Conservative PC? More on Patrick Henry College

The article that got Erik Root into trouble at Patrick Henry College is now available here.

To see why this apparently uncontroversial article could be controversial at Patrick Henry College, look at the College's Institutional Statement of Biblical Worldview. You will notice that biology teachers at PHC are expected to teach that the Biblical book of Genesis is actually a science textbook. They must teach that the entire creation of the universe "was completed in six twenty-four hour days." They can teach Darwinian evolution and intelligent design theories, but they must make it clear to the students that the 6-days-of-creation theory must be seen "as both biblically true and as the best fit to observed data." Consequently, not only would teaching Darwinian evolution as true be rejected, but even teaching intelligent design as taking longer than 6 days would be in violation of the College's mission.

I am reminded of a comment by Peter Augustine Lawler, a Catholic conservative, in his new book STUCK WITH VIRTUE: "This secessionist impulse of our evangelicals is, in part, the result of their intellectual weakness, their tendency not to read or write great books. Their Christian America is founded in the revelation of the Bible, not that realistic view of nature and human nature that all citizens can share in common" (p. 105).

Part of my argument for "Darwinian conservatism" is to present it as an appeal to "that realistic view of nature and human nature that all citizens can share in common." Most citizens--conservatives included--are not going to agree on a literal reading of the Bible that concludes that the universe was created in six twenty-four-hour days. Neither are most citizens going to agree on the details of the moral rules set forth in the Bible. If we are not going to have a biblical theocracy, then we need to appeal to some shared natural standards of truth and morality--something like the tradition of natural law. Darwinian naturalism supports such a tradition.

PHC proudly announces that it is on the Young America's Foundation list of Top 10 Conservative Colleges. American conservatives often complain about left-wing "political correctness." But now it seems that conservatives enforce their own "political correctness" at colleges like Patrick Henry, Hillsdale College, Grove City College, and elsewhere. Isn't this in violation of the great tradition of liberal arts education? Would Socrates be permitted to teach at schools like Patrick Henry? Apparently not.

Most of the students at Patrick Henry have been home-schooled by evangelical parents. Should we begin to wonder about the wisdom of this home-schooling movement, especially if these home-schooled kids are being taught that any teacher who believes the creation of the universe might have taken longer than 6 days should be scorned as a corrupter of the youth?

Mansfield's Manly Nihilism

As I indicated in my previous post, Harvey Mansfield asserts that the "manly virtue" of Plato and Aristotle depends on the eternity of species and cosmic teleology, which are denied by Darwinian evolution. In response, I have argued that Darwinian science supports the idea of natural right through an immanent teleology of species-specific natural ends.

It is odd, however, that Mansfield never actually asserts the truth of eternal species and cosmic teleology. And while he opens and closes his book by apparently endorsing the teaching of Plato and Aristotle that virtue is rooted in nature, the central chapter of his book (Chapter 4)is devoted to the "manly nihilism" of Teddy Roosevelt and Friedrich Nietzsche. He thus leaves his reader suspecting that the secret teaching of the book is the truth of "manly nihilism."

"The most dramatic statement of manliness," Mansfield asserts, "would be the one where the man is the source of all meaning," which is nihilism (82). Nietzsche is "
the philosopher of manliness in modern times" (110). Teddy Roosevelt is the best political expression of manly nihilism, particularly in the "assertiveness of executive power" (97).

Mansfield is famous for his Machiavellian defense of executive prerogative, which includes some recent articles defending President Bush's displays of the "assertiveness of executive power." Is this all in the service of "manly nihilism"? Does this support the suspicion that Mansfield and other "Eastern Straussians" really are nihilists?

There would no need for nihilism if we saw how a Darwinian naturalism supports natural right as rooted in human nature and immanent teleology.

Darwin and Mansfield on Manliness

Harvey Mansfield's new book Manliness is one of the most profound books I have read in recent years. It is a deep study of the nature of human sex differences and of the moral and political implications of those differences.

Mansfield's reasoning about the human nature of male and female is very close to what I have said about sex differences in Darwinian Natural Right and Darwinian Conservatism. And yet he fails to fully embrace Darwinian science because he does not rightly understand the Darwinian account of human nature as confirming Aristotelian naturalism. Mansfield's mistakes in his view of Darwinian biology are shared with other Straussians who fail to see how Darwinism supports the idea of natural right.

Mansfield defines manliness as expressed in assertiveness and spiritedness. He regards such manliness as both good and bad, but essential for politics.

He thinks that in modern liberal society, manliness exists, but it is unemployed. The danger in this situation comes from either too little manliness (bourgeois softness) or too much manliness (Nietzschean will to power). We need to see the wisdom in the reasoning of Plato and Aristotle, who saw the need for a middle ground between too little manliness and too much.

Against the tendency to explain manliness as falling on one side or the other of the nature/nurture dichotomy, Mansfield explains it as emerging from the complex cooperation of nature and nurture. Manliness is a social construction that cultivates a natural inclination.

While criticizing the radical feminist pursuit of gender neutrality, in which manliness would be denied or repressed, Mansfield does not think we can go back to traditional arrangements--with women confined to the home and men free for public careers. Ultimately, he proposes a new liberal feminism based on the liberal distinction between public and private, state and society, so that there would be formal gender neutrality in the public realm but not in the private realm. He concludes: "We need to both respect and ignore sex differences" (228).

Mansfield surveys some of the evidence and reasoning from Darwinian biology that confirms his assertion of differences in men and women rooted in nature that are not likely to be radically altered or abolished by social engineering. But even as he does this, he makes four criticisms of the Darwinian view of manliness.

First, although Darwin rightly sees manliness as aggression, he does not see how that manly aggression among human males becomes assertiveness (48-49, 64-65).

Second, because Darwin does not recognize manly assertiveness, he does not see how such assertiveness supports male dominance in politics (49-50).

Third, the Darwinian denial of eternal, fixed nature and cosmic teleology prepares the way for nihilism (16, 83, 89, 196, 201).

Finally, Darwin assumes a "spontaneous nature" that denies the need for habituation and reasoning in cultivating natural inclinations (192-93, 196-97, 202, 215).

The first criticism is inaccurate. Male assertiveness is a clear theme in Darwin's writing. In The Descent of Man (London: J. Murray, 1871), Darwin wrote: "Man is the rival of other men; he delights in competition, and this leads to ambition which passes too easily into selfishness" (2:326). He saw men as showing "higher energy, perseverance, and courage" than women in the pursuit of "eminence" and "victory" (2:327-28).

Against the second criticism--Darwin's neglect of politics--I would point to Darwin's account of human sociability as manifested in distinct communities with leaders that lead them in competition with other communities (1:74, 79, 84-85, 95). Mansfield is simply wrong when he asserts that in Darwin's writing, we have no politics, because "all we have is the individual and the species" (1:49).

Mansfield's third criticism is hard to handle, because while he warns that the Darwinian denial of the eternity of species and cosmic teleology prepares for nihilism, he never explicitly affirms the truth of the eternity of species and cosmic teleology.

Mansfield concedes that Darwin himself was not a nihilist. He was not, I would say, because he believed that each species had a species-specific nature, so that there were natural ends for each species for as long as the species endured. This sustains an immanent teleology of species-specific ends as a ground for natural right without any need for a cosmic teleology by which the universe as a whole is ordered to some end. That species are not eternal does not deny the natural order of each species for as long as it exists. As Aristotle said: "The Idea of the Good will not be any more good because it is eternal, seeing that a white thing that lasts for a long time is not whiter than a white thing that lasts for a day" (Nicomachean Ethics, 1096b3-5). For as long as the human species exists in its present form, there will be natural differences between men and women, and we will need to take those diffences seriously.

Mansfield's fourth criticism--Darwin saw only "spontaneous nature"--is wrong, because Darwin repeatedly affirmed the importance of habit, custom, and reason in cultivating human nature. In this respect, as in many others, Darwin was close to Aristotle. Darwin explained that "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" (2:404; see also 1:165-166, 1:173).

Darwin would agree with Mansfield that natural human inclinations--such as manliness--set a natural guide for action, but we are free to decide how to follow that natural guide as we deliberate about how best to cultivate and direct those inclinations.

If Mansfield--and other Straussian conservatives--were to recognize how Darwinian science supports Aristotelian naturalism, they might see the wisdom in Darwinian natural right and Darwinian conservatism.

Reason and Revelation at Patrick Henry College

Patrick Henry College in Purcellvile, Virginia, was founded six years ago as an evangelical Christian college promoting conservative politics. The school was specifically designed as a college for Christian conservative students who had been home-schooled by their parents. The college made a name for itself quickly because many of its first graduates found jobs in the Bush administration, which indicated the influence of evangelical fundamentalism in the Bush coalition.

About two months ago, I was contacted by Erik Root, a professor of government at Patrick Henry College and a Ph.D. candidate in political philosophy at Claremont Graduate School. Root had written an article in the school newspaper about Augustine's view of education, in which he spoke of the philosophic tradition of natural law. Root quoted some comments from me about how natural law might be rooted in human nature. College President Michael Farris responded to his article by criticizing him for quoting me, since I was a "known Darwinist." I advised Root to be careful about what he said, and I suggested he might be better off not quoting me.

Now I have learned that President Farris has fired Root. In response to this firing, four other faculty members have resigned in protest. Consequently, 5 of the school's 16 faculty members are leaving. News reports have quoted President Farris has saying, "I believe what the Scripture said, and that is that the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God."

So it seems that studies of science and philosophy must be subordinated to the authority of the Bible. The five faculty members who are leaving argue that Christian students need to be open to the knowledge that comes from rational inquiry outside of Biblical religion.

Beginning this summer, the College will have a new president--Graham Walker. In explaining his vision for the College, Walker says: "Most colleges today, even many evangelical schools, have veered away from truth because of their infatuation with human reason."

Isn't there something disturbing about a Biblical conservatism that thinks that college students must avoid any "infatuation with human reason," and that any college professors who defend human reason should be fired?

Wouldn't it be wiser to say that faith and reason have nothing to fear from one another, because God speaks not only through the words of the Bible as revealed to faith, but also through the works of nature as comprehended by reason?

As suggested by the quotation from Francis Bacon about God's "two books" that is the epigram for Darwin's Origin of Species, Darwinian science is open to both Biblical faith and scientific reason. So religious conservatives can also be Darwinian conservatives.

A Reply to Jonathan Wells

The May 22nd issue of The Weekly Standard has a letter by Jonathan Wells concerning James Seaton's review of Darwinian Conservatism in the May 8th issue.

Wells writes: "In his review of Larry Arnhart's Darwinian Conservatism, James Seaton seems to be confused about the nature of conservatism. Arnhart's argument that Darwinism supports conservative social ideals is based on evolutionary psychology, an approach based on so little evidence that even some Darwinists dismiss it. Arnhart ignores central aspects of Darwinian theory that are deeply inimical to traditional Christianity. Arnhart's argument that Darwinism supports conservative political/economic ideals obscures the fact taht Darwinian thinking underlies the 'zero-sum' concept that reduces us to competing for limited resources and justifies leftist-managed economies--the exact opposite of creating wealth through new technology and engaging in free-enterprise capitalism. It's no accident that leftists have historically embraced Darwinism while conservatives have tended to reject it."

Wells is a Fellow of the Discovery Institute in Seattle. He is best known for his book Icons of Evolution, which argues that some of the standard arguments for Darwinian science are flawed.

I cannot respond to Wells' dismissal of evolutionary psychology, because he does not specify exactly what he is criticizing. Actually, I rely very little on evolutionary psychology (of the Tooby-Cosmides sort), because I prefer to stay close to Darwin's own texts.

Likewise, it's hard to respond to the claim that "central aspects of Darwinian theory" are "deeply inimical to traditional Christianity," because Wells does not specify what he has in mind. I have a whole chapter on religion in my book. Wells does not indicate what he finds wrong in this chapter.

The only clear point that I can see in Wells letter is the assertion that Darwinian thinking promotes a "zero-sum" concept, in which one person's gain is another person's loss. By contrast, a "non-zero-sum" game is one in which players gain by cooperating.

Wells ignores my emphasis on how Darwinian thought promotes the evolutionary benefits of sympathy and cooperation that sustain free-market capitalism. As I indicate in the book, Darwin quoted Adam Smith freely about the importance of sympathy and reciprocity in social order. I also stress the Darwinian character of what Frederich Hayek called the "extended order" of civilization achieved through the "spontaneous orders" of cooperation. I have an entire chapter on how Darwinian thinking supports private property and the gains from trade.

So I am baffled as to what Wells is talking about when he asserts that "zero-sum" concepts must dominate Darwinian thinking.

The Atheism of Intelligent Design Theory

In much of the journalistic coverage of "intelligent design theory" as an alternative to Darwinian science, it is assumed that ID is on the side of Biblical religion, while Darwinism is not. But this is not correct.

The proponents of ID stress the fact that they do not accept the Bible as a guide for science. Specifically, they do not take a literal reading of the Genesis story of six days of creation as superior to the Darwinian theory of evolution. They assume that the Intelligent Designer could have taken millions or billions of years to do his work. And they speak of the Intelligent Designer as a disembodied intelligence with none of the traits of the Biblical God.

The proponents of "young Earth Creationism"--such as Ken Ham of "Answers in Genesis"--scorn ID as an attack on the Bible. A recent article in Christianity Today surveys this controversy and quotes Ham as saying: "What good is it if people believe in intelligence? That's no different than atheism in that if it's not the God of the Bible, it's not Jesus Christ, it's not salvation."

This article also reports that ID proponent William Dembski has been replaced by creationist Kurt Wise as director of the program in science and theology at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary. Apparently, the Southern Baptists have found that Dembski's ID is not an orthodox Biblical doctrine.

Christian conservatives who support ID should recognize that they are rejecting the literal reading of the Bible as a guide for science. Having taken that step, I ask, why not consider the possibility of a theistic evolution that would make Biblical religion and Darwinian science compatible?

Nature's God and the Founders' Faith

In my previous post, I have claimed that the American Founding Fathers were predominantly Deists, and thus not orthodox Christians. The historical evidence for that claim is laid out clearly in a recent book--David Holmes' The Faiths of the Founding Fathers.

He shows that some of the leaders in the founding generation--such as Patrick Henry, Samuel Adams, and John Jay--were probably orthodox Christians. But he also shows that Benjamin Franklin and the first five presidents of the United States--Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe--were Deists.

The Deists believed in God, but this was--in the phrase of the Declaration of Independence--"Nature's God." In other words, they believed that God as First Cause was most clearly manifested in the lawful order of nature. Therefore, the best way to study God was through a rational and scientific study of nature as God's work.

Darwin suggested a similar thought in the epigram from Francis Bacon that begins The Origin of Species. "Let no man out of a weak conceit of sobriety, or an ill-applied moderation, think or maintain that a man can search too far or be too well studied in the book of God's word, or in the book of God's works; divinity or philosophy; but rather let men endeavour an endless progress or proficiency in both." Consequently, the scientific study of nature could be seen as the study of God's works, or of what Darwin called "the laws impressed on matter by the Creator."

Nature's God could work through the natural laws of evolution. And so there should be no conflict between believing in God as the First Cause of nature and the scientific study of natural evolution.

The Founding Fathers Were Not Christians

On this blog and in Darwinian Conservatism, I have argued that Darwin and the evolutionary science that he founded supports religious belief, at least insofar as religion helps to reinforce the moral sense inherent in human nature. Moreover, Darwin acknowledges that the ultimate origin of life is mysterious in such a way that one cannot reject the idea of God as First Cause of life.

But for many American Christian conservatives, this is not enough. They insist that nothing less than orthodox Christian piety can support the traditional morality defended by conservatives.

One manifestation of this thought is the current obsession about the religious beliefs of the American Founding Fathers. Recently, there have been a half dozen or more books on the religious beliefs of the Founders--those who wrote and signed the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution--to determine whether they were orthodox Christians. Many Christian conservatives want to argue that the Founders were good Christians who saw Christian beliefs as essential for the moral and political health of the nation.

To me this ignores the obvious fact that the American Founders were not orthodox Christians but Deists. In other words, they were open to talking about how the "Almighty" created the universe, including human beings, and how this "Almighty" enforced a moral law in the universe. But they did not believe that God intervened in human affairs in answer to prayers. Nor did they believe in the divinity of Jesus as the incarnation of God. They spoke often about how important religion might be for reinforcing healthy morality. But they were not inclined to believe in the salvational power of Jesus or the efficacy of prayer for changing events.

Consider just the most obvious evidence. The Declaration of Independence refers to God as Creator and Lawgiver. But there are no references to Jesus or Christianity. The Constitution of the United States makes no references to Jesus or God, except for dating the document "in the Year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and Eighty seven and of the Independence of the United States of America the Twelfth." The only reference to "religion" is the clause declaring that "no religious test" shall be required for any public office (Article 6). In the Ratification Debates, this "no religious test" clause was criticized by some Christians as an anti-Christian provision.

The most revealing evidence comes from a notorious episode in the Constitutional Convention of 1787 in Philadelphia. On June 28th, the delegates appeared to be deadlocked in their debates because of the opposing interests of large States and small States. Benjamin Franklin rose to propose that the Convention invite some local minister to attend and offer daily prayers to invoke the aid of God. "If a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without God's notice, is it probable that an empire without his aid?" According to a popular legend, the Convention accepted Franklin's proposal, and from the moment that they had these prayers, the deadlock was broken by God's providential intervention. This story has been repeated by many American ministers as evidence that the American Constitution was divinely inspired. 

I first heard this story as a child when it was part of a sermon at the First Baptist Church of Wills Point, Texas.  But years later, as a college student in a class on the American Founding, I was shocked when I looked at James Madison's notes for the Convention as edited by Max Farrand in the Yale University Press edition (particularly 1:450-52, 3:470-73, 3:499, 3:531), and I saw that this story was false. Franklin did make his proposal for daily prayer at the Convention. But the response was silence.  Finally, Alexander Hamilton offered a quip about how they did not need "foreign aid." The motion was dropped.

This is not the action of good Christians. It is the action of men who respected religious belief, but who did not believe that God would answer their prayers and intervene to promote their political success. Since the meetings of the Convention were kept secret, they were not concerned about public appearances. If the meetings had been open to the public, they surely would have felt compelled to accept Franklin's motion.

The American Founders were conservatives with a realistic view of human nature, who designed a Constitution based on their view that the concentration of power was dangerous, and therefore that the best government was a limited government of separated powers with checks and balances. Moreover, they believed in the importance of family life and private property in securing individual liberty and moral order. They also believed that religion could provide support for such principles. In all of this, they conformed to what I have called "Darwiniana conservatism."

But none of this requires a pious belief in orthodox Christianity. Anyone who wants to turn the American Founders into good Christians must deny the most obvious facts about their words and deeds.

On the other hand, one could argue that at least some of the American Founders were pious Christians in the tradition of Roger Williams, who thought that New Testament Christianity requires a "wall of separation" between church and state to protect the spiritual purity of the church and the political purity of the state.  And therefore, it is blasphemy to pray for God's sanctification of a government.

After all, as Williams argued, in the first three hundred years of Christianity (before Constantine), the Christians did not think God wanted them to establish a Christian government.

American Conservatives and Intelligent Design Theory

Until recently, it seemed that the Discovery Institute--a conservative think-tank in Seattle--had succeeded in persuading American conservatives to adopt "intelligent design theory" as the alternative to Darwinian evolutionary science. Their appeal to conservatives was based on the claim that Darwinian science is necessarily atheistic and materialistic in ways that deny the traditional morality that conservatives want to defend.

But now it seems that the tide is turning the other way. In December, Judge John Jones--a Republican appointee--issued a meticulous decision in the famous Dover, Pennsylvania, school case, in which he ruled that teaching "intelligent design" in public schools as a scientific theory was unconstitutional. He explained in careful detail why "intelligent design theory" was not supported by the scientific evidence.

Some conservative commentators--such as Charles Krauthammer and James Q. Wilson--have rejected "intelligent design" and defended Darwinian science. In First Things, one of the leading journals of religious conservatism, Stephen Barr has argued that there is no necessary contradiction between religious belief and Darwinian science, because there is no reason to deny that God could not have worked His creative will through the natural laws of evolution. Charles Darwin himself indicated this at the end of The Origin of Species, when he spoke of "the laws impressed on matter by the Creator."

The ultimate fear of conservatives is that Darwinian evolution is morally corrupting. But I have argued that when Darwin explains the "moral sense" as rooted in the evolved nature of human beings, he supports the conservative view of morality as founded in human nature. Moreover, the conservative commitments to family life, private property, and limited government can all be justified as conforming to human nature as shaped by evolutionary history.

As I have indicated previously, I see nothing wrong with allowing high school biology students to debate the competing claims of "intelligent design" and Darwinian science. If they were to read Darwin's own writings along with some of the "intelligent design" writings, students would see that Darwin anticipated all the major criticisms of his theory and offered plausible responses. Most importantly, they would see that his science supports traditional morality and allows for the possibility that God could be the First Cause of life.

Unfortunately, the conditions in American public schools are not hospitable to such a free and thoughtful debate. But at least now it seems that some conservative leaders are open to such a debate

A Review in THE WEEKLY STANDARD

The May 8th issue of The Weekly Standard has a review of Darwinian Conservatism by James Seaton, a professor of English at Michigan State University.

I am grateful to Seaton for his accurate summary and general praise of the book. For such a review to be published in a conservative journal such as The Weekly Standard suggests that some conservatives are open to my arguments.

Seaton makes the point that conservatives are opposed not so much to science as to "scientism." He defines "scientism" as "an exaggerated trust in the efficacy of the methods of natural science applied to all areas of investigation (as in philosophy, the social sciences, and the humanities)." In M. D. Aeschliman's article on "Science and Scientism" in American Conservatism: An Encyclopedia (ISI Books, 2006), "scientism" is identified with a reductionistic materialism that denies human purposefulness, freedom, and rationality.

In Darwinian Conservatism, I respond to this conservative fear of "scientism" in the chapter on "Emergence." I argue that a Darwinian conservatism can recognize the special capacities of the human soul as manifesting the emergent complexity of life, in which higher levels of organization produce mental abilities that cannot be found at lower levels. The emergence of novelty is manifested throughout the evolution of the universe. As we pass through levels of complexity, we find new properties at higher levels that are not fully reducible to the lower levels.

This idea of emergence denies strong reductionism, because it denies that the higher levels of organization can be completely reduced to the lower levels. But the idea of emergence also denies dualism, because it denies any radical separation of matter and mind.

We can see the emergent evolution of the soul in the brain that sustains human freedom and reason. The evolution of the primate brain shows a trend towards increasing size and complexity of the neocortex, which allows for greater behavioral flexibility in primates. This trend reaches its peak in the human brain. In human evolution, the growth in the size and complexity of the frontal lobes passed over a critical threshold allowing human beings to use words and images to compare alternative courses of action through mental trial and error. Consequently, human beings show emergent mental capacities for freedom of thought and choice that are uniquely human, although they have arisen from an evolutionary trend seen in other animals.

Since the soul emerges as an activity of the brain, the soul is not an immaterial or disembodied spirit. Research in neuroscience shows that the soul depends on the brain, because brain damage or disability produces mental disorders. And yet a normally functioning brain allows the human soul to exercise a freedom of thought and choice that no other animal has.

In this way, a Darwinian conservatism can reject the "scientism" of strong reductionism and affirm the unique freedom of human beings for deliberate thought and action as arising from the emergent evolution of the soul.

Darwinian Conservatism and Natural Law: A Reply to J. Budziszewski

Many conservatives regard natural law as the moral ground of their conservatism. Against moral relativism or subjectivism, they believe that there are some natural standards of right and wrong, good and bad, which are universal because they are rooted in human nature. Some conservatives look to the medieval tradition of natural law defended by Thomas Aquinas. Others look to the Aristotelian tradition of natural right defended by Leo Strauss.

In developing my Darwinian conservatism, I agree with this conservative reliance on natural law or natural right. But I argue that this ethical naturalism can be defended as grounded in the natural desires of the human species as shaped by natural selection in evolutionary history. In an article in Social Philosophy and Policy (Winter 2001), I elaborated this idea under the title "Thomistic Natural Law as Darwinian Natural Right."

But some of the conservative proponents of natural law regard my position as preposterous. For example, J. Budziszewski has attacked me in a paper entitled "The Rivalry of Naturalism and Natural Law." The paper was first published in Uncommon Dissent: Intellectuals Who Find Darwinism Unconvincing, edited by William Dembski (ISI Books, 2004). Recently, the paper has been published again in another book edited by Dembski (with a Foreword by Senator Rick Santorum)--Darwin's Nemesis: Phillip Johnson and the Intelligent Design Movement (Inter-Varsity Press, 2006). Both books are part of the "intelligent design" movement, and Budziszewski's paper shows how important it is for the proponents of "intelligent design" to reject Darwinian conservatism.

Budziszewski makes many points worth discussing. But his main idea is that for "natural law," one must "regard nature as the design of a supernatural intelligence." By contrast, for "naturalism," one must "regard nature (in a physical or material sense) as all there is." What I defend, he argues, is not "natural law" but "naturalism." And he criticizes me for my "determined attempt to make natural law safe for atheists."

First of all, I should stress that I have never defended atheism. On the contrary, in all of my writings--including Darwinian Natural Right and Darwinian Conservatism--I have argued that religious belief--particularly, Biblical religion--is both morally healthy and intellectually respectable. The religious appeal to God as the uncaused cause of nature cannot be refuted by reason. All natural explanations of the world--including Darwinian science--must assume that ultimately the order of nature is the final ground of explanation. But there is no way to deny the possibility that nature itself is the contingent product of nature's God.

And yet in our moral experience, we can appeal to a natural moral sense that does not depend upon religious belief, although religious belief can often reinforce that moral sense. When Thomas Aquinas defends the natural law as distinct from the divine law, he explains that natural law as "that which nature has taught all animals," because it is rooted in the "natural inclinations" or "natural instincts" of human beings and other animals. The divine law of the Bible can reinforce the natural moral law. But that natural law can stand on its own natural ground, and thus it can be known even to atheists. Darwinian science confirms this by explaining how this natural law could have evolved naturally to become what Darwin recognized as the natural moral sense implanted in human beings.

Budziszewski rejects this, because he believes that Thomistic natural law depends upon belief in God as the supernatural designer of nature. But if this were so, then there would be no distinction between divine law and natural law. This would deny the whole point of natural law reasoning, which is that human beings can agree on certain natural moral principles even when they cannot agree about religion. This has been a fundamental idea for conservatives who believe in religious liberty. We can tolerate religious diversity as long as we are confident that we share a natural moral sense that does not depend upon religious doctrines.

In criticizing my position, Budziszewski contradicts what he said in his book Written on the Heart: The Case for Natural Law (1997). In that book, he wrote that natural law is "a standard for believers and unbelievers alike," and that's why it is "especially pertinent to politics," because it provides a moral standard that all human beings can know because it is "written on the heart" (p. 11).

Far from absolutely depending upon the divine law of the Bible, our natural moral sense allows us to correct the moral mistakes in the Bible. For example, Budziszewski says that recognizing "the wrong of deliberately taking innocent human life" is part of the natural law. And yet, according to the Bible (Genesis 22), Abraham showed his faith in God by being willing to obey God's commandment to murder his son Isaac. Christians such as Kierkegaard have seen this Biblical story as teaching us "the suspension of the ethical" in our faith in God. We must obey God's commands even when they seem unethical. But most people see this Biblical teaching as wrong, because we recognize the wrongness of killing innocent children, and thus our natural moral sense corrects the Bible.

Another example would be the wrongness of slavery, which Budziszewski says is part of natural law. Darwin and others could condemn slavery as contrary to our natural moral sense. And yet in every Biblical passage where slavery is specifically mentioned, it is endorsed. Saint Paul taught slaves to obey their masters (Ephesians 6:5). In the debate over slavery in the United States, the slaveholders in the South quoted the Bible in their defense. As Eugene Genovese indicates in his book The Mind of the Master, the Southern slaveholders had a much better Biblical case for their position than did the abolitionists. The largest Protestant denomination in the United States--The Southern Baptist Convention--was formed to defend the Biblical basis of slavery. So, here again, we can correct the Bible because we can see that slavery violates our natural moral sense.

As I argue in Darwinian Conservatism, conservatives see traditional religious belief as important for supporting traditional morality. But they can also recognize the moral mistakes in religious beliefs that violate our natural moral sense.

ISI's Encyclopedia of American Conservatism

The Intercollegiate Studies Institute has just published AMERICAN CONSERVATISM: AN ENCYCLOPEDIA. I have posted the following review on the Amazon.com website:

No other book provides such a rich survey of the intellectual history of American conservatism. With almost 1,000 pages of entries written by some of the most prominent American conservatives (such as Russell Kirk, M. E. Bradford, and Murray Rothbard), this is now the one book that must be studied if one wants to understand American conservatism.

This comes at a good time, because American conservatives are wondering about the future of conservatism in America. The current debate over whether George Bush and his neoconservative supporters have betrayed the conservative movement manifests this new period of conservative self-examination. This book will help conservatives to reconsider their complex history and their possible future.

My judgment might be biased because I was involved in the original launching of this project by Greg Wolfe in 1990. I have five articles in the book--on "Intelligent Design Theory," "The Scopes Trial," "Social Darwinism," "Sociobiology," and "Herbert Spencer." My articles reflect a desire to persuade conservatives that Darwinian science supports conservative social thought. But that is a minority view in this book. The more common conservative scorn for modern science is stated in M. D. Aeschliman's article on "Science and Scientism."

The one weakness in this book is that it does not really cover the full history of the American conservative movement. It stresses the intellectual or academic side of conservatism as dominated by the Intercollegiate Studies Institute and NATIONAL REVIEW. It gives no attention to the most populist elements of the conservative movement in the 1950s and 1960s. For example, there is not a single reference to Billy James Hargis, to John Stormer's book NONE DARE CALL IT TREASON, or J. Evett Haley's book A TEXAN LOOKS AT LYNDON. Hargis was a Christian conservative who once broadcast his radio program in the 1960s on over 200 radio stations. Hargis's book A COMMUNIST AMERICA, MUST IT BE? was widely distributed. The books by Stormer and Haley sold millions of copies in 1964, during the Goldwater presidential campaign against LBJ. People like Hargis, Stormer, and Haley were far more popular than William Buckley or Russell Kirk in the 1960s.

I understand, however, that the editors of this encyclopedia want to make the history of American conservatism intellectually respectable by concentrating on the more purely academic levels of the movement.

In any case, no one can think seriously about the intellectual history of American conservatism without reading this book. And in helping us to understand the past history of conservatism, this book can also help us to foresee the future promise of conservatism in America and around the world.

Transhumanism and the Future of Human Nature

"Transhumanism" has become a popular term for the idea that technological enhancements of humans, animals, and machines will create a superhuman species of beings. Transhumanists believe that advances in genetic engineering, robotics, computer science, pscyhopharmacology, and nanotechnology will improve the physical and mental capacities of human beings to produce a new stage of evolutionary history. A new species of beings far superior to Homo sapiens might evolve from such technologies. Some of the best statements of transhumanism come from Nick Bostrum, James Hughes, and others in the World Transhumanist Association.

As I indicated in my chapter on biotechnology in Darwinian Conservatism, I am skeptical about transhumanism for two reasons. (I am now working on a new book that will elaborate my case against transhumanism.) My first reason is that transhumanism suffers from a Nietzschean utopianism that lacks common sense, because it ignores the ways in which the technologies for altering human traits are limited in both their technical means and their moral ends. My second reason is that I favor a stance of libertarian conservatism in response to technological changes that would allow improvement in human life but without the transcendence of human nature expected by the transhumanists.

The technology for enhancing human powers will be limited in its technical means, because complex behavioral traits arise from the intricate interplay of many genes interacting with developmental contingencies and unique life histories to form brains that constantly change as they respond flexibly to changing circumstances. Consequently, precise technological manipulation of human nature to enhance desirable traits while avoiding undesirable side effects will be very difficult if not impossible.

Consider, for example, the matter of human intelligence. One of the central assertions of the transhumanists is that we will soon create "superintelligent" beings that will be as intellectually superior to humans as humans are today to chimpanzees. Notice the extraordinary claims implicit in such an assertion--that we know what "intelligence" is in all of its complexity, that we can reduce intelligence to material causes that can be technically manipulated in precise ways, and that we can use this technical power to increase intelligence beyond anything ever achieved by living beings.

If we ask transhumanists to justify these claims, we get vague assertions about what might happen in the future. For instance, James Hughes, in his book Citizen Cyborg, says this about the future of computer intelligence: "Since computers powerful enough to model human brains should be common in thirty years, those computer models may then be able to run software simulations of our brains and bodies. Presumably these backups of our minds, if switched on, would be self-aware and have an independent existence. This is the scenario known as 'uploading.'"

No one knows how to fully model human brains or how to replicate such models in computers. No one knows how brains and bodies could be simulated in computer software. No one knows how computer software could become self-aware. And yet Hughes can imagine a "scenario" in which all of this ignorance is dispelled based on what he thinks "should" or "may" or "presumably" will happen in thirty years!

Now, of course, there are ways that we can use biomedical technology to protect against mental disabilities. For example, we could completely eliminate the mental retardation from Down syndrome through genetic screening of embryos or other means so that parents could be sure that they would not have children born with an extra 21st chromosome. But although this would be an improvement in human life, it would not transcend human nature by moving us towards "posthuman" beings with superhuman intelligence.

When transhumanists like Hughes predict the coming of "posthuman" humans as the fulfillment of what they think "should" happen, they are expressing not scientific or philosophic reasoning from observable experience but a religious longing for transcendence. Hughes is a Buddhist, and he foresees that the transhuman future will fulfill his Buddhist vision of a "society of enlightened beings as an infinite net, laced with pearls and gems, each enlightened mind a multicolored twinkle that is reflected in every other jewel." Like Friedrich Nietzsche, the transhumanists profess an atheistic materialism, and yet they still yearn for religious transcendence, which drives them to project fantasies of "overmen" and "posthumans" who have escaped the limitations of human nature to enter a heavenly realm of pure thought and immortal bliss.

The transhumanists also ignore how the technology of human enhancement will likely be limited in its moral ends. Human beings act to satisfy their natural desires. The use of technology to enhance human life will be driven by these natural desires. Transhumanists implicitly assume the enduring power of these desires. But if that is the case, then it is hard to see how human nature is going to be abolished if the natural desires endure.

For example, Hughes speaks about "the human needs and desires these technologies will be asked to serve," which include the desires for long, healthy lives, for intelligence and happiness, and the desires for parents to care for the physical and mental flourishing of their children. (All of these desires are included in my list of "twenty natural desires" in Darwinian Conservatism.) But if human beings are always going to be moved by the same natural desires, how does this take us into "posthuman" existence?

If we were really going to enter the "posthuman" realm, we would have to create beings who lacked the natural desires of human beings and who felt no concern for human life as moved by such desires. Such creatures might be superintelligent. But they would also be superpsychopathic predators who would feel no guilt or shame in enslaving or exterminating human beings.

The transhumanists respond to this prospect by explaining that we will have to be careful to instill in these posthuman beings what Nick Bostrum calls "human-friendly values." Hughes explains that we will have to instill by technological devices "sociability and empathy for all sentient beings." For example, we might require the installation of "morality chips." Hughes is not troubled by the naive expectation that we can develop "morality chips" to control the posthumans without any harmful side-effects.

Even if we could solve the technical problems in reducing morality to a mere matter of mechanical engineering, we might still wonder why Hughes and the other transhumanists want to preserve human morality if their goal is an absolutely posthuman life. If human morality as rooted in the natural human desires is at the core of human nature, then posthumanity would require the abolition of that morality. If the posthumans are going to be moved by the same natural desires and moral emotions that have always moved human beings, then it would seem that human nature has survived.

As an alternative to the transhumanist stance, I would defend a libertarian conservatism rooted in human nature. I would argue for leaving people free to exercise individual choice in developing and using new technologies to meet human needs and desires. This would allow people to learn by trial and error what is desirable and what is not in the use of such technologies.

Some legal regulation of choice might be required to promote the minimal safety and efficacy of the new technologies and to protect people against force and fraud. But within such a modest regulatory regime, people would have freedom of choice.

The moral standard here would be that a technology is good if it promotes the flourishing of our human nature by satisfying our natural desires. We can best conform to that standard by allowing people free choice in satisfying their desires. Although there will be great diversity in the choices people make, there will be some enduring patterns in their choices that reflect the universality of natural human desires. For example, we can assume that the natural desire for parental care will generally motivate parents to use technology in ways that promote the happiness of their children.

My stance is close to the position taken by Ron Baily in his book Liberation Biology. But I depart from Bailey when he moves towards a transhumanist libertarianism that assumes that somehow human nature will be superseded by a new, superior form of life.

I welcome the prospect of technological changes in the human condition that will improve the physical and mental functions of life. But rather than expecting the emergence of a transhuman form of life, I foresee that human nature will not only endure but prevail.

Leo Strauss, Darwinian Natural Right, and the Platonic Roots of Intelligent Design Theory

As I indicate in Darwinian Conservatism, the arguments for "intelligent design theory" as an alternative to Darwinian evolution were first stated in Book 10 of Plato's Laws. Leo Strauss's book on Plato's Laws raises questions about intelligent design in Plato's political theology. Those questions suggest the possibility that there might be a natural moral sense in at least some people that does not depend on the cosmic teleology of Plato's intelligent design theology. And if so, that suggests the possibility of justifying natural right as rooted in a moral sense of human nature shaped by natural evolution, which would not require an intelligent design theology.

In Plato's dialogue, the Athenian character warns against those natural philosophers who teach that the ultimate elements in the universe and the heavenly bodies were brought into being not by divine intelligence or art but by natural necessity and chance. These natural philosophers teach that the gods and the moral laws attributed to the gods are human inventions. This scientific naturalism appeared to subvert the religious order by teaching atheism. It appeared to subvert the moral order by teaching moral relativism. And it appeared to subvert the political order by depriving the laws of their religious and moral sanction. Plato's Athenian character responds to this threat by developing the reasoning for the intelligent design position as based on four kinds of arguments: a scientific argument, a religious argument, a moral argument, and a political argument.

His scientific argument is that the complex, functional order of the cosmos shows an intentional design by an intelligent agent that cannot be explained through the unintelligent causes of random contingency and natural necessity. His religious argument is that this intelligent designer must be a disembodied intelligence, which is God. His moral argument is that this divine designer is a moral lawgiver who supports human morality. His political argument is that to protect the political order against scientific atheism and immorality, lawgivers must promote the teaching of intelligent design as the alternative to scientific naturalism. Two thousand years later, William Jennings Bryan developed these same four arguments for intelligent design as superior to Darwinian naturalism. Recent intelligent design proponents such as Phillip Johnson, Michael Behe, and Bill Dembski have elaborated these same four arguments.

What's Strauss's position? Often it seems that Strauss and his students agree with Plato's intelligent design theology. They argue that natural right--as the alternative to moral relativism and nihilism--depends upon a cosmic teleology in which the cosmos has been intelligently designed to aim at certain ends that set the standards for natural right. And yet it sometimes seems that Strauss and his students regard this intelligent design teleology as only a "noble lie."

The latter is suggested by Strauss's book on the Laws. Strauss says that this is Plato's "only political work" and his "most pious work" (pp. 1-2). In Book 10, the Athenian character lays out the different classes of those guilty of impiety--those who deny the intelligent design theology--and indicates how they will be punished. Strauss notes that some of the atheists "have a character by nature good, hate the bad men, and through loathing injustice do not do wrong" (p. 155). Strauss then goes on to raise questions: "what happens to the atheist who is a just man and does not ridicule others because they sacrifice and pray and who to this extent is a dissembler? . . . One could say that he will become guilty if he frankly expresses his unbelief--but what if he expresses it only to sensible friends? Can one imagine Socrates denouncing him to the authorities?" (p. 156)

Does this imply that Socratic philosophers with "a character by nature good" could be good even without believing in the cosmic teleology of intelligent design theology? But if many people cannot be good without believing in the intelligent design theology, would the Socratic philosophers be obligated to dissemble by not openly declaring their atheism?

Why not then say that religion and intelligent design theology might be useful to reinforce morality, even though morality might be rooted in a natural moral sense for those without religous belief? Could that natural moral sense be a product of the natural evolution of the human species? That was Darwin's position, and I see no reason why it could not be adopted by conservatives as a sensible account of morality and religious belief. Conservatives could defend this as Darwinian natural right.

A Review of Richard Weikart's FROM DARWIN TO HITLER

In Darwinian Conservatism, I have a long section criticizing Richard Weikart's book From Darwin to Hitler, which argues that Darwin's ideas prepared the way for Hitler and Nazism. I have also summarized some of my criticisms on this blog.

The Journal of Modern History(March 2006) has just published a review of Weikart's book by Ann Taylor Allen, a professor of history at the University of Louisville. Unfortunately, the review is not available online except to subscribers. (I am grateful to Ed Babinski of Furman University for bringing this review to my attention.)

Weikart's book was financed by the Discovery Institute as part of their "wedge strategy" for attacking Darwinian science as morally corrupting in its atheism. The book is now commonly cited by proponents of creationism and intelligent design as scholarly proof that there is a direct line of influence "from Darwin to Hitler." But as I have shown, Weikart doesn't actually show any direct connection between Darwin and Hitler. In fact, Weikart has responded to my criticisms by admitting that the title of his book is misleading, since he cannot show any direct link between Darwin's ideas and Hitler's Nazism.

Professor Allen confirms my criticisms. She agrees with me that Weikart's talk about "Darwinism" is not based on any careful reading of Darwin himself but on vague ideas by a variety of people who presented themselves as "Darwinian," although their thinking was not directly shaped by Darwin's ideas. She also agrees that some of the fundamental elements of Nazism--such as anti-Semitism--clearly cannot be attributed to Darwinism.

Weikart insists that the traditional "Judeo-Christian ethic" was opposed to Hitler and Nazism, but he ignores the importance of Christian anti-Semitism in Germany (beginning with Martin Luther) in shaping the cultural roots of Nazism.

Allen concludes her review:
"This picture of the Holocaust as the outcome of a 'culture war' between religion and science leads to serious distortions on both sides. The 'Judeo-Christian' worldview is unproblematically associated here with many beliefs--such as opposition to birth control, legalized abortion, and assisted suicide--that many believing Christians and Jews would reject. And 'Darwinism' is equated with a hodgepodge of ideas about race, politics, and social issues. If all these ideas were to fall into well-deserved obsolescence, this would in no way detract from the validity of Darwin's contributions to modern biological science. Neither religion nor science is well served by this oversimplified view of their complex history."

Recognizing Hitler's tyranny for what it is requires a natural moral sense. Darwinian science supports that moral sense by explaining how it expresses the evolved desires of the human animal. Such a moral sense as rooted in human biological nature is a crucial part of Darwinian conservatism.

Posts on related themes can be found here and here.

Fukuyama, The Iraq War, and Darwinian Conservatism

In my book Darwinian Conservatism, I say very little about international relations and foreign policy. Francis Fukuyama's article in The New York Times Magazine(February 19)on neoconservatism and the Iraq war indicates to me the kind of foreign policy that would be supported by Darwinian conservatism. Although Fukuyama would not identify himself as a Darwinian conservative, Carson Holloway does identify him--along with James Q. Wilson and me--as a Darwinian conservative, and thus an object of his attack.

Fukuyama announces in this article that he can no longer consider himself a neoconservative, because he disagrees with the neoconservative foreign policy that supported the American invasion of Iraq. He agrees with the neoconservatives that American foreign policy should advance the ideals of democratic liberty. But he does not think that the unilateral and preemptive use of force in Iraq is a good means to achieve that end. More generally, he accuses the neoconservatives of discarding what he thought was originally fundamental to the neoconservative position--a realistic suspicion that grand social engineering can work without undesirable and unintended side effects. In Iraq, American forces are attempting to impose a new democratic regime as a massive project in social engineering, and Fukuyama regards this as naively utopian.

I agree with Fukuyama, and I think his major points conform to my arguments for Darwinian conservatism on at least four points.

First, I agree with Fukuyama's "end of history" argument insofar as this means that liberal democratic capitalism has a universal appeal to human beings because it satisfies the 20 natural desires that constitute the motivational core of human nature. I also agree, however, with Fukuyama's claim that the Bush neoconservatives are mistaken in thinking that the "end of history" is best achieved by preemptive wars of democratic imperialism. Rather, this will be achieved only gradually over a long period of time as people around the world are attracted by the success of the Western liberal democratic regimes.

Second, I agree with Fukuyama that the "end of history" does not mean the end of war or conflict. One of the 20 natural desires is the desire for war to defend one's society against others. The tendency to in-group/out-group behavior is so deep that there is no reason to think that the "end of history" will bring perpetual peace.

Third, I agree with Fukuyama that social order arises not just from a universal human nature but also from cultural traditions and deliberate choices. Consequently, the 20 natural desires of human beings will be diversely expressed in different societies based on the local traditions and choices of each society. So although liberal democratic capitalism should have a universal appeal because it fosters the satisfaction of natural human desires, we should expect that the particular social orders around the world will develop in unique ways to express the traditions and choices of each people. The Darwinian emergence of social order is a complex interaction between natural selection, cultural selection, and deliberate choice. So if an Islamic democracy does emerge in Iraq, it will do so through a long period of social evolution and particular choices that cannot be planned out according to some rational design given them by Americans.

Finally, I agree with Fukuyama's fundamental point that the democratic imperialism of the neoconservatives is utopian, because it ignores human imperfectibility. To assume that we can design liberal democratic regimes for every society and enforce our designs by force assumes more knowledge and virtue than human beings have. When George Bush proclaims--as he did in his Second Inaugural Address--that American foreign policy will have "the ultimate goal of ending tyranny in the world," he adopts a utopian idealism that is contrary to the conservative principle of the imperfectibility of human nature. In that Second Inaugural, Bush did go on to say that freedom cannot be imposed by force of arms because freedom must be chosen by every people, who will adopt institutions that "reflect customs and traditions very different from our own." But that prudent stance is denied by the democratic imperialism that Bush and the neoconservatives have adopted in Iraq.

Darwinian Libertarianism: A Reply to David Gordon

David Gordon has written a review of Darwinian Conservatism for The Mises Review (the winter 2005 issue), which is published by the Ludwig von Mises Institute. Unfortunately, this issue is not yet available at the website for the Mises Institute.

Gordon praises the book as "valuable" and "provocative," and he urges his readers to read it. As a libertarian, he is pleased that I defend libertarian principles of private property and limited government. He generally agrees with my argument that leftist programs tend to go against human nature.

But he also suggests some possible objections to my position. The first objection is that Darwinism does not add much to what we already know about human nature. "Did we not know, long before Darwin, that human beings have a nature? Must we appeal to speculations about the behavior of baboons and chimpanzees to justify our acceptance of obvious truths?"

In response, I would stress that my Darwinian conservatism provides support for the natural-law libertarianism of Murray Rothbard. As far back as 1983, I began talking with Rothbard, and he was enthusiastic about my idea that Darwinian science could sustain an ethics of natural law. In The Ethics of Liberty, Rothbard rooted his libertarian ethics in "the natural laws of the human organism" (1982, p. 32). In Economic Thought Before Adam Smith, Rothbard explained: "Natural law sees ethics as living-entity- (or species-) relative. What is good for cabbages will differ from what is good for rabbits, which in turn will differ from what is good or bad for man. The ethic for each species will differ according to their respective natures" (p. 4). He elaborated his ethics of liberty as founded in the natural inclinations of the human animal. Darwinian conservatism provides a biological account of those natural inclinations and of how they sustain a natural moral sense.

Human nature and natural inclinations as the ground of ethics might be "obvious" to Gordon. But Rothbard indicated that intellectuals commonly reject the idea of human nature and of ethics as rooted in natural inclinations. So it seems important to me to show how Darwinian science confirms Rothbard's natural-law libertarianism.

Gordon's second objection is that appealing to human nature in arguments against the statist left are not very useful if the limits of human nature are so broad that leftist programs cannot be rejected as absolutely impossible. But of course the same point could be made about any libertarian argument. When libertarians like Mises and Hayek argue against socialism, they cannot show that socialism is absolutely impossible. But they can show that the human costs of socialism are high because it denies the imperfectibility of human nature. Darwinian conservatism reinforces that argument by indicating how that limited human nature arises from human biology.

Gordon's third objection arises from his acceptance of the fact-value distinction and his belief that rooting morality in natural moral emotions cannot explain "moral obligation." Like Adam Smith, David Hume, and Charles Darwin, I believe that morality is ultimately grounded in moral emotions or sentiments. Our feeling of obligation--that we ought or ought not to do something--really is a feeling or emotion, and our morality ultimately depends upon those moral emotions of the human mind as shaped by natural evolution to be part of human nature. That's why I agree with Rothbard that what is good is relative to each species. If human nature were radically different from what it is, human morality would be different.

By contrast, Gordon believes that "moral obligation" requires a "direct perception of something" that is beyond the natural world. My only response to that is to ask him to explain and defend the idea that there is another world beyond the natural world, that moral norms are found in that other world, and that those transcendent moral norms somehow enter our natural world. He might then have to defend Kant's appeal to the "noumental" world of the "moral ought" beyond the observable world of nature. Such a radically dualistic metaphysics makes no sense to me. And I am not persuaded that a transcendentalist libertarianism would be superior to Rothbard's naturalistic libertarianism.

Abraham Lincoln and Charles Darwin

On February 12, 1809, Abraham Lincoln was born in Hardin County, Kentucky; and Charles Darwin was born in Shrewsbury, England.

The coincidence of their being born on the same day might lead us to think about other points of similarity in their lives.

William Herndon was Lincoln's friend and law partner, and he wrote one of the best biographies of Lincoln. He says that he gave Lincoln a copy of Robert Chambers' book Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation, which was first published in 1844. Chambers set forth a theory of evolution that Darwin later acknowledged as a forerunner of his theory. Chambers' book created a great controversy, because many people saw it as denying the role of God as Creator of the universe. According to Herndon, Lincoln was persuaded to adopt this new theory of evolution, because it confirmed his belief that everything in the universe must occur by natural causes. So it seems that Lincoln and Darwin were in agreement in their scientific naturalism and evolutionary views.

Because of their reliance on scientific explanation, both Lincoln and Darwin were accused by some people of promoting atheism by denying the doctrine of Creation. According to Herndon, Lincoln as a young man wrote a book against Christianity arguing that the Bible was not divinely inspired and that Jesus was not the son of God. He was warned by his friends that it was dangerous to make such arguments in public.

In 1846, Lincoln was running for election to Congress, and he had to answer the charge that he was an "infidel." In his written response, he acknowledged that he had never been a member of any Christian church. But he insisted that he had never openly promoted disrespect for Christianity. He conceded that he had defended--in private with a few friends--the "doctrine of necessity" that the human mind is determined by causal necessity beyond its control. But he thought some Christian denominations defended the same doctrine. Moreover, he wrote: "I do not think I could myself be brought to support a man for office, whom I knew to be an open enemy of, and scoffer at, religion. Leaving the higher matter of eternal consequences, between him and his Maker, I still do not think any man has the right thus to insult the feelings, and injure the morals, of the community in which he may live."

Lincoln often spoke as if God as Creator must be the First Cause of the universe, and he also commonly invoked the Bible as a source of moral teaching. And yet he also appealed to a natural "moral sense" inherent in human nature, which suggested a natural morality that did not depend on biblical doctrine.

One manifest expression of the "moral sense," according to Lincoln, was the moral feeling against slavery. To reinforce this moral feeling that slavery was unjust, Lincoln would quote the scriptural doctrine of human beings as created in God's image and the scriptural teaching of the golden rule. He did this despite the fact that the pro-slavery Christians in the American South quoted the specific passages on slavery in the Bible as supporting slavery.

On all of these points, Darwin took similar positions. Although he began life as an orthodox Christian, he eventually reached a point of being a skeptic or agnostic. He was particularly disturbed by the unmerited suffering of human beings--such as his child Annie, who died when she was 10 years old--as casting doubt on the existence of an all-good God. And yet he acknowledged that the First Cause of the universe was a mystery pointing to the existence of God. In his published writings, he regularly acknowledged that evolution might depend ultimately on the laws that the Creator had impressed on matter.

Darwin also agreed with Lincoln in seeing morality as rooted in a natural "moral sense." Although this natural morality could stand on its own, it could also be reinforced by biblical morality. Like Lincoln, Darwin saw the Bible's teaching of the golden rule as confirming the ultimate principle of natural morality.

Darwin was also a fervent critic of slavery as contrary to the natural moral sense. Against the scientific racists who argued that the human races were actually separate species, Darwin laid out the evidence for the universal traits shared by all human races as members of the same species.

On all of these points, Lincoln and Darwin support what I have defended in Darwinian Conservatism. We can explain the natural order of the universe as a product of natural evolutionary causes. But if we ask about the First Causes of Nature itself, we face a mystery that points to God as Creator. There is a natural moral sense that allows us to make moral judgments independently of any religious beliefs. And yet Biblical religion can reinforce natural morality by appeal to God as the moral lawgiver. Moreover, religion generally can have beneficial social effects because it helps people to cooperate more effectively by promoting social trust among the believers.

On all of these points, conservatives should see Darwinian science as confirming their principles of ordered liberty as rooted in traditional morality and religious belief. Many religious conservatives object to what they assume is the atheistic teaching of Darwinism, and that's why many of them support "scientific creationism" or "intelligent design theory" as alternatives to Darwinian science. But this ignores the possible compatibility of evolution and religion. In fact, as I argue in my book, there are many theistic evolutionists. And there is no clear evidence that Darwinism has converted people to atheism. (A good survey of the effects of evolution on religious belief can be found in a lecture by Ronald Numbers.)

These are some of the topics we might ponder as we celebrate the birthday of Abraham Lincoln and Charles Darwin.

Leo Strauss, Charles Darwin, and Natural Right

Those influenced by Leo Strauss cannot agree on how to solve what he identified as the fundamental problem of natural right. The problem is that the ancient Aristotelian idea of natural right seems to depend on a teleological conception of the universe that has been refuted by modern natural science.

I have argued--in Darwinian Natural Right and Darwinian Conservatism--that a Darwinian natural science can support an Aristotelian conception of natural right. But many, if not most, of those under Strauss's influence would reject this position, because they believe that Darwinism must deny the fundamental premises of natural right in denying the uniqueness of human beings as set apart from the rest of animal nature and in denying the cosmic teleology that sustains human purposefulness.

In the Introduction to Natural Right and History, Strauss claimed that the most serious problem for the ancient Greek idea of natural right is that it seems to have been refuted by modern natural science. Natural right in its classic form requires a teleological view of nature, because reason can discern what is by nature good for human beings only if they have a natural end. Strauss thought Aristotle had the clearest view of this dependence of natural right on natural teleology. Modern natural science, however, seems to deny natural teleology by explaining natural phenomena as determined by mechanical causes that act without ends or purposes. This creates a dilemma. If the science of man is to be a part of a nonteleological science of nature, then human action must be explained by reduction to physical impusles, which seems inadequate to explain human ends. The only alternative appears to be "a fundamental, typically modern, dualism of a nonteleological natural science and a teleological science of man," but this rejects the comprehensive naturalism of the premodern exponents of natural right such as Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas. Neither reductionism nor dualism is fully satisfactory.

Strauss concluded: "The fundamental dilemma, in whose grip we are, is caused by the victory of modern natural science. An adequate solution to the problem of natural right cannot be found before this basic problem has been solved." "Needless to say," Strauss then added, "the present lectures cannot deal with this problem," because the lectures published as Natural Right and History are "limited to that aspect of the problem of natural right which can be clarified within the confines of the social sciences."

The two unsatisfactory alternatives identified by Strauss are what I would call "reductionist monism" and "transcendentalist dualism." According to reductionist monism, everything should be ultimately reducible to physical mechanism. But this cannot adequately explain the evident purposefulness of human thought and action. According to transcendentalist dualism, human beings are uniquely free as spiritual beings to transcend the nonteleological realm of natural causes. But this typically modern dualism denies us the comprehensive science that we need to make the whole intelligible as a whole. Strauss sometimes spoke of a "dualism of the sciences: the sciences of nature and the sciences of man as man" as a "convenient practical solution." But he regarded this as only "provisionally indispensable," because he thought the final goal should be a "comprehensive science."

As an escape from this dilemma that would move towards a "comprehensive science," my conception of "Darwinian natural right" rests on what I would call "emergentist naturalism." Unlike the transcendentalist dualist, I recognize the continuity of nature and the integration of human beings within the natural order. Unlike the reductionist monist, I recognize the irreducible complexity of nature in which novel properties emerge at higher levels of organization that cannot be reduced to lower levels, so that the uniqueness of human beings comes from the emergent properties that distinguish the human species--most notably, the size and complexity of the frontal lobes of the human brain as a product of primate evolution. I have elaborated this point in Darwinian Conservatism in the chapter on "emergence."

Strauss recognized that the ultimate source of the modern dualistic separation of nature and culture is Hobbes., Despite the monism of Hobbes's materialism, his political teaching presupposes a dualistic opposition between animal nature and human will or reason: in creating political order, human beings use their rational will to transcend and conquer nature. This Hobbesian dualism was explicitly developed by Kant, who originally formulated the modern concept of culture as that uniquely human realm of artifice in which human beings escape their natural animality to express their rational humanity as the only beings who have a "supersensible faculty" for moral freedom. Through culture, human beings free themselves from the laws of nature.

To overcome the intellectual crisis created by this Hobbesian-Kantian dualism, Strauss hoped for a comprehensive science of nature that would reconcile modern natural science and Aristotelian natural right. But he was resigned to accepting a dualism between nature and humanity until his hope for a comprehensive science could be fulfilled.

One reason for why Strauss found dualism unsatisfactory is that it was one of the fundamental themes in Martin Heidegger's philosophic endorsement of Nazism. Arguing against "biologism," which treats human beings as rational animals rooted in the natural world, Heidegger believed that National Socialism would vindicate the spiritual freedom of the German people as "world-building" historical beings who transcend their natural animality. This dichotomy between the freedom of human history and the determinism of animal nature supported Heidegger's historicist nihilism as unconstrained by natural right.

In contrast to such dualistic separation between humanity and nature, I argue for the sort of comprehensive science that Strauss sought as manifested in a scientific naturalism rooted in Darwinian evolution. In such a science, morality could be studied scientifically as an expression of natural moral sentiments, which are natural in the sense that normal human beings in normal circumstances are born with natural propensities to learn the moral emotions necessary for living as social animals. And yet the specific content of moral rules will vary according to individual temperament and social circumstances. Judging what is right for particular people in particular situations will require practical judgment or prudence. This way of understanding the science of morality as part of a comprehensive science of nature would seem to come close to what Strauss sought.

Unfortunately, such serious topics raised by Strauss have been obscured recently by the silly journalistic commentary on the political influence of Strauss in American government. Now there is even some reporting about the Straussians
invading Canada! The opponents of the Straussian conspiracy in Canada are led by Shadia Drury, who once told a friend of mine that I was the only "reasonable" Straussian. Hmm . . .

I have written a series of posts on teleology.  The links can be found here.

The Dangers of Democracy

The landslide victory of Hamas in the Palestinian parliamentary elections exposes the mistake of the Bush administration in promoting democracy as the solution to problems in the Middle East and elsewhere.

Darwinian conservatives are committed not to pure democracy but to limited government. A Darwinian view of imperfect human nature suggests that no one is to be trusted with unchecked power, even when that power has been conferred by popular election. To secure ordered liberty, we need a system of balanced government under the rule of law based on the principle of countervailing power so that power checks power.

By contrast, Bush and the neoconservatives have adopted a utopian view of democracy based on popular sovereignty as the solution to the world's problems. But what happens when a majority of the people elect Islamic terrorists as their rulers? If pure democracy is our only standard for good government, we cannot object. But if limited and balanced government is our standard, then we can condemn pure democracy when it does not prescribe that power is to be limited and balanced.

The foolishness of embracing pure democracy through majoritarian rule is also evident in the neoconservative advocacy of presidential leadership acting outside the rule of law to exercise "wise discretion" in response to emergencies. To assume that a popularly elected president should be free to act outside the law for what he judges to be the public good is to assume a utopian view of human nature that ignores the corrupting effects of giving unchecked power to ambitious rulers.