of my posts, Collins is a theistic evolutionist. Having been an agnostic or atheist in his youth, Collins eventually embraced Christianity through the influence of writers like C. S. Lewis. He decided that this religious belief did not require belief in creationism or intelligent design reasoning--which he rejects--because Darwinian evolutionary science is fully compatible with Christianity. In recent years, he has spoken a lot about this. In fact, some scientists are uneasy about his nomination because they think he shouldn't be mixing science and religion.

At the same time, creationists and intelligent design proponents dislike Collins because he subverts their rhetorical strategy of arguing that scientific atheists like Richard Dawkins speak for all Darwinian scientists.

The second point of interest related to Collins is his involvement in the debate over the power of human genetics. As the leader in the human genome project, Collins won massive federal funding with the prediction that mapping the human genome would fuel medical advances in treating genetically caused diseases and disabilities. That prediction has failed to come true, which has exposed the falsity of any simple-minded genetic determinism. Now, Collins himself emphasizes that human nature cannot be reduced to human genetics, because genetic factors interact in complex ways with many other factors that are not reducible to genetic causes.

Some of my posts related to Collins can be found here, here, and here.

A Darwinian Reading of Cropsey's Plato

Against my argument for "Darwinian natural right," many of my critics have insisted that any defensible conception of "natural right" requires a cosmic teleology in which human ends can be understood as fulfilling the natural ends of the cosmic order. Since Darwinian science cannot support such a cosmic teleology, they conclude, it cannot support the idea of natural right.

My response has been to point out that even if human ends cannot be sustained by cosmic nature, those ends can be sustained by human nature. And insofar as Darwinian science explains the evolutionary emergence of a natural moral sense rooted in human nature, such a science supports an immanent teleology that is sufficient grounds for natural right. Some of my many posts on this can be found here, here, here, here, and here.

Many of my critics on this point are Straussians who think they are following Plato in arguing for a cosmic teleology of moral ends. I believe, however, that Plato (or Plato's Socrates) is actually close to what I have in mind in defending an immanent teleology of human nature as understood by Darwinian science.

In some ways, Joseph Cropsey's book Plato's World: Man's Place in the Cosmos (1995) confirms my thinking about the link between Plato and Darwin on this point. (Many years ago, Cropsey was one of my professors at the University of Chicago.)

The most persistent theme of Cropsey's book is "care." Human beings are said to care about their existence within an uncaring world of nature and without any divinity to care for them (2, 7, 62, 64, 110, 114, 118-21, 125, 127-31, 136-38, 145-47, 151, 155-57, 160, 164-65, 170, 180, 212, 218, 222, 225). At times, this sounds more like Heidegger than Plato. Cropsey never mentions Heidegger in this book. And yet, for Heidegger, the being of human being understood as Dasein is defined as "care" (Sorge), and "care" is grounded in historical temporality. Cropsey seems to be suggesting that Heidegger elaborates what is implied in the Platonic dialogues. This impression of mine was confirmed when I saw that Catherine Zuckert in her review of Cropsey's book also spoke of "the evocation of Heideggerian themes--the temporal limitations of human knowledge, the centrality of the confrontation with death in the definition of human existence, and the importance of care." (Aren't these all Humean and Darwinian themes as well?)

Cropsey indicates that for Plato the primacy of human care shows itself in the need for a human conquest of nature. According to Cropsey, Plato did not believe that nature could provide "the criterion and incentive of human excellence," because Plato actually anticipated the modern teaching that nature is "indifferent or unfriendly to our well-being until we learn to exploit it" (185-86). Cropsey's Plato thus affirms "the moral neutrality of nature" (210).

Although Cropsey does not explicitly associate "care" with any particular Greek word, he implicitly links "care" to two Greek words--epistatike and epimeleia (138, 151, 156, 160). The second word is used by Socrates in the Apology (24c, 31b, 36b-c) when he claims to "care" for the Athenians by trying to persuade them to "care" for virtue rather than for money and power. Both words are used by the Stranger in the Statesman (305e, 308e, 311c) when he speaks of the statesman as the one who "cares for" his city by weaving the diverse characters of his people into a common fabric.

Cropsey says that human caring has neither natural nor divine support. Here is where I disagree with Cropsey. Even if one grants that cosmic nature is uncaring, why not say that caring is natural in the sense that it is rooted in human nature?

After all, Cropsey indicates that caring for their existence is natural to all human beings in some manner, and a special kind of intelligent caring is natural to Socratic philosophers (110, 121, 125, 129-31, 147). Although Cropsey depicts philosophy as a struggle against nature (157, 161, 176, 185), he also makes much of Socrates' philosophic caring as dictated by his nature (157, 161, 185). He describes Socrates as having "an innate inclination toward right and good" that is part of his nature, and this shows us "that nature sends the better angels of caring and nobility as well as the afflictions of cruelty and baseness" (157). According to Cropsey, the Socratic philosopher is "guided by his understanding of the good for the humanity he has insisted was an object of his caring" (212). But where would this philosopher get his understanding of the human good if not from his understanding of human nature (218)? How could we even identify "an innate inclination toward right and good" in Socrates if there were no natural standard of "right and good"?

Cropsey says that human nature does not clearly support human care because of the natural conflict between the indispensable virtues of hardness and softness. "Courage or manliness or aggressiveness (andreia) is in conflict with restraint or accommodation or passivity (sophrosyne), each being a virtue or a part or kind of virtue" (139). True statesmanship is "according to nature" when it contrives a union of these virtues that "conflict by nature," which requires "weaving by which the hard-natured and soft-natured are united as warp and woof to form the protective web of state, procuring the mingling that uncorrected nature would preclude" (139-42). Statesmanship as weaving is the artifice that overcomes "the conflict in equivocal nature between the aggressive and the accommodating virtues" (170).

What does Plato mean in calling this statesmanship "the truly genuine political art in accord with nature" (Statesman, 308d)? Cropsey would say that although the materials are natural, the political order that is woven out of those disorderly materials is an artificial construction of the philosophic statesman. Like other students of Leo Strauss, Cropsey interprets Plato as denying Aristotle's claim that human beings are political animals by nature.

But I would say that what one sees here is the trichotomy of political order as manifesting natural inclinations, cultural traditions, and individual judgment. A fundamental insight of Aristotelian and Darwinian political science is that human political nature must be nurtured through custom and judgment.

If the philosophic weaver cannot look to human nature for guidance, where does he find the pattern for the cloth? How does he know that the best pattern must include an interweaving of courage and moderation? Plato's Stranger explains that the combination of courage and moderation is necessary for the survival of a city in war and peace (Statesman, 307e-308b). Cropsey suggests that "his implication is that the natural reward of survival is conferred on those regimes that sit most bearably on their subjects because the polity respects the law and keeps undivided counsel." Therefore, "survival is the natural reward that signals the presence of true and authentic statesmanship (136).

Doesn't this indicate that the standard for the political weaver is by nature? Given the nature of human beings, they cannot live together in stable political communities without some combination of courage and moderation. Darwin recognized this in his account of how group selection in war contributed to the evolution of cooperation and the moral sense.

Nature can provide no standard for the philosophic statesman if nature is irrational. Cropsey seems to think that the irrationality of nature is indicated by the fact that certain kinds of geometric relationships require irrational numbers for their numerical expression (111, 125). But this makes no sense. These geometric relationships--such as that between the diagonal of a square and its sides or that between the radius and the circumference of a circle--are regular and thus intelligible relationships. Indeed, the wondrous intelligibility of such geometric patterns would seem to manifest the rational order of nature.

If the pattern for the political weaver is purely artificial, as Cropsey suggests, we are left with many questions. Does the weaver simply invent his pattern arbitrarily? Or is his pattern only a modification of a pattern that he has inherited from others? Does the weaver weave himself into and out of his own pattern? Or has the weaver been woven into someone else's pattern?

Cropsey claims that Socrates is the model statesman. If so, was he produced by the pattern woven by Athenian political weavers? According to Cropsey, "Socrates is under the influence of an unfeigned if subdued patriotism that is born of the understanding . . . that the human authority erected in political society is our nearest guarantee of prosperity in an uncaring milieu" (160).

Socrates realizes, however, that "human authority" is not sufficient to sustain the right opinions of the multitude of people. Socrates as the superior human being who cares for humanity cannot speak simply in his own name, because "the natural human suspicion of human superiority gives rise to the urgent need for a presence and a judgment above suspicion." Therefore, Cropsey concludes, Socrates had to create a new religion as a "noble lie." "His own care for the Athenians seems to reveal itself in his effort to conceal from them their human loneliness and to make up for it, as far as possible, with a simple theology of the nameless god. . . . What could better illuminate the paradox of the human condition than this act of human caring for man on the part of one who teaches that the oblivious deity is diligent in righteousness" (165)? In the words of a more recent philosophic weaver of noble lies, "Only a god can save us now."

Cropsey speaks of Socrates's "new religion without theophany" as "a religion of reason and justice rather than faith and charity" (177). But it seems to me that "a religion of reason and justice" might well be a natural religion in the sense of a religion adapted to human nature, a religion that might be the product of natural human evolution.

If nature were not the standard for the Socratic weaver, then the pattern of his weaving would be set not by reason and justice but by will and power. This might be Cropsey's view of the matter. But I do not think it is Plato's.

Dancing Cockatoos and Ice Age Flutes

Music is sometimes said to be a uniquely human activity that cannot be explained through Darwinian evolution from ancestral species. But the YouTube video of Snowball the cockatoo dancing to the music of the Back Street Boys suggests that music has deep roots in the animal world. With birds like this, we shouldn't miss Michael Jackson.

Recently, Nature published an online article reporting the discovery of a flute that is estimated to be over 35,000 years old. The flute has five finger holes, and it was made from the wing bone of a vulture. It was found in Hohle Fels Cave in Germany, where other such flutes have been found.

The Wall Street Journal has a a good article on this discovery and the scientific debate over the evolutionary origins of music. The video accompanying the article includes a recording of what the flute might have sounded like.

It is surprising, however, that the Nature article makes no reference to Darwin; and the article in the Wall Street Journal claims that Darwin was "baffled" by music, because he could not explain how it could have evolved.

In fact, in The Descent of Man, Darwin has a long section on music. He reported the discovery of "two flutes, made out of the bones and horns of the reindeer, found in caves together with flint tools and the remains of extinct animals." So here, as in so many other cases of supposed new discoveries in evolutionary science, we should see that Darwin was there first!

Some of the scientists studying the evolution of music believe that music evolved among ancient humans before speech, and that speech might actually depend upon abilities shaped originally by music. But, again, Darwin was there first with his claim that "musical sounds afforded one of the bases for the development of language."

And yet one can also see progress beyond Darwin in some critical respects. For example, the use of radiocarbon dating allows for a reasonably precise dating of human archaeology, which was not available to Darwin. Another example of progress would be advances in neuroscience that are now being applied to reasoning about human evolution, so that, in this case, we can infer evolutionary changes in the human brain corresponding to the archaeological evidence for music.

But even as they go beyond Darwin, these new advances in evolutionary science fit within, and deepen, Darwin's evolutionary framework--in this case, Darwin's explanation for how even the highest artistic activities of the human mind might have emerged from human evolutionary history.

Nature and Nature's God: Another Reply to Budziszewski

Observing the Fourth of July might remind us of the famous appeal in the Declaration of Independence to "the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God."

That phrase provokes questions. Do the "Laws of Nature" depend on some religious belief in "Nature's God"? Does "Nature's God" suggest some kind of natural theology--some conception of the divine that is manifest in nature without need for revelation? Could "Nature's God" suggest a deistic notion of God as the uncaused cause of Nature? Or do we need a more biblical conception of God as a divine person who intervenes in nature miraculously? Does the very idea of "Laws of Nature" imply a lawgiver, who must be God? If natural law requires religious belief, does that mean that a regime based on the principles of the Declaration of Independence must enforce religious belief--at least the minimal religious beliefs suggested by the Declaration with its invocation of God as Creator, Legislator, and Judge? If so, why is the United States Constitution silent about these religious beliefs, even as it declares that there shall be "no religious test" for public office, and no congressional "establishment of religion"?

Some of these questions have come up in the exchanges I have had with J. Budziszewski, a professor of government and philosophy at the University of Texas. Budziszewski is an evangelical Christian who writes works of Christian apologetics, which include a defense of natural law reasoning as the basis of ethics. He has criticized my claim that natural law can be rightly understood as a purely natural morality rooted in evolved human nature that can be known to human beings regardless of whether they have any religious beliefs. Against my position, he insists that natural law requires some belief in God as the supernatural ground of natural law.

Budziszewski has developed his critique of my reasoning in an essay that he has published three times. Most recently, the essay appears in his new book--The Line Through the Heart: Natural Law as Fact, Theory, and Sign of Contradiction (ISI Books, 2009). Three years ago, I wrote a post responding to the earlier version of this essay.

I still believe that Budziszewski's argument is implicitly based on a divine command view of ethics--the idea that we have no natural ground for judging right and wrong independently of God's command. Budziszewski tries to deny this. He writes: "The idea of a divine authority behind the natural law is often misunderstood. Some people imagine that if God had ordained that we rape instead of marry, murder instead of cherish, hate Him instead of love Him, then such things would be right. The absurdity of this idea is considered an objection to God's authority. What the objection overlooks is that a being capable of commanding such things would not be God. God is neither constrained by nor indifferent to the good; He is the good, the uncreated good in which the goodness of created being is grounded" (210-11).

But doesn't this identification of God with the good imply that Budziszewski knows what the good is independently of God's revealed will? For example, since Budziszewski knows murder is wrong, wouldn't he say that the biblical story of God commanding Abraham to murder his son Isaac must be somehow mistaken? Wouldn't he also recognize that Thomas Aquinas was wrong when he concluded that it was right for the Church to sanction the execution of heretics?

Similarly, while the Bible sanctions slavery, Budziszewski knows that this is wrong, and therefore he looks for some way to correct the Bible to conform to his natural moral knowledge that slavery is wrong. In his new book, he writes: "Consider how many centuries it took natural law thinkers even in the Christian tradition to work out the implications of the brotherhood of master and slave. At least they did eventually. Outside of the biblical orbit, no one ever did--not spontaneously" (36). The explicit teaching of the Bible is that the "brotherhood of master and slave" is consistent with preserving slavery as a moral good. But Budziszewski rightly judges that Christians had to correct the Bible by seeing that human brotherhood demands the abolition of slavery as a great moral wrong.

Darwin's Understanding of Love and Death

Peter Lawler's contribution to Darwinian Conservatism: A Disputed Question is entitled "All Larry Needs Is Love (and Death)."

As I indicate in my response, I don't understand Lawler's claim that "Arnhart denies that love and death are essential to our being," and that I cannot account for "the fact of our deep loneliness or of our deep longing to be known and loved by other persons." It is odd that he says this considering that I stress the natural desires for friendship, conjugal love, parental care, and familial bonding as manifestations of our evolved nature as social animals, and that I also speak about the natural human longings for religious understanding and intellectual understanding in the face of the mysteries of life and death.

I disagree with Lawler's assertion that Darwin advanced an "impersonal theory of evolution" denying the personal reality of love and death. Anyone who examines Darwin's life and writings can see how his scientific thinking was influenced by his personal life, and particularly by his experience with love and death in his family and with his friends.

One of the best studies of how Darwin's science arose from his personal struggles with love and death is Randal Keynes' Darwin, His Daughter, and Human Evolution (2001). Keynes is a great-great-grandson of Charles Darwin and a great-nephew of John Maynard Keynes. Some years ago, he came across a child's writing case that had belonged to Annie Darwin, the first daughter of Charles and Emma, who had died when she was ten. The writing case was filled with personal items that Emma had saved to remember her daughter. Charles had written a note recording how Annie felt every day during her last months, and then after her death, he wrote a memorial to record his memories of her character and life. As Keynes collected this and related material, he began writing his book as a study of how the death of Annie in 1851 had shaped her father's understanding of love and death in ways that guided his scientific thinking about the natural world.

A few days before his wedding, Charles told Emma that while during his five years travelling on the Beagle, "the whole of my pleasure was derived from what passed in my mind," he now looked to marriage to take him out of himself. "I think you will humanize me, and soon teach me there is greater happiness, than building theories and accumulating facts in silence and solitude." He spent the rest of his life doing his scientific work surrounded by his family in his home in Down. (As I have indicated in a previous post, I found that visiting Down House evokes the life of the Darwins in a poignant way.)

The family included ten children, of whom seven lived to adulthood. Mary died in 1842, within three weeks of her birth. Annie died in 1851. Charles Waring died in 1858, at age four. Annie's death, after six months of severe illness, was especially traumatic for Charles and his family.

Charles responded to his children with both the warm feelings of a father and the methodical observations of a scientist. He kept careful records of how his children developed in infancy to support his "natural history of babies," which would help him understand the earliest psychological development of human emotions and thoughts as compared with other animals. He also learned from his own paternal feelings and from Emma's maternal care the importance of parental love in nurturing the individual development of each child.

Charles's mother had died when he was eight. He regretted later in life that he could not recall many clear memories of her. When Annie died, he was careful to preserve a written summary of his memories of her written one week after her death. In about 1,500 words, he sketched her character, her appearance, and her behavior. He wrote:

"Our poor child, Annie, was born in Gower St on March 2nd 1841 and expired at Malvern at Midday on the 23rd of April 1851. I write these few pages as I think in after years, if we live, the impression now put down will recall more vividly her chief characteristics. From whatever point I look back at her, the main feature in her disposition which at once rises before me is her buoyant joyousness, tempered by two other characteristics, namely her sensitiveness, which might easily have been overlooked by a stranger, and her strong affection. Her joyousness and animal spirits radiated from her whole countenance and rendered every movement elastic and full of life and vigour. It was delightful and cheerful to behold her. Her dear face now rises before me, as she used sometimes to come running down stairs with a stolen pinch of snuff for me, her whole form radiant with the pleasure of giving pleasure. . . .

"Her figure and appearance were clearly influenced by her character: her eyes sparkled brightly; she often smiled; her step was elastic and firm; she held herself upright, and often threw her head a little backwards, as if she defied the world in her joyousness. . . .

"Her health failed in a slight degree for about nine months before her last illness; but it only occasionally gave her a day of discomfort: at such times, she was never in the least degree cross, peevish or impatient; and it was wonderful to see, as the discomfort passed, how quickly her elastic spirits brought back her joyousness and happiness. . . . When so exhausted that she could hardly speak, she praised everything that was given her, and said some tea 'was beautifully good.' When I gave her some water, she said 'I quite thank you'; and these, I believe were the last precious words ever addressed by her dear lips to me.

"But looking back, always the spirit of joyousness rises before me as her emblem and characteristic: she seemed formed to live a life of happiness: her spirits were always held in check by her sensitiveness lest she should displease those she loved, and her tender love was never weary of displaying itself by fondling and all the other little acts of affection.

"We have lost the joy of the household, and the solace of our old age: she must have known how we loved her; oh that she could now know how deeply, how tenderly we do still and shall ever love her dear joyous face. Blessings on her."

At the time, no one really understood the cause of Annie's death except that she suffered from a "bilious fever." She probably died of tuberculosis, which was known at the time as "consumption," for which there was no cure. It was not until 1882 that the German bacteriologist Dr. Robert Koch identified the cause of the disease as a bacillus Mycobacterium tuberculosis.

So how should loving parents understand and deal with the death of a child? In Victorian England, there were a variety of beliefs about how to handle such a loss.

Orthodox Christians consoled themselves that their dead children would go to Heaven, and that parents would eventually be reunited with their children in Heaven. Christians could believe that such death was designed by God to teach the need for faith in undergoing suffering.

For many religious believers, death was God's punishment for the Original Sin of Adam and Eve, and even innocent children had to pay the price for the sin of Adam. Or such believers might see the death as the punishment for some personal sin of the parents.

For some people, however, such beliefs were dubious. Despite the common view that the Bible teaches eternal life after death, the Biblical account of the afterlife is vague, and the character of Heaven and Hell is not clearly explained. Moreover, why should we be consoled by belief in eternal life if we can't be sure about whether we (or our children) will go to Heaven or Hell? And why should we rely on scriptural authority for an afterlife if this is not supported by evidence from natural human experience and reasoning?

In any case, it's not clear that even those who profess to believe in an afterlife really believe it strongly enough for this to overcome their natural feeling that death is the end.

Some people wondered why a God who is both all-powerful and all-good would allow the innocent to suffer and die. They also wondered about the fairness of God in condemning most people to eternal punishment in Hell.

Some Victorians thought that we should accept death as a consequence of natural causes that we cannot alter. This seemed to be Alfred Tennyson's response when his first child was stillborn (three days before Annie's death):

Little bosom not yet cold,
Noble forehead made for thought,
Little hands of mighty mould
Clenched as in the fight which they had fought.
He had done battle to be born,
But some brute force of Nature had prevailed
And the little warrior failed.

"Some brute force of Nature had prevailed." What more should be said about the death of a child--or of any human being?

How did Emma and Charles respond to the death of Annie? As a Unitarian who believed in the eternal afterlife, Emma tried to console herself with the thought that she would be reunited with her family after death in Heaven. She was troubled that Charles did not find the evidence for such beliefs convincing. Over her life, as she and Charles talked about this and read books on the debate over the evidence for personal immortality with eternal rewards and punishments, she became less confident about her beliefs, although she was always more openly pious than Charles.

In his early life, Charles was an orthodox Christian believer. By the middle of his life, he had concluded that there was insufficient evidence for the divine authority of the Bible and traditional Christian doctrines. By the end of his life, he identified himself as an agnostic. Some people assumed he was a complete atheist. But he always insisted that he was open to the possibility of God as First Cause of the natural laws governing the universe, although he worried that searching for the ultimate causes of all things was beyond the natural limits of the human mind. "The mystery of the beginning of all things is insoluble by us."

He was clear, however, in rejecting the traditional doctrines of God as having separately created every form of life and as providentially intervening to control every event in natural and human history. He laid out the evidence and arguments for species as originating from ancestral species through natural laws of evolution, although he indicated that this was consistent with believing in God as the Creator of those natural laws. Persuaded by the evidence of experience and science that nature was governed by general laws, Charles could not believe in any miracles, except possibly the original miracle by which the laws of nature themselves were created.

Charles rejected the traditional teaching that God would condemn all unbelievers to everlasting punishment as a "damnable doctrine."

He also rejected the traditional belief in God's particular providence, because Charles could not see how a just God could be responsible for "the clumsy, wasteful, blundering low and horridly cruel works of nature." It would be a more sublime notion of God, Charles thought, to say that God was not responsible for the cruelty of nature as governed by the "universal struggle for life." He believed it was "more satisfactory to attribute pain and suffering to the natural sequence of events." So at the end of the Origin of Species, Charles leaves his reader with the image of how "endless forms most beautiful" evolved "from the war of nature, from famine and death."

Charles learned this from his personal experience of love and death. He could love Annie as his beautiful child. He could understand her death as coming from her losing struggle for life in the war of nature. He could cherish his memories of her vibrant personality, as preserved in his memorial essay, but without any expectation of being reunited with her in an afterlife.

Charles could also engage in scientific research on the natural causes of suffering and death with the hope that such knowledge could provide some relief. Although he did not understand how Annie's disease was caused by microorganisms, Charles did develop an evolutionary theory of how parasites and hosts coevolve in the struggle for life.

In 1877, a scientific friend of his sent him an article by Dr. Robert Koch, who would later discover the bacillus that causes tuberculosis. The article contained the first photographs of bacteria, along with Koch's argument that such microorganisms could cause diseases. Charles replied: "I well remember saying to myself between twenty and thirty years ago [about the time of Annie's death], that if ever the origin of any infectious disease could be proved, it would be the greatest triumph to Science; and now I rejoice to have seen the triumph."

So now Charles's science can explain why his daughter died. She died because she lost her struggle for life in the war of nature with tubercular bacteria. She was defeated by a "brute force of Nature."

Without a scientific understanding of her disease, Charles could not save her life. But he could save his memories of her in all her beautiful exuberance. "She held herself upright, and often threw her head a little backwards, as if she defied the world in her joyousness."

Does Peter Lawler have any better alternative for understanding love and death?

Catherine Zuckert, Remi Brague, and Platonic Cosmology

Was Plato the first intelligent design theorist?

It is clear that the basic arguments for intelligent design are stated in Book 10 of Plato's Laws. In that dialogue, the Athenian Stranger warns against the dangerous atheism of natural philosophers who explain the universe as a product of purely natural causes. Against them, he argues that lawmakers must persuade their people that the complex, functional order of the universe shows the intelligent design of a divine mind that is benevolent in supporting human morality and law. This intelligent design reasoning provides cosmic support for human moral and political order.

Similarly, in the Timaeus, Timaeus argues that Socrates "city in speech" can be supported by a rational theology of cosmic order, in which the intelligible order of the cosmos manifests the intelligent design of the cosmic craftsman. The moral and political order of human life can then be judged by how well it conforms to this cosmic order of the omnipotent and benevolent craftsman.

Remi Brague--in his book The Wisdom of the World--shows how this conception of a cosmos ordered by Divine Intellect provided a cosmic pattern for human life to imitate, and how this idea runs through much of the history of the Western world until it was challenged by modern thinkers. Brague also shows how the biblical teaching of God as providential creator was assimilated to this Platonic cosmology.

The modern "disenchantment of the world"--based on the claim that the natural universe is indifferent to human moral concerns--means that human life must take its moral bearings from human experience itself rather than from some transcendent order of the universe. For Brague, this denial of cosmic moral order leads to moral confusion if not nihilism.

Many conservatives and Straussians have adopted Brague's reasoning in denying my argument for "Darwinian natural right." The only possible ground for natural right, they claim, is a cosmic moral teleology. Without such a teleology of the universe, any appeal to a moral sense as rooted in evolved human nature will collapse into moral relativism.

But is this really Plato's position, as Brague and others suggest? Brague acknowledges that Timaeus's cosmology reverses the move of Socrates in the Phaedo in turning towards the study of human things separated from the study of cosmic order. Moreover, Brague admits that some readers of the Timaeus have found Timaeus's reasoning so ridiculously implausible that they wonder whether Plato is being ironic. But having noted this possibility (p. 32), Brague moves on without considering its implications. Furthermore, Brague never really explains why anyone should accept this anthropological cosmology--in either its Platonic or Biblical form--as true.

A very different way of reading Plato on this issue is laid out in Catherine Zuckert's new book Plato's Philosophers: The Coherence of the Dialogues. This massive study of all of the Platonic dialogues (888 pages long!) is organized around the dramatic dating of the dialogues rather than the dating of their writing by Plato. Her insight is that each dialogue fits into a dramatic context in which the strengths and weaknesses of Socrates' philosophic approach are assessed in comparison with four other philosophers prominent in the dialogues--the Athenian Stranger, Parmenides, Timaeus, and the Eleatic Stranger.

Zuckert suggests that Socrates distances himself from the cosmological reasoning of the Athenian Stranger and Timaeus. Socrates is skeptical about any claim that human beings can attain full knowledge of the whole, she claims. Furthermore, Socrates also doubts that the order of human life can be governed by the order of cosmic intelligibility. Socratic philosophy, she concludes, will be a search for wisdom that never ends in complete knowledge; and although we will never understand completely the order of the universe, we can understand something about the order of human desires as a guide for human action and thought.

In contrast to Brague's reading of Plato, Zuckert stresses Socrates' quest for understanding human nature on its own terms and his skepticism about appeals to cosmic design. If Zuckert is right--as I think she is--then Socrates is not that far from the skeptical naturalism of David Hume and Charles Darwin.

For some other posts related to this topic, go here, here, here, and .here.

Leon Kass and the Demise of the Council on Bioethics

Last week, President Obama abolished the President's Council on Bioethics, which had been established by the Bush Administration in 2001 under the chairmanship of Leon Kass. Peter Lawler has written a statement on his termination as one of the members of the Council.

My reaction to this is mixed. On the one hand, I will miss the high intellectual level of discussion fostered by the Council both through its meetings and through its reports. I agree with Lawler that Kass directed the Council in such a way as to promote a Socratic discussion of the deep philosophical questions raised by biotechnology, and it is rare for any government agency to do anything like this. By contrast, President Obama seems to have no interest in such philosophical debate.

On the other hand, I have always been disturbed by Kass's unreasonable scorn for modern science and by his dishonesty in his management of the Bioethics Council. As I have often noted on this blog, Kass's deep fear of modern science as impious and immoral distorts his view of everything associated with modern science and technology.

Kass's dishonesty was evident in 2004 when he pressured the White House to dismiss Elizabeth Blackburn from the Council because of her firm disagreement with Kass. Along with the voluntary resignations of William May and Stephen Carter, this created three vacancies. Kass successfully recommended three replacements--Benjamin Carson, Peter Lawler, and Diana Schaub. Many people at the time noted that all three of these people were in general agreement with Kass, and so it was clear that Kass was being careful to insure that the majority of the Council would be on his side.

I was particularly shocked by Schaub's appointment. Shortly before her appointment, I had met her at Hillsdale College where we were participating in a week-long lecture series on biotechnology. I was disappointed by the shallowness of her lecture, which suggested that she knew nothing at all about the subject. Apparently, Kass appointed her because she was a friend of his, and she agreed with him.

And yet, in response to his critics, Kass wrote an article for the Washington Post arguing that he knew nothing about the views of these three people, and that there was no political bias in his appointments. He suggested that he selected these three people only because they were obviously the most qualified people for the positions. Even some of Kass's friends were embarrassed by the blatant dishonesty in his statement.

Some of my posts on Kass can be found here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.

Darwin's Barnacles

In 1836, Charles Darwin returned from his five year trip around the world on the Beagle. In 1837, he began writing out in notebooks the ideas that eventually would be elaborated as his theory of the origin of species. He married Emma in 1839. They moved to Down House in 1842, which would be their home for next 40 years until Darwin's death in 1882. By 1842, Darwin had written a thirty-five pages of a sketch of his theory of natural selection. By 1844, he had written a 231-page essay developing his theory. But then, oddly enough, he chose not to publish this work. Instead, in 1846, he began a meticulous study of barnacles that would not be completed until 1854. Only then would he return to his theory of the origin of species, and his Origin of Species was finally published late in 1859.

One of the big questions for Darwin scholars is why Darwin delayed the publication of his theory, and why he chose to spend eight years studying barnacles.

The best handling of this question is Rebecca Stott's book Darwin and the Barnacles (2003). This is one of the best books on Darwin that I have ever read. It is certainly one of the best-written. Stott is a novelist and a professor of English who writes with a wondrously evocative style.

Darwin's grandfather--Erasmus Darwin--had speculated in his book Zoonomia that all of life might have emerged ultimately from some simple aquatic life form. In 1844, Robert Chambers elaborated this idea in his Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation. Indeed, Darwin recognized in Chambers' book his own theory of transmutation of species as traced back to some original marine life form. But despite the wide audience for Chambers' book, scientists (including Darwin) criticized him for engaging in wild speculation without meticulous empirical research to back it up. This was a lesson for Darwin--that he should not publish his theory until he had won the respect of the scientific community for his careful observational and experimental research. His research on barnacles would do that.

In studying marine invertebrates to see the gradation of differences between life forms, Darwin was following in the tradition of Aristotle's biology, which was recognized by Robert Grant, who became Darwin's mentor in Edinburgh. But Grant and Darwin had advantages over Aristotle. The microscope allowed them to see microscopic patterns of life that were invisible to Aristotle. Another advantage for Darwin is that the development of a postal system and a railway system allowed Darwin to contact people around the world who might collect barnacle specimens and barnacle fossils for him, and with whom Darwin could carry on discussions about the problems he faced. Stott shows how this allowed Darwin to develop a "barnacle network" that would later expand as he carried out his later research from his perch in Down. This global network of information--based largely on the global structures of the British Empire--created the conditions for collective scientific research far beyond anything available to Aristotle.

Stott lays out at least five ways in which Darwin's barnacle research advanced his theory of the origin of species. First, this research allowed him to see how the history of barnacles showed the variability of animals adapting to diverse environments for survival and reproduction, and in this history, there was no sharp demarcation between one species and another. Second, this research established Darwin's authority as an empirical scientist who would not engage in broad speculation until he had mastered the details of natural history. Third, this work on barnacles gave him time to allow the pressure to build among naturalists who were beginning to recognize the mutability of species. Fourth, his global network of correspondence in his barnacle research established connections with people around the world that could later be used for promoting his theory of species.

Finally, this work on barnacles gave Darwin time to develop his writing style--in which he combines accuracy of description, cautious hesitancy, and boldness of conclusions. As she indicates, this deft combination of caution and boldness is illustrated by one sentence in the last paragraph of the Introduction to the Origin: "Although much remains obscure, and will long remain obscure, I can entertain no doubt, after the most deliberate study and dispassionate judgment of which I am capable, that the view which most naturalists entertain, and which I formerly entertained--namely, that each species has been independently created--is erroneous."