Catherine Zuckert and Richard Hassing are the two discussants for my APSA panel this Friday. They have sent me written comments on the papers for the panel. Here is my response.
ZUCKERT
In commenting on my
paper—“Darwinian Liberalism Solves the Straussian Problems of Natural
Right”—Catherine Zuckert says that I have misread and misstated some of Leo
Strauss’s most important claims about three topics--natural human desires, the
reason/revelation debate, and esoteric writing.
She also briefly questions my support for Nietzsche’s position in his
middle writings as superior to his position in his later writings. I will respond to each of these four points.
Natural Desires
Zuckert writes:
Arnhart
maintains that what he calls “Darwinian liberalism” can and does provide us
with a standard of good based on the immanent teleology of emergent human
nature, which he goes on to describe in terms of 20 desires. He does not seem to notice, as any reader of
Plato’s Protagoras would, that some of these desires seem to conflict
with others—courage is the primary example of a virtue that does not align
itself easily with the animal attraction to pleasure and aversion to pain. Nor does he address the difference between
pleasure and the good, upon which Plato, Aristotle, and Strauss insist. He solves in quotes the problem of natural
right by defining it differently than Strauss did. For Strauss the problem of natural right is
“solved,” so to speak, by identifying philosophy as the way of life that is
good for human beings by nature.
I have been persuaded by
Aristotle that “the good is whatever is desirable for its own sake” (Rhetoric,
1362a22; NE, 1113a10, 1139a36-b6).
In his biological studies, Aristotle saw that in their voluntary
activities, animals move to satisfy their desires in the light of their
information about opportunities and threats in their particular circumstances (On
the Movement of Animals). This does
not mean that the good is whatever an animal happens to desire at any moment,
because an animal can mistakenly desire what in fact is not truly desirable. Furthermore, what is desirable differs for
each kind of animal, because each species has its own species-typical range of
desires. What is desirable also differs for
different individuals with different natural temperaments and propensities. Human beings have a distinctive range of
natural desires, and they are unique in their capacity for deliberate choice in
choosing to intelligently manage their desires for the fullest and harmonious
satisfaction of their desires over a whole life, which requires prudence in
judging what is desirable for particular individuals in particular circumstances.
Strauss suggests this
thought when he says that for natural right, “we must distinguish between those
human desires and inclinations which are in accordance with human nature and
therefore good for man, and those which are destructive of his nature or his
humanity and therefore bad. We are thus
led to the notion of a life, a human life, that is good because it is in
accordance with nature” (NRH, 95).
In the footnote to this passage, Strauss cites Cicero’s claim that
“almost all” classical philosophers accepted this notion that prudence must
judge what is in harmony with the primary natural desires instinctive to human
beings (De finibus, 2.33, 5.17).
Zuckert says that for
Strauss, “the problem of natural right is ‘solved,’ so to speak, by identifying
philosophy as the way of life that is good for human beings by nature.” Then, at the end of her comments, she says that
Strauss and I disagree about the “definition of the human good by nature,”
because while I identify this with “the satisfaction of 20 some desires,”
Strauss identifies this with “the dignity of the human mind.”
I agree that the
philosophic life is good for human beings by nature, because it satisfies the
natural desire for intellectual understanding.
I disagree, however, with the claim that the philosophic life is the only
good human life by nature, and therefore, as Strauss says, “there are no gods
but the philosophers,” and “the man who is merely just or moral without being a
philosopher appears as a mutilated human being,” who lives a life of “human
misery” and “despair disguised as delusion” (NRH, 151; “Reason and
Revelation,” 147, 163).
I agree with Shadia Drury
that this core Straussian teaching is both false and dangerous. It is false because it denies the natural
goodness of those many human lives that are not devoted to philosophy—moral,
religious, and political lives. It is dangerous because it teaches those who
think they are the true philosophers living the only naturally good life that
they can rule over all other human beings by natural right.
I agree with Strauss that
“philosophy is essentially the preserve of the very few individuals who are by
nature fit for philosophy,” because they are animated by the “natural desire”
to know (“Reason and Revelation,” 146, 149; “Progress or Return?,” 122). But Strauss never offered any proof
that this was the only good human life by nature—that other human lives
with different rankings of natural desires could not be good by nature. Strauss said that there must be a
“pre-philosophic proof” that the philosophic life is the only right way of life,
and that this proof must be confirmed by “an analysis of human nature” (“Reason
and Revelation,” 146-47). But Strauss
never provided this “pre-philosophic proof” or the “analysis of human nature”
that would confirm it.
A Darwinian scientific study
of human nature can show that there is a range of at least 20 natural human
desires that constitute the natural goods of life, which includes goods such as
family life, social ranking, politics, property, friendship, religious
understanding, and intellectual understanding.
The generic standard for a good human life will include all or most of
these human goods to some degree. But
the ranking of goods—so that one good is stressed more than the others—depends
upon the temperament and circumstances of individuals. The philosophic life is best for Socrates,
but not for those who lack the natural inclinations and capacities of Socratic individuals.
Consequently, the best
social order is one that allows human beings the freedom in their families and
voluntary associations to develop the moral and intellectual virtues necessary
for pursuing the full range of naturally good human lives. Darwinian liberalism embraces the liberal
social order as doing this most successfully.
Even those who agree with Strauss that the philosophic life is the best
life by nature should recognize the liberal social order as best, because philosophy
has flourished in those “comparatively liberal” orders such as fourth and fifth
century Athens (PAW, 33).
Socrates would not have lived a good life in Sparta, and Strauss would
not have lived a good life in Nazi Germany.
An important part of the
freedom secured in a liberal order is the open public debate over whether the
natural desire for religious understanding should rank higher than the natural
desire for intellectual understanding, which is the conflict between reason and
revelation.
Reason and Revelation
Zuckert writes:
Arnhart
also mistakes Strauss’s argument why reason cannot refute revelation. It is not the “brute” fact of some people
claiming to have had a revelation (which may, after all, have been an
illusion); it is the incapacity of human reason thus far to give a complete
account of the whole that would exclude the possibility of the existence of the
God of Scripture.
Strauss writes:
There
cannot be any evidence in favor of revelation but the fact of revelation
as known through faith. Yet this means
that for those who do not have the experience of faith, there is no shred of
evidence in favor of faith; the unbelieving man has not the slightest
reason for doubting his unbelief; revelation is nothing but a factum
brutum; the unbeliever can live in true happiness without paying the slightest
attention to the claim of revelation. (“Reason and Revelation,” 142)
Yes, as Zuckert
indicates, the unbeliever can say that “the fact of revelation” is “an
illusion,” but to say this, the unbeliever must assume that a complete account
of the whole would exclude the possibility of revelation, and therefore any
putative fact of revelation is really an illusion. Since that complete account of the whole has
not yet been attained, and is probably unattainable, the unbeliever cannot
rationally refute the fact of revelation.
Although the Darwinian
liberalism that emerged in Victorian England did not settle this dispute
between reason and revelation, it did promote the open public debate over
reason and revelation as expressed in the conflict between evolutionary science
and Christian creationism. This allowed
human beings—even the great multitude of human beings—to deliberately choose whether
or not to rank the natural desire for religious understanding as higher than
the natural desire for intellectual understanding.
This showed the success
of the Liberal Enlightenment in achieving its goal—“a time when, as a result of
the progress of popular education, practically complete freedom of speech would
be possible, or—to exaggerate for purposes of clarification—to a time when no
one would suffer any harm from hearing any truth” (PAW, 33-34). This seemed to contravene Strauss’s teaching that
philosophers must always be esoteric in hiding their skeptical questioning of
revelation and other authoritative opinions.
But then Zuckert says that I have misinterpreted Strauss’s account of
esotericism.
Esotericism
She writes:
Arnhart
gives an incomplete and therefore inaccurate account of Strauss’s argument for
the ongoing necessity of esoteric speech and writing by ignoring the third and
most fundamental reason Strauss gives for it: it is not possible to convey the
truth of things by merely stating it.
People will not understand the truth if they have not thought about the
problem themselves. The most a text can
do, therefore, is to provoke them to think.
Here she is alluding to
Arthur Melzer’s distinctions between three kinds of reasons for esoteric
writing. Defensive esotericism is
esoteric writing that defends philosophers from persecution. Protective esotericism is esoteric
writing that protects non-philosophic readers from being harmed by dangerous
ideas. Pedagogical esotericism is
esoteric writing that teaches potentially philosophic readers how to think for
themselves in the search for truth. She
seems to be saying that a liberal social order can eliminate the need for
defensive and protective esotericism by promoting freedom of thought and speech,
so that the philosophic quest for truth is no longer harmful in its subversion
of social order based on unexamined opinion.
But this does not eliminate the “ongoing necessity” for pedagogical
esotericism, in which philosophic writers create puzzles, so that in solving
the puzzles, their philosophic readers learn how to think for themselves.
Is she suggesting that
Strauss himself saw the “ongoing necessity” that he had to write esoterically,
but only for the sake of pedagogical esotericism, and not for the sake of
defensive or protective esotericism? This
seems to be what she says in The Truth About Leo Strauss, where she says
that Strauss’s writing shows “pedagogical reserve” in saying less than what he
thinks, but not true esotericism in saying other than what he thinks
(136-37). But if that is so, if Strauss saw
no necessity in a liberal social order for defensive or protective esotericism,
doesn’t that indicate that the premodern philosophers were wrong in believing
“that public communication of the philosophic or scientific truth was
impossible or undesirable, not only for the time being but for all time,” because
in a liberal society there is no deadly conflict between philosophy and the
city?
That’s the point I make
in my paper about how Darwinian liberalism in Victorian England promoted a
largely open society with such freedom of thought and speech that esoteric
writing and speaking were unnecessary and undesirable. One can also see this in the Darwinian
liberalism of Nietzsche’s Human, All Too Human.
Nietzsche
Zuckert writes: “Arnhart’s
embrace of the middle Nietzsche as a supporter of modern science and liberal
democracy raises the obvious question of why Nietzsche did not stick with this
position but moved on.”
Nietzsche’s friend Lou
Salomé offered the best answer to this question: In his middle writings,
Nietzsche shows the intellectual clarity of a skeptical free thinker; but in
his later writings, the religious longing from his youth reappears, and he is
caught up in the atheistic religious frenzy which he affirms as his “Dionysian
nature.”
The philosophic question
here concerns not so much the motivation for Nietzsche’s switch from the
Darwinian aristocratic liberalism of his middle period to the Dionysian
aristocratic radicalism of his later period, but rather the question of which
is rationally superior. In my paper, I
make some arguments for why his Darwinian aristocratic liberalism is closer to
the truth about human existence than is his Dionysian aristocratic radicalism.
In Human, All Too Human,
Nietzsche warns against the foolish and dangerous belief that some minds are
“superhuman” (übermenschlich) as a “religious or half-religious
superstition” (sec. 164). In his later
writings, of course, he is inspired by a vision of the superhuman
artist-philosopher exercising will to power over all of humanity for a
transvaluation of all values. This later
position of Nietzsche is likely to be more appealing to those who believe that “there
are no gods but philosophers.”
HASSING
Hassing
asks whether my account of Darwinian natural right could support a cultural
education in natural right that would counter the modern idea of “transformism—the radical malleability of nature and human
nature in face of scientific and legal techne, and political power in the hands of progressive
forces.”
My
answer is yes. In my lifetime, I have
seen an amazing shift in academic education and popular culture from the predominance
of the “blank slate” denial of human nature unconstrained by animal biology to
a growing acceptance of evolved human nature.
While
my thinking about Darwinian natural right began in 1975 as I read Ed Wilson’s Sociobiology, there was an explosion of vehement scorn for
Wilson’s claim that human social behavior was shaped by evolutionary nature. A few years later, the early proponents of
“evolutionary psychology” (such as Leda Cosmides and John Tooby) provoked the
same kind of denunciation. But then,
over the past 25 years, these ideas about the evolutionary science of human
nature as shaping human sociality, morality, and cognition have become widely
accepted, although there is still serious resistance. For example, evolutionary psychology has
become a standard field of study within departments of psychology and
anthropology, and even in some English departments, and in many philosophy
departments.
In
my own Department of Political Science at Northern Illinois University, we had
“Politics and the Life Sciences” as a field of study at both the undergraduate
and graduate levels. We had some
courses—such as my “Biopolitics and Human Nature”—that were cross-listed in
both the political science and biology departments. So I had both biology and political science
majors who were fascinated by thinking about how the biological science of
human nature might illuminate the great debates in political science and political
philosophy.
The
influence of this thinking in popular culture can be seen in the popularity of
many best-selling books explaining human nature and human history through
evolutionary science. Steven Pinker’s
books are an example of this.
The
success of such thinking depends on escaping the false dichotomy of nature
versus nurture or biology versus culture.
Increasingly, evolutionary theorists recognize that we need to explain
animal behavior as shaped by at least three levels of explanation: natural
history constrains but does not determine cultural history, and nature and
culture jointly constrain but do not determine individual history. One illustration of how this might work is in
my paper “Biopolitical Science,” which explains Abraham Lincoln’s decision to issue
the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863 as manifesting all three levels of
analysis in complex interaction: we need to see this as an event in the natural
history of cooperation in the human species, in the cultural history of slavery
in America, and in the individual history of Lincoln as a political actor in
the Civil War.
Hassing asks whether the
Darwinian natural right of sex differences, familial bonding, and parenting
might provide natural standards for judging current debates over the proper
social norms for gender identity, family life, and marriage. My answer is yes, and I would point to how these
debates often become debates over evolutionary human psychology.
So, for example, in
Thomas Aquinas’s reasoning about the natural law of marriage, we can see the
influence of Aristotle’s biological works in support of Aquinas’s claim that
“natural right is that which nature has taught all animals.” And in the recent debates over same-sex
marriage, we have seen people questioning whether same-sex marriage can serve
the natural biological ends of marriage—conjugal bonding and parental care. Proponents of same-sex marriage have to argue
that same-sex couples can serve these biological ends, because same-sex couples
can be good parents, and because even if they don’t become parents, a married
same-sex couple can satisfy the natural desire for conjugal bonding. It then becomes an empirical scientific
question to see if same-sex marriages succeed or fail to satisfy these natural
biological desires.
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